the congenial solitude of Miss Asenath's Woods, where, with a
thick, woolly carriage rug spread on the ground under the hollow tree,
she lay for long hours and read or dreamed. Miss Eliza absolutely
refused to countenance any sitting or lying on the damp earth of spring
without that rug beneath her, in Arethusa's present state of seeming
ill-health; but she made no objections to as many hours spent in the
woodland as Arethusa pleased, only provided the rug was there too.

Timothy was very busy, as all farmers needs must be in the spring. The
garden had to be got in, and the fields plowed and planted. He did not
have nearly so much time for gadding, and Miss Eliza was pleased. She
told him she was every chance she had to do so.

Timothy looked much older, Miss Asenath thought. He had a great deal
more dignity, and his blue eyes seemed to have acquired depth. There
were stern little lines in his face that had never been there before;
just as if the boy Timothy had given place to the man. Miss Asenath
loved these evidences of his growing.

But often, when he made his rare and formal visits to the Farm of an
evening and he and Arethusa sat so decorously in front of the
sitting-room fire with the family, she watched him then a trifle sadly.
Miss Asenath believed that she would almost be glad to hear him and
Arethusa quarrel once more.

"Poor children!" she said to herself one night. "I wonder when they're
going to even begin realising how much time they're wasting! All these
precious days are slipping by and nothing can ever bring them back!"

And then, with her frail hands clasped on the locket at her throat,
Miss Asenath fell to dreaming.

CHAPTER XXV

Arethusa gathered up her woolly rug and a dog-eared copy of "Jane
Eyre," which would have known almost instant confiscation if Miss Eliza
had glimpsed it in her possession, and proceeded to go down to the
woodland. It was an afternoon in early May, and unseasonably hot. As
she passed through the kitchen, Mandy paused in her bread-making and
looked around. She shook her head at the girl's evident intention, with
disapproval.

"I wouldn' be gwine out theah to be settin' this arternoon, Arethusie.
It are gwine to rain," she stated with positiveness. Mandy was by way
of being something of a weather prophet.

"Nonsense, Mandy! The sky's as blue as blue! There's not a cloud
anywhere!" Arethusa dismissed the idea with laughter. "Don't be such an
old prophet of e