de him when Miss Letitia and
Miss Eliza refused his invitation. If either one of them had gone, it
would have been all right. But neither would.

No human power could have got Miss Letitia into it, and Miss Eliza
considered it such a sinful waste of money when Timothy told her how
much it had cost him, that she showed her great disapproval by
declining to even sit in it.

But nearly every night it whizzed by on the way to town, and Arethusa
watched for it in the shadow of the clematis vine.

* * * * *

Arethusa sighed deeply, and reached for "Jane Eyre," at the side of the
rug.

It was a most abused and mistreated copy of this work, bearing her
father's name on its fly leaf, which she had found on a recent
rummaging through the garret. A glance through its pages had made her
most anxious to read it. It seemed to be rich with sentiment and
entertainment, of a truly Romantick nature.

She had read only as far as Jane's venture into the world of Mr.
Rochester last night, when forced by the unfeeling Miss Eliza who
viewed no printed matter as of such interest as to make for any
forgetfulness of what one ought to do, with a stern call from the foot
of the stairs, to "put out that light, and stop whatever it is you're
reading this minute, and go straight to sleep!" Arethusa had wept
bitterly over the cruelty of the early years; she hoped, this
afternoon, to see Jane through to an uninterrupted conclusion of
Perfect Happiness such as she so unmistakably deserved.

She read eagerly; her grey-green eyes following the lines of print
without once lifting. Her only movement was the turning of the leaves,
until a large and splashing drop of something fell plump on the page
then open, and she wiped it off. But another fell, immediately after
it; then another. It was Mandy's rain.

So Arethusa rose and gathered up her rug to start for the house. In her
recently acquired submissiveness, the disobeying of Miss Eliza to stay
out in a rain seemed to have no attraction.

But the storm broke with such quickness and fury, that Arethusa got no
farther towards the house than a big oak a few yards away from the
Hollow Tree. Underneath this, she crouched, covering her head with her
arms. For the first time in her life she was frightened of a storm. But
then, she never remembered having seen such a battle of the elements as
this became, in the fewest possible moments. In fact, for years
afterwa