as strong as he was.

They had been forced to converse in shouts in order to be heard above
the noise of the storm through the swaying and bending trees, and the
whole affair:--the loud argument which got nowhere, and the subsequent
tableau of the girl and himself standing here under the big tree
glaring at each other while the fury of the rain lashed against them
and the storm dinned about them, suddenly struck Timothy as funny.

He laughed.

"Stop laughing!" screamed Arethusa, angrily.

"I can't help it! You--you look so perfectly funny!" Timothy's mirth
pealed forth again.

Arethusa's hair hung about her face in long, wet locks; her eyes, in
her white face, were like great, dark pools of wrath; and she had
spread her arms out behind her against the tree as if she had gripped
it to hold should Timothy attempt force to make her leave her
stronghold.

"You look just like a drowned rat, yourself!" she exclaimed furiously.
"And--and you've got a whole pond in your Jimmy!"

So Timothy took off his big Jimmy hat and shook the pool of rain water
out of the curved brim.

Had she not been so angry with him, Arethusa might have likened him
then to a young river god instead of a "drowned rat," and the
comparison would have fitted much better. And with his blonde head,
which the dampness had merely made to wave a little more, for his
thickly plaited straw hat had somewhat protected it from a thorough
wetting, she might even have called him a young Viking, without any
very great misuse of metaphor; Timothy was so thoroughly of the
outdoors in his appearance, with all his youthful strength.

His deep blue eyes gleamed with determination as plainly as the grey
eyes opposite him gleamed with anger, for Timothy meant that Arethusa
should go into the house; and that without much more delay.

But he changed his tactics to accomplish this. Although he was nothing
of a weather prophet, he displayed, at times, wisdom rather beyond his
years.

"Arethusa, do be reasonable, now," he said, in the most friendly of
coaxing tones. "Suppose that tree should be struck; you'd be killed. I
would too."

"That wouldn't make very much difference," she replied, naughtily.

But he ignored this interruption. "I might enjoy doing this some other
time, Arethusa, when the lightning and thunder aren't so bad. This is
the very worst electrical storm we've had this whole summer. And you
know that I never do mind being out in the rain, don't you