ittle bit of a way nearer to the door.

"You don't know any thing about it," declared Miss Eliza, flatly. "What
you call love is just pure silly!"

"Well," Arethusa despairingly presented her final bit of reasoning, "I
hate Timothy! I think it's the very ugliest name I ever heard. I could
never be happy married to anybody called 'Timothy'."

Miss Eliza sniffed. The girl was getting more and more foolish! "That
certainly means nothing!"

"I always thought 'Timothy' was a good name," came softly from Miss
Asenath. "I always liked 'Timothy' very much myself."

Arethusa melted suddenly. She remembered.

How could she have been so cruel as to say such a thing and hurt dear
Aunt 'Senath's feelings? With a rush she was across the room and both
strong young arms had clasped the frail figure of the best-loved aunt
closely to her.

"Oh, Aunt 'Senath, Aunt 'Senath!" she sobbed, wildly penitent. "I was a
beast! I didn't think! Your Timothy was a lovely name!"

It sounded a trifle illogical and inconsistent, but Miss Asenath seemed
to understand perfectly. She whispered her forgiveness to the weeping
Arethusa, who could only squeeze her and murmur incoherent avowals of
her lack of intent to be unkind. To be unkind to Aunt 'Titia was bad
enough, but to be unkind to Aunt 'Senath! It was the last word in
perfidy.

"It all depends on what we think of the person, what we may think of
the name, Arethusa, dear," said Miss Asenath. "I know you didn't mean
it."

And Arethusa wept some more, scalding tears of still another sort of
penitence: Aunt 'Senath was such a darling! The back of Miss Asenath's
woolly white wrapper was rapidly getting damper and damper.

Such scenes as the one just past generally ended in just this way, with
Arethusa's tears; and the tears nearly always cleared the air. Miss
Eliza took up the _Christian Observer_ once more, and Miss Letitia
resumed her rosy crocheting, after raveling out almost a whole row
which she had put in as wrong as was possible.

"If I were you, Arethusa," remarked Miss Eliza drily, after awhile,
looking up from her magazine to bend her sharp glance on the pair on
the sofa, "I would not crush my aunt into jelly in order to show her
your sorrow at being so thoughtless and unfeeling. And you will make
her quite ill; very likely it will bring on one of her bad headaches,
if you carry on much longer that way."

Miss Asenath's headaches were periods of much anxiety for all the
family,