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Miss Asenath watched her sympathetically. If it would have done the slightest good she would have entered the breach, but when Miss Eliza reached the stage of her argument of pointblank questions, it meant pursuit to the bitter end. Miss Letitia was not so wise. She had made three attempts to catch the loop of the same stitch in her crocheting, and failed each time, in her excitement.
Nay, father, never will I become his wife. I am willing to marry the son of Pharaoh, the future ruler and king of Egypt." Potiphar promised his daughter not to speak of the plan again. At that moment Joseph's arrival was announced, and Asenath left the presence of her parents and withdrew to her own apartments.
Potiphar was enchanted with the honor in prospect for him, and also with the opportunity it would afford him of bringing about a marriage between Asenath and Joseph. But when he disclosed his plan to his daughter, she rejected it with indignation.
With her own hands, Asenath made the room as fresh and nice as could be; put little frilled covers over the pillows of the low bed, and on the half-high bureau top; brought in and set upon the middle of this last a slender vase from her own table, with a tea-rose in it, and said to herself when all was done, "How sweet and still it will be for them to come up to, after all!
It may have been a bitter pill for the priest to swallow, to give his daughter to a man of yesterday, and an alien; but, just as probably, he too looked to Joseph with some kind of awe, and was not unwilling to wed Asenath to the first man in the empire, wherever he had started up from. But should not Joseph's religion have barred such a marriage?
One evening, as Richard, in displaying his collection, brought to view the blood-red leaf of a gum-tree, Asenath exclaimed "Ah, there is the sign! It is early, this year." "What sign?" he asked. "That the summer is over. We shall soon have frosty nights, and then nothing will be left for us except the asters and gentians and golden-rods." Was the time indeed so near?
With Miss Eliza's departure harmony reigned supreme, and Arethusa's tongue loosened. Over the marking of her stockings, she chattered happily to Miss Asenath and Miss Letitia. Very often, when Miss Eliza was present, her rather dry reception of her niece's enthusiastic presentation of ideas had a somewhat quenching effect upon the real flow of conversation.
Asenath Scherman did not keep two dictionaries, nor pare off an idea, as she would a bit of apple before she gave it to a child. It was noticeable how she sharpened their little wits continually against her own without straining them. And there was a reflex action to this sharpening. She was fuller of graceful little whims, of quick and keen illustrations, than ever.
Richard Hilton laughed merrily at the gravity with which she uttered the last sentence. "Why, Miss Asenath, I mean what am I good for; if I have not strength enough to carry a basket?" "Thee's a man, I know, and I think a man would almost as lief be thought wicked as weak. Thee can't help being weakly-inclined, and it's only right that thee should be careful of thyself.
"But you are making a great big mistake, Arethusa," she could not help adding, "every way, in not taking Timothy while you can." Yet it was amiably said, and did not cause the slightest excitement. Which goes but to prove more surely that Miss Asenath seemed to have missed her calling. "That was such a pretty girl that just went past us, Ross."
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