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Bridge lessons were forgotten as if they had never been heard of. Every vestige of color left Arethusa's face. Her hands clasped tightly over her suddenly tumultuous heart. "To.... To me, George? To me," she stammered; "are you real sure he said to me?" George nodded, smiling. "He said, 'Miss Worthington, very plain, Miss Arethusa."
Arethusa's name and address had been sewed in everything she had on, "in case of accident." Miss Letitia had had a dream one night of an unidentified body lying by a railroad track after a wreck. She dreamed the body to be Arethusa's.
The station had gradually become deserted, until there were only a few employees pottering about here and there, and one lone man standing talking to the blue-capped man at the gate. Arethusa's mental picture of her father had been very clear. All this while she had been looking for the handsome youth of the wavy dark hair, eccentrically long, and the graceful Italian military cape.
So when George announced a caller who had asked for "Miss Worthington," Elinor, who had just that moment come back from down-town with those two new and widely advertised detective stories for Ross's amusement which he had earlier in the day expressed a desire to see, said that she would begin the reading aloud in Arethusa's place, and that Arethusa must receive the visitor.
She looked so young, so altogether young, with her slimness and her tumbled hair, and her childishly quivering red mouth, for all that great unhappiness in her eyes. And even if she would not tell him the exact nature of her trouble, Ross was almost positive that he knew what it was. He was well acquainted with Mr. Bennet, and with Arethusa and Arethusa's worship of Mr.
So he sulked in his corner and the moments of the Party sped by joyfully and all too quickly, for everybody else. Arethusa's guests, with the sole exception of Timothy, seemed to be having the very best of times. She was far too happy herself to notice his unhappiness very much, although she did fly over to him once or twice to beg him to behave and stop being such an awful gloom.
She could not possibly object to a little Friendly Conversation with someone in the very same seat. And he listened, truly interested, as Arethusa's enthusiasm began to make up for the while it had been pent, in all she told him of the coming Visit and the magnificent expectations she had of that Visit, and of Ross and Elinor.
Timothy knelt down and began making frantic efforts to move the huge branches. "Are you hurt?" "Not a single bit!" Arethusa's spirits began an immediate reviving. Here was Timothy! The unmistakable cheerfulness in her tones somewhat reassured her rescuer. "Only I can't get out!" "And you're quite positive you're not hurt?"
Never, in all of the history of the season, did any one ever have such a Christmas Glow as this of Arethusa's. And it was extended most lavishly to everyone she met through these days, whether she knew them or not, old and young, rich or poor, from smiling lips and starry eyes. "A Real Spirit of Christmas," Ross called her, "red hair and all!"
It hadn't come altogether too late. In a slight lull which followed Timothy's third helping to ham, Miss Letitia asked Arethusa if she had brought her father's letter back to the house with her. Arethusa's eyes shone immediately. "Yes," she replied. Then she remembered, "No, I didn't either. I left it down in the Hollow Tree." "It happened to be my letter," said Miss Eliza, drily.
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