It was his suggestion that they have a run up to the house.
Hand in hand, they set off at a mad pace through the orchard. Miss Eliza saw them coming, for she was restlessly waiting on the back porch; she had been waiting for some time. She was grim and disapproving as the flushed pair brought up, panting, before her.
But Timothy interposed in a very masterful sort of way.
"You mustn't scold her, Miss 'Liza, for she came very near being killed!" He drew Arethusa's hand through his arm with a little air of proprietorship which did not escape unnoticed. "The big Hollow Tree fell and it pinned her down. I had an awfully hard time getting her out from under it."
At a sudden recollection of the getting Arethusa out from under the tree he blushed boyishly, and most violently, even through his flush of running. Arethusa followed suit.
She regarded them both with keen eyes for a moment, those keen eyes of hers that so little escaped.
"Have you," she asked suddenly, and so suddenly that both boy and girl jumped, "have you decided to marry Timothy at last, Arethusa?"
"No," replied Arethusa, although very weakly, for it was more from force of habit than anything else.
Timothy put his arm clear around her quite unashamed before Miss Eliza, to the deep interest and great delight of Mandy, peering through the kitchen door; and he drew the unresisting girl close to his side.
"Yes," he repeated, with firmness, "she has!"
Arethusa looked up at him sideway, at the strength of his young profile; and feeling his arm around her and remembering how strong and sure that arm had seemed such a little while before, like a bulwark for safety between her and anything that might threaten, she answered meekly, almost like an echo, "Yes, I have!"
And this was quite in spite of the fact (and yet that may have been the very reason why she did, for she had always declared so emphatically that she would say, "no!" to any such proposition coming from him) that Timothy had made no formal proposal of marriage to her so far this summer.