Nobody else, apparently, was stirring yet. Joy was beginning to feel hungry, so she strayed into the dining-room, to see whether by any chance anybody else was down.

Phyllis was just coming into the dining-room, with her son frolicking about her.

"How do you feel after your triumph last night?" she asked. "Dead; or do you want another party this morning? I was proud of you, Joy. Everybody told me how pretty you were, and how charming, and how intelligent it was of me to be a friend of yours."

Joy flushed with genuine pleasure.

"Oh, was I—did they?" she asked. "Phyllis, it was lovely! ... And think of being able to dance like that without knowing how! That was just a plain miracle, if you like!"

"Good-morning, Joy," said Allan, coming in at this point.

He sat down with them and attacked his grapefruit.

"I see I'm two laps behind on breakfast. Philip, you young rascal, where's my cherry?"

Philip giggled uncontrollably.

"Why, Father, you ate it yourself! You ate it while you said good-morning to Joy!"

"You seem to have made one fast friend, Joy," pursued Allan, dismissing the subject of the cherry for later consideration. "Rutherford confided to me last night that he thought he had been working too hard; he isn't returning to his native heath for a month more. His aunt's been pressing him to stay on, and he thinks he will. He's coming over to see me this morning. He's devoted to me," stated Allan sweetly. "There's nothing he needs more than my friendship. He explained it to me."

Phyllis and he both laughed.

"You always did have winning ways, Allan," said his wife mischievously. "When is John expected to drop in? He, too, loves you—don't forget that!"

Allan grinned.

"Poor old Johnny has to look after his patients. He can't very well snatch a vacation in his own home town. It's a hard world for gentlemen, Joy!"

Phyllis looked from one to the other of them with an answering light of mischief in her eyes.

"I suppose John could take anybody he liked to hold the car, couldn't he?" she said demurely. "In fact—he has!"

"If you mean me," answered Joy, "he was very severe with me yesterday. John is bringing me up in the way I should go!" The feeling of vivid excitement was still carrying her along, and she laughed as she answered them.

Allan looked at her critically.

"H'm!" he said thoughtfully. "I seem to have a feeling that he won't bring you such an amazing distance, at that—short time as I have known you. Did you say popovers this morning, Phyllis?"

"Popovers," nodded Phyllis, "and some of Lily-Anna's fresh marmalade."

"An' little dogs!" broke in Philip enthusiastically. "Oh, Father, don't you just love little dogs?"

His mother tried to look troubled.

"Allan, don't you think you could teach Phil, by precept or example, that they really are sausages?" she asked. "The other day at Mrs. Varney's we had them for luncheon, and he said, 'I'd like another pup, please!' And she was shocked to the heart's core."

"It's such a nice convenient name," pleaded Allan. "Joy, I have to waste most of the morning talking over the long-distance 'phone to my lawyer. I shall spend an hour discussing leases, and two more bullying him and his wife into coming out to visit us. You will readily see that I can't entertain my new-found soulmate at the same time. I don't suppose you could offer any suggestions about his amusement?"

"Solitaire," suggested Joy demurely. "Or you might give him a book to read."

Allan threw back his head and laughed.

"Excellent ideas, both!" he said, "and truly original. He shall have his choice!"

"You have the kindest hearts in the world," said Phyllis, summoning the waitress. "Allan, before you finish that million-dollar conversation to Mr. De Guenther, please call me. I want to speak to him a minute, too."

"I'll call you," he promised.

They drifted off, Phyllis to attend to her housekeeping, Allan to his long-distance leases, and Philip to find Angela, whom he never forgot for long. She had breakfast with her nurse, and Philip felt it was time he looked her up. He adored his little sister, and spent the larger part of his days in teaching her everything he had been taught, which was sometimes hard on Angela, who obeyed him implicitly.

As for Joy, she strayed out into the garden again. The feeling of intense, happy aliveness in a wonderful world was still on her, and she wanted to be alone to think things out—to think out especially the thing she had discovered last night—and what to do about it.

It was as warm as June by this time, for the sun was getting higher, and she went slowly down the paths with the sun shining on her hair and making it look like fire, breaking, as she went, a few more flowers to pin in her dress. She had put on one of her old picture-frocks, a straight dull-cream wool thing that she wore in the mornings at home, girdled in with a silver cord about the hips. She fitted the garden exceedingly well, though nothing was further from her thoughts.

At the far end, among a tangle of roses and beneath a group of shade-trees, the Harringtons had set a little fountain, a flat, low-set marble basin with a single jet of water springing high, and falling almost straight down again. Its purpose was to cool the air on very hot days, but it always flowed till frost, because it was so pretty Phyllis never could bear to have it shut off. Joy loved the half-hidden, lovely place, though she had only had one glimpse of it before, and she sat down by it and began to try to think things out. She had a much harder thinking to do than she'd had for a long time.

"A 'hard world for gentlemen'!" meditated Joy, and laughed as she trailed one hand in the water. "It's a much harder one for ladies, if Allan but knew it!"

She bent over, half-absently, to watch the water in the basin. It fascinated her, the flow of it, and it helped her to reason things out. There were several things that needed reasoning.

To begin with—there was no use saying it wasn't so, for it was—she was in love with John.... Her heart beat hard as she looked down into the water and said the words in her mind. It would have been lovely to do nothing but sit there and think of him. There were so many different wonderful things he had for her to think about; his steady eyes that changed from warm-gray to steel-gray, and back, and could look as if they loved you or hated you or admired you or fathered you, while the rest of his face told nothing at all; the little gold glint in his fair hair and the way it curled when it was damp weather; his square, back-flung shoulders; the strong way he had of moving you about, as if you were a doll—the way his voice sounded when she said certain words—

Joy pulled her thoughts from all that by force.

"Clarence Rutherford calls me a sorcerette," she thought, "and I suppose I must be. This must be being one. But, oh, I have to think how I can get John to love me back!"

It looked a little hopeless, to think of, at first. He was so old and wise and strong, compared to her, just a nineteen-year-old girl who had never had even one lover to practise on! Something Gail had said the night before came back to her—one of the girl's half-scornful, half-amused phrases.

"Barring a male flirt or so like Clarence over there," she had vouchsafed, "men are such simple-minded children of nature! All you have to do is to treat them like hounds and tell them what to do, and they'll do it."

Joy could scarcely imagine treating John like a hound. She was too afraid of him, except once in a while when she had a burst of daring. But, at any rate, if she went on the principle that John was simple-minded and could always be depended on to think she felt the way she acted, things would be lots easier.

"If only I can keep the courage!" she prayed.

But as to details. She would have to let John see enough of her to want her about. But—not so much that he got tired of it.

"I wonder how much of me would tire him?" she said. Anyway—Joy dimpled as she thought of it—he seemed to want to be the only one. He didn't seem to want Clarence around. They all kept telling her Clarence was a flirt—as if she wanted him to be anything else! It's a comfort sometimes to know that a man can be depended on not to have intentions.... Very well, she would try to make John jealous of Clarence. Not enough to hurt him—it would be dreadful to hurt him!—but enough to make herself valuable.

"It's going to be very hard," she decided, "because all I want is to do just as he says and make everything as happy for him as I can. Oh, dear, why are men like that!"

But she was fairly certain that they were. They were like that in the books, and Gail had said so. Gail apparently knew.

"It'll be hard," she thought sadly. Then her face brightened. "But it'll be fun! and if it works I'll be able to be as nice to John as I want to all the rest of my life, and please him to my heart's content. Why, it'll be my duty!"

She smiled and fell into another dream about John, leaning over the fountain, with her copper braids falling across her bosom.

She had forgotten all the outside things, until presently she felt some one standing near her.

"Lean down to the water, Melisande, Melisande!"

the some one sang, in a soft, half-mocking voice.

She turned and looked up.

"How do you do, Mr. Rutherford?" she said sedately.

She had been addressed as "Melisande" too many times, at home with the poets, to be particularly excited, but even a man of Clarence's well-known capabilities couldn't be expected to know this. He disposed himself gracefully along the edge of the fountain. He had a feline and leisurely grace, in spite of the fact that he wasn't specially thin, had Clarence, as he very well knew.

"I hope I won't fall into the water," he observed disarmingly. "I may if you speak to me too severely. See here, Melisande, why did you go and be all engaged to the worthy Dr. Hewitt? You had four or five good years of fun ahead of you if you hadn't."

"I mustn't listen to you, if you talk that way," Joy told him quietly.

"Oh, you'd better," said Clarence with placidity. "I'm very interesting."

"You're very vain," Joy told him, laughing at him in spite of herself.

"I am, indeed—it's one of my charms," explained he. "Now that's out of the way, we'll go on talking."

"Well, go on talking!" Joy answered him childishly, putting her hands over her ears. "I can go on not listening!"

Clarence accordingly did, while Joy kept her hands over her ears till her arms were tired and Clarence apparently had no more to say. Then she dropped them.

"I was reciting the Westminster catechism," Clarence observed blandly. "I never waste my gems of conversation on deaf ears. Come, Joy of my life, unbend a little. I don't mean a bit of harm in the world. All I want is a kind word or two and the pleasure of your society."

Joy looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, and then laughed.

"If you were a poet, here is where you would tell me that the fetters of wearying and sordid marriage were not for you—that they wore on your genius," she said unexpectedly.

Clarence gasped. It must have been very much like having the kitten suddenly turn and offer him rational conversation.

"Et tu, Laetitia!" he said in a neat and scholarly manner. "Joy, you have cruelly deceived me—I thought you were a simple child of nature."

"I don't know a bit what I am," she answered truthfully, "but the poets at Grandfather's did talk that way—not to me, but to other people—and you sounded like them. You aren't really a poet, are you?"

"Well, I've never been overt about it," he evaded. He did not know what to make of Joy, any more than ever.

Joy, trailing the end of a braid absently in the water, thought a minute longer, then looked up at him.

"It seems to me," she said suddenly, "that you just mock and mock at things all the time. I'm not clever, and I can't answer you cleverly. You might as well make up your mind to it, and then the way I look won't be a disappointment to you. I know I look like a medieval princess. It's because I was brought up to. But I'm not the least bit medieval inside; honestly I'm not. I love to cook and I love children, and I'm always hungry for my meals. I don't want to seem discouraging, but I shall really be a dreadful disappointment to you if you—"

"As long as you have copper-gold hair and sky-blue eyes, nothing you can do will disappoint me," said Clarence caressingly. "Be a suffragette, if you will—be a war-widow! It's all the same. I can be just as happy with you—and I intend to be!"

The mockery dropped from his voice for a moment as he said the last words. Joy looked at him, a little frightened for the moment. She smiled, then.... She was only nineteen, but she was thoroughly human, and the spirit of Aunt Lucilla lighted her eyes. She dropped her black lashes against her pink cheeks and spoke irresponsibly.

"But suppose—suppose I should fall in love with you?" she asked in a most little-girl voice. "Don't you see how dreadfully unhappy I would be?"

"Oh, you won't," Clarence assured her in a tone whose casualness did not quite hide his welcome of the prospect. "We'll just be interested in each other enough to make it interesting. Why, Joy of My Life, I wouldn't take anything from good old Hewitt for anything in the world."

There was a certain amount of conceit in Clarence's voice and manner, patent even to so inexperienced a person as Joy. He seemed to think that all he had to do was take! Joy looked at him curiously for a moment, and then she sighed. Sometimes she almost wished somebody would take her mind off caring so much for John.

"But this isn't real," she suddenly thought, "the sunshine and the gaiety and these kind, handsome Harrington people being good to me, and this Clarence person posing about and trying to toy with my young affections—why, it's like a fairy tale or a play! ... I just rubbed the wishing ring, and it happened!"

She forgot Clarence again and began to sing softly under her breath, watching the ruffled water.

"What are you thinking, Melisande?" asked Clarence softly.

Joy lifted her wide innocent eyes and gave him a discreet version.

"That, after all, this is a glade in Fairyland, and I am the princess, and you—the dragon," she ended under her breath.

But Clarence, naturally enough, wasn't given to casting himself as a dragon. He was perfectly certain he was a prince, and said so with charming frankness.

Joy continued to sing to herself.

"I don't see why I shouldn't kiss your hand, if I'm a prince," he observed next. "In fact, as nice a little hand as you have really calls for such."

He reached for it—the nearest, with the wishing ring on it.

She snatched it indignantly away and clasped her hand indignantly over the ring. That would be profanation!

"I wish somebody would come!" she thought. "I'll have to leave not only Clarence, but my nice fountain, in a minute." The next thing she thought was, "What a well-trained wishing ring!" for Viola appeared between the tall rose trees at the entrance to the little pleasance.

"Miss Joy, have you seen Philip anywhere?" she asked. "It's his dinner-time, and I've hunted the house upsidedown for him."

"Nowhere at all," said Joy truthfully, "Oh, is it as late as all that? I'd better go, Mr. Rutherford."

She followed Viola swiftly out, waving her hand provokingly to Clarence.

"There's a way out on the other side of the garden," she called back casually.

"I've found a note from Philip, Viola," Phyllis called as they neared the house. "He's lunching out, it seems."

She handed Viola the note.

"I hav gon out too Lunchun," it stated briefly. "Yours Sincerely, Philip Harrington."

"He'll come back," his mother went on, with a perceptible relief in her voice. "He has a corps of old and middle-aged ladies about the village who adore him. He's probably at Miss Addison's—she's his Sunday-school teacher. He really should have come and asked, I suppose. Well, come in, Joy, and let us eat. Allan won't be back—he's gone off to some village-improvement thing that seems to think it would die without him."

They ate in solitary state, except for Angela, and after that nothing happened, except that they separated with one accord to take long, generous naps.

Joy was awakened from hers by Phyllis' voice, raised in surprise.

"But, Miss Addison!" she was saying, on the porch below Joy's window, in a tone that was part amusement, part horror.

Joy slipped on her frock and shoes and ran down to share the excitement. When she got down, Phyllis was just leading the visitor into the old Colonial living-room, and they were having tea brought in. Philip was nowhere to be seen.

"A wheelbarrow!" Phyllis was saying tragically, as she took her cup from the waitress, who was listening interestedly, if furtively.

"A wheelbarrow," assented Miss Addison, a pretty, white-haired spinster. She, too, took a cup.

Phyllis cast up her eyes in horror and, incidentally, saw Joy.

"Come in," she said resignedly. "I'm just hearing how Philip disported himself at his 'lunchun.'"

"I didn't mean to distress you, but I really thought you should know, Mrs. Harrington," pursued the visitor plaintively.

"I'm eternally grateful," murmured Phyllis, beginning, as usual, to be overcome with the funny side of the situation. "But—oh, Joy, what do you think of my sinful offspring? Miss Addison says Philip spent the luncheon hour relating to her how his father went to the saloon in the village, had two glasses of beer, was entirely overcome, and had to be brought home in—in—" by this time Phyllis was laughing uncontrollably—"in a wheelbarrow!"

Joy, too, was aghast for a moment, then the situation became too much for her, and she also began to laugh.

"Good gracious!" she said.

"And that isn't all!" Phyllis went on hysterically. "After Allan's friends, or the policeman, or whoever it was, tipped him off the wheelbarrow onto the front porch (imagine Allan in a wheelbarrow! It would take two for the length of him!), he staggered in, and would have beaten me, but that my noble son flung himself between! Then he was overcome with remorse—wasn't he, Miss Addison?—and signed the pledge."

"Good gracious!" said Joy, inadequately, again.

"Now, where on earth," demanded Miss Addison, "did he get all that?"

"Only the special angel that watches over bad little boys knows," said his mother with conviction. "And it won't tell. I know by experience that I'll never get it out of Philip. He'll say, sweetly, 'Oh, I just fought it, Muvver!' in as infantile a voice as possible."

They all three sat and pondered.

"It sounds just like a tract," said Joy at last.

"Exactly like a tract," assented Phyllis. "Do you suppose—in Sunday-school——"

"I'm his Sunday-school teacher," Miss Addison reminded her indignantly. "That settles that!"

"Well, have some more tea, anyway, now the worst is over," said her hostess hospitably.... "A wheelbarrow!"

They continued to sit over their teacups and meditate. Suddenly Phyllis rose swiftly and made a spring for the bookcase, scattering sponge-cake as she went.

"I have it, I believe!" she exclaimed. "Well, who'd think—Viola read this to Philip when he was getting over the scarlatina last winter. There wasn't another child's book in the house that he didn't know by heart, and we couldn't borrow on account of the infection. I took it away from them, but the mischief was done. But he's never spoken of it or seemed to remember it from that day to this, and I'd forgotten it, too."

She held up a small, dingy book and opened it to the title-page.

"The Drunkard's Child; or, Little Robert and His Father," it said in lettering of the eighteen-forties.

It was unmistakably the groundwork of Philip's romance. It had a woodcut frontispiece of Little Robert in a roundabout and baggy trousers, inadequately embracing his cowering mother's hoopskirt, while his father, the Drunkard in question, staggered remorsefully back. It was all there, even to the wheelbarrow—also inadequate.

"It didn't hurt Philip's great-grandfather," said his mother. "I don't see why it should have affected Philip as it did. Different times, different manners, I suppose.... The Drunkard's Child!"

"Where is he?" Joy thought to ask.

"Innocently playing with his little sister in the nursery," said Phyllis. "Doubtless teaching her that she is a Drunkard's Daughter. I have him still to deal with.... A wheelbarrow! I wonder what Allan will say?"



CHAPTER NINE

THE TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE

"It wasn't so much my behavior after I was wheeled home," said Philip's father mournfully, "as it was my getting so outrageously drunk on two glasses of beer. That was the final straw. Why couldn't he have made it several quarts of brandy, or even knockout drops?"

"I hope you don't want an innocent child of that age to know about knockout drops!" said Clarence Rutherford, the ubiquitous.

"Well, there's something wrong with his environment," said Allan.

"We are his environment," Phyllis reminded him. "As far as I know we are rather nice people."

The Harringtons, John Hewitt, with Gail and her cousin, not to speak of Joy, were enjoying an unseasonably hot day in the Harrington garden. They had all been playing tennis, and now everybody was sitting or lying about, getting rested. The trees kept the morning sun from being too much of a nuisance, and there was a tray with lemonade, and sweet biscuits which were unquestionably going to ruin everybody's luncheon appetite.

"What that child needs," answered his father, taking another glass of lemonade and the remaining biscuits, "is young life-companions his own age."

They had all been racking their brains to think of a punishment that would fit Philip's crime, or at least some warning that would bring it home to him. He had been led by Viola, subdued and courteous, to tell Miss Addison that he had deceived her. He did, very carefully.

"But it might of been my father," he explained as he ended. "Oughtn't we to be glad that it wasn't my father, Miss Addison?"

Miss Addison, quite nonplused by this unexpected moral turn to the conversation, had acknowledged defeat, and fed Philip largely. He had a very good time, apparently, for he grieved to Viola all the way home over Angela's missing such a pleasant afternoon. When he returned he flung himself on Allan.

"Oh, Father, please let Angela go, too, next time I go 'pologizing!" he implored. "There were such nice little cakes—just the kind Mother lets her eat!"

Allan shook his head despairingly.

"Please remove him, Viola," he said. "I want to think."

Not only he, but Phyllis and John, had spent a day thinking. No one had, as yet, reached any conclusion at all.

"It's all very well for you to be carefree," he said now to John, who was laughing like the others. "It isn't up to you to see that the young idea shoots straight."

John's face remained quite cheerful.

"Well, you see, I have Joy's manners and morals to look after," he said, glancing across at her in a friendly way. "That's enough for one man."

Joy curled on the warm grass, laughed lazily. She was too pleasantly tired from tennis to answer. She only curled her feet under her and burrowed into the grass a little more, like a happy kitten.

It didn't seem as if anything ever need interrupt her happiness. And as Phyllis had had the happy thought of ordering luncheon brought out to where they were, there seemed no reason why they should ever move. There was a feeling of unchangingness about the wonderfully holding summer weather, and the general lazy routine, that was as delightful as it was illusive. For the very next day things began to happen.

They were just finishing breakfast when a telegram came.

"I suppose it's from the De Guenthers, telling us which train to meet," Phyllis said carelessly, as she opened it.... "Oh!"

"What is it, dear?" asked Allan at her exclamation of distress.

She handed him the telegram.

"Isabel suddenly ill with inflammatory rheumatism. Fear it may affect heart. Can you come on?"

"They're the nearest thing either of us has to relatives," Phyllis explained to Joy. "Inflammatory rheumatism! Oh, Allan, we ought to go."

She looked at him across the table, her blue eyes distressed and wide.

"Of course you shall go, my dearest," Allan told her gently, while Joy wondered what it would be like to have some one speak to her in that tone. The Harringtons were so careless and joyous in their relations with each other, so like a light-hearted, casually intimate brother and sister, that it was only when they were moved, as now, that their real feelings were apparent.

Joy looked off and out the window, and lost herself in a day-dream, her hand, as usual, mechanically feeling for the rough carving of John's ring.

"To be in John's house, close to him, like this, and to have him speak to me so—wouldn't it be wonderful?" she thought, with a warm lift of her heart at even the vision of it. She forgot the people about her for a little, and pictured it to herself.

She had only seen two rooms of the Hewitt house, and that when they were dressed out of all homelikeness, because of the reception. But she could think how they would look, with just John Hewitt and herself going up and down them. They would be happy, too, in this light-hearted fashion—so happy that they laughed at little things. They would not talk much about loving each other. But they would belong to each other, and they would know it. Each of them would always be there for the other, and know it. They would sit by the wood fire in the dusk....

"Now to set my house in order," said Phyllis, rising from the table. "You said the two train, Allan? All right—I can easily be ready for that, or before, if you like."

She rang for Lily-Anna, who appeared, smiling and comfortable as ever.

"Mr. Harrington and I are going off for some days—perhaps longer, Lily-Anna," Phyllis explained. "I shall have to leave the children with you and Viola. Mrs. De Guenther is very ill."

Lily-Anna seemed used to this sort of thing happening, and said she could manage perfectly well. Indeed, Viola was beamingly amiable over the prospect, when summoned and told. She volunteered to do any mending and packing necessary on the spot.

"How beautifully they take it!" marveled Joy when the servants had gone again, full of shining assurances that all would be well.

"You may well say so!" said Phyllis, lifting her eyebrows. "Their rapture at getting the children to themselves is almost indecent. It's all very well to have such attractive infants, but I sometimes look sadly back to the days when Lily-Anna loved me for myself alone. And now about you."

"Me?" said Joy in surprise. She had not supposed there was any question about her.

"You," answered Phyllis decisively. "Here is where I am given a chance of escape from making a lifelong enemy of your future mother-in-law." She crossed to the telephone as she spoke, and got Mrs. Hewitt's number. "This is Phyllis Harrington," Joy heard her say. "I called up to say that I am yielding in our struggle for Joy's person. Allan and I have to go away this afternoon. We should love to have her stay here and chaperone Philip and Angela, but it seems a waste. Would you like to have her?"

Sounds of fervent acceptance were evidently pouring over the wire, for Phyllis smiled as she listened.

"She not only wants you," she transmitted to Joy, "but she says that she'll take no chances on our changing our minds, and is coming for you in an hour, whether we go or not. She says to tell you that she's taking you shopping first.... You know, we're to have her back when we return," she continued firmly to the telephone. "We saw her first."

She hung up the receiver and swept Joy off upstairs with her while she packed.

"You know, we may never get you again," she warned. "I'm taking a fearful chance in letting you escape this way. You have to come back, remember, my child."

"Indeed I will come back," Joy promised fervently.

It seemed so strange that all these people should so completely have made her one of themselves, even to the point of wanting to keep her in their homes.

"You are all so good to me!" she said.

"You are exceedingly lovable," explained Phyllis matter-of-factly. "In fact, Clarence remarked the last time I saw him that you had the most unusual kind of charm he had ever seen. He said you were like a sorceress brought up in a nunnery. While I think of it, Joy dear, Clarence and Gail are two of the most confirmed head-hunters I know. They ought to marry each other and keep it in the family, but they won't. I'm not worried about anything Gail can do, but do please keep your fingers crossed when Clarence drops carelessly in. And when he starts discussing your souls turn the conversation to the village water-supply or something as interesting."

Joy smiled a little wistfully.

"John doesn't seem to mind," she said. Then she laughed outright. "Phyllis, I've seen every one of Clarence's tricks all my life. He's the only type I'm accustomed to: it's the John and Allan type I don't know."

"You certainly are a surprise to me," said Phyllis, busily folding a flesh-colored Georgette waist, and laying it in a tray with tissue-paper in its sleeves. "I don't seem to be able to teach you much, which is a good thing. Now you'd better let me help you pack up enough for a week, for Mrs. Hewitt is due fairly soon."

Joy declined to take any of Phyllis' much-needed time, and went off to fill her suitcase. It was not until she had put in almost everything she intended to take that she thought of the wishing ring again. She looked down at the heavy Oriental carving with what was almost terror. She had wished for something on it, and once more her wish had come true. She was going over to be in the house with John, to see him whenever he was there, to have him—yes, he would have to pretend, at least, that they were lovers, because of his mother. She had as nearly what she had wished for as it was possible for a ring to manage.

"I almost feel as if I had made that poor old lady have the rheumatism," she thought with a thrill of fear. Then she pulled herself up—that was nonsense.

"But anyway," Joy told the ring severely, "I won't touch you when I make wishes after this. I might wish for something in a hurry, and be terribly sorry afterwards."

But one thing she did wish then, deliberately. She sat back on her heels and clasped her fingers over the heavy carving of it. "Please, dear wishing ring, let John be in love with me!" she begged. The next moment she was scarlet at her own foolishness. The ring couldn't do that, if it had belonged to Aladdin himself.

So she went on packing. She was a little afraid and excited, going off to live in the very house with John, but she couldn't help being a little glad. She would see him for hours and hours every day.

"And oh, dear ring," she whispered, forgetting that she had promised not to wish any more, "don't let him get tired of having me around!"

She was not quite done when she heard the impatient wail of Mrs. Hewitt's horn. She stuffed the last things into the heavy suitcase and ran down, dragging it after her.

Phyllis went out to the car with her, kissing her good-by.

"Now mind, this is only a loan," she told Mrs. Hewitt.

"Nothing of the sort," retorted Mrs. Hewitt with an air of certainty. "Good-by, my dear. Give my love to Mrs. De Guenther. Perhaps when you get back I may give an afternoon tea and allow you to see Joy for a few minutes."

Phyllis laughed, and patted Mrs. Hewitt's gloved hand where it lay on the steering-wheel.

"Use our place all you like, as usual," she said in sole reply, "and don't forget to miss me."

"That's one of the loveliest girls that ever lived," said Mrs. Hewitt as they sped away. "Anybody but Phyllis I would begrudge you to. Oh, my dear, we're going to have the best time!"

Joy squeezed the hand that should have been, but wasn't, helping the other hand steer. Mrs. Hewitt was so adorably a young girl inside her white-haired stateliness!

"We're going to the next village to buy materials," she told Joy blithely, "and then we're going home to make them up, or I am. It won't hurt to get a bit of the trousseau under way, and you know I haven't sewed a thing for my daughter for thirty-four years—not since the wretched child turned out to be John, and I had to take all the pink ribbons out and put in blue!"

Mrs. Hewitt's inconsequent good spirits, somehow, took away some of the dread with which Joy had been looking forward to her sojourn in John's house. She allowed herself to be motored over to the next town, where there was fairly good shopping, and went obediently into the stores. It was not until she saw the lady ordering down for inspection bolts of crepe de Chine and wash satin and glove silk in whites and pinks and flesh-colors, that the full inwardness of the thing dawned on her. For evidently Mrs. Hewitt had every intention of paying for all this opulence, and Joy didn't quite see what to do about it. Nor did the pocket-money her grandfather had given her when she left him warrant her paying for the things herself, even if she used it all.

"Please don't get these things," she whispered when she found a chance. "I—I think I oughtn't to."

"Oughtn't to, indeed," replied Mrs. Hewitt coolly. "'Nobody asked you, sir, she said!' I'm getting them myself. I may be intending to make up a set of wash-satin blankets for the Harrington bulldog for all you know. I don't think he'd be surprised—they treat him like a long-lost relative now. Now be sensible, darling. Do you think valenciennes or filet would be better to trim the blankets? Or do you like these lace and organdy motifs? They'd look charming on a black bulldog."

Joy laughed in spite of herself.

"There's no doing anything with you," she said.

"Not a thing!" said the triumphant spoiled child whom the world took for an elderly lady. "Now we'll get down to business. Would you rather have crepe or satin for camisoles? Half of each would be a good plan, I think, if you have no choice."

There wasn't any doing anything with Mrs. Hewitt. She was having a gorgeous time, and she carried Joy along with her till the girl was choosing pink and white silks and satins, and patterns to make them by, with as much enthusiasm as if no day of reckoning loomed up, three and a half weeks away.

There was no way out. Of course, she would leave the things behind. The thought gave her a pang already, for Joy had been dressed by her grandfather's ideas only as far as frocks went. Her grandmother had seen to everything else, and was devoted to a durable material known as longcloth, which one buys by the bolt and uses forever.

But they sped merrily home, after a festive luncheon, with about forty dollars' worth of silk and lace and ribbon aboard, not to speak of patterns, and a blue muslin frock which was a bargain and would just fit Joy, and which she had invested in herself.

"Oh what a tangled web we weave When first we practise to deceive!"

Joy thought of that quotation so often now that she was beginning to feel it was her favorite verse. But she touched the big parcel with a small, appreciative foot, and remembered that the blue frock, at least, would be saved out of the wreck, and that John liked blue.

Mrs. Hewitt showed her her bedroom when they got back, and left her to take a nap. But she did not want to rest. She lay obediently against the pillows and stared out the window at a great, vivid maple tree, and felt very much like staying awake for the rest of her natural life.

"How on earth was I to know that mothers-in-law were like this?" she demanded of herself indignantly. "All the ones I ever heard about made your life a misery."

It is rather calming to remember that you really couldn't have foreseen what is happening to you. So Joy presently rose happily, smoothed her hair and tidied herself generally, and came sedately down the stairs, prepared to go on playing her part. Only it was getting to feel more like a reality than a pretense. The other life, the one she would go back to, seemed the dream now.

"John will be here soon," Mrs. Hewitt greeted her. "It will be a surprise to him: you know, he hasn't an idea you are here. I wouldn't tell him what Phyllis said."

Joy dimpled.

"Do you suppose he'll mind?" she ventured.

"Oh, I think he'll bear up," said Mrs. Hewitt amiably. "Come here, Joy; I've cut out a half-dozen of the silk ones already. Do you know how to do them? They're just a straight piece—see——"

Joy knelt down by her, absorbed in the pretty thing and in seeing how to make it. The day was chillier than any had yet been, and a fire had been built in the deep fireplace of the living-room. Mrs. Hewitt was sitting near it, with the pretty scraps of silk and lace all over her lap, and an ever-widening circle of cut-out garments around her.

"We can do the most of these by hand," she mused. "Indeed, we shouldn't do them any other way."

Joy rooted sewing things out of a basket near by and sat down just where she was, between Mrs. Hewitt and the large, fatherly Maltese cat who occupied a wonted cushion on the other side of the fireplace. And so John found her when he came in. The lamp had just been lighted, and its soft rays shone on Joy's bronze head and down-bent, intent little face. She had on a little white apron that Mrs. Hewitt had fastened around her waist, and she was sewing hard.

Before Joy heard John come in she felt him. No matter how tired he was, there was always about John an atmosphere of well-being and sunniness, of "all's right with the world," that made faces turn to him instinctively when he stood in a doorway. But Joy did not raise her eyes to look at him, nor did she move.

His mother rose and came over to greet him. Joy did not hear her whisper: "The child feels a little shy. She'll be more at ease now you've come."

John came swiftly over to where she sat on the floor, very still, with her hands flying, and her eyes on her work.

"Why, Joy dear, this is a lovely thing that I didn't expect," he said gently. "Welcome—home!"

He smiled down at her and held out his hands to help her up. Quite unsuspectingly, she pushed her work into the pocket along the hem of her sewing-apron and laid her hands in his, and he drew her easily to her feet. But, instead of releasing her then, he drew her closer—and kissed her, quite as calmly as he had his mother a moment before.... No, not quite as calmly. Joy felt his arms close around her, as if he was glad to have her in his hold.

"Let me go," she said in too low a voice for Mrs. Hewitt to hear.

"Who has drawn the wine must drink it," he told her in the same low voice. He went on, still softly, but more seriously, "My child, this sort of thing is necessary, if you want Mother to be satisfied while you are here. It's—a courtesy to your hostess. I promise to do no more of it than is necessary, as it seems to trouble you so. But—don't you see?"

He released her, and she stepped away.

"I—see," she answered him a little uncertainly. "Th—thank you.... I—I couldn't help coming, John."

Then she fled upstairs to dress for dinner.

She puzzled all the time she was dressing. There was no use talking—his mother needn't be amused by such things. She would get on perfectly well without seeing them. John might think he was doing it as a sacred duty—in spite of her adoration of him it did not impress Joy that way.... There were men who kissed you just because you were a girl, if you let them; Clarence was that kind, according to all accounts. But—John! He was the best, kindest, noblest man she had ever known. Every one seemed to have the same feelings about him that she had. Even when Clarence had sneered at him he had only been able to call him a "reliable citizen."... And yet—he seemed to want to kiss her! He liked it.

"Of course," said Joy to herself, with a beating heart beneath the wisdom of Aunt Lucilla, "the answer is that he probably doesn't know it. Men don't ever seem to know things about themselves. But I must remember that it's no sign he likes me."

But it was quite true that it was going to have to continue. It had dawned on Joy that her will was no match for that of the Hewitt family. But it was a very kindly will. She smiled a little, irrepressibly, as she clasped her girdle—she was wearing one of the old picture dresses—and went downstairs. For even if you are a little impostor who has captured a five-weeks' lover by means of a wishing ring, unlimited things to wear are nice, and having the man you are in love with want to pet you is nice, too!

At the top of the stairs a thought struck her. Joy's thoughts had a way of arriving suddenly. She had set out to be happy. Very well!

"I don't see why I shouldn't be engaged to the limit!" she thought daringly. "I—don't—see—why I shouldn't! ... for just this little while—just this one little while out of my life before I go back to the shadows! ... I don't care if I am bad! I don't care if I am unmaidenly! I'll be as happy as ever I can. They'll think I'm very dreadful, anyway, all of them, when they know all about me!"

She swept on down the stairs, head up, cheeks flaming.

And so, when she came upon John, waiting her courteously at the stair-foot, she did just exactly what in her heart she desired to do. She stood on the step above him and deliberately laid both little white hands on his shoulders and smiled into his eyes.

"I am so glad I'm here with you," she said, looking at him with no attempt to hide the love she felt for him. "Are you glad to have your sweetheart in the house—for a little while? Say so—please, dear!"

He laughed light-heartedly, and his eyes shone.

"A little while?" he answered gaily. "I can stand a lot more of you than that, kiddie.... Come, now, Mother's waiting. Or shall I lift you down from the step? ... I always seem to want to lift you about, somehow, you're so little and light—such a little princess:"

He set his hands about her waist, but she slipped from him, laughing excitedly.

"I believe you think I'm just a doll somebody gave you to play with!" she told him with a certain sweet mockery that was hers sometimes.... "Come, now, Mother's waiting!"

She ran down the hall, evading his grasp, and laughing back at him over her shoulder, to Mrs. Hewitt and safety.

"Come, children, dinner will be cold," said Mrs. Hewitt obliviously.

"Coming, Mother dear!" answered Joy.



CHAPTER TEN

CLARENCE SWOOPS DOWN

It was quite as pleasant to breakfast with John as it had been to dine with him, which had been something Joy had secretly wondered about. When breakfast was over, he told her matter-of-coursely that he was going to take her with him on his morning rounds.

"You'd better take a book," he advised her practically. "If you don't, you'll be bored, because I'll be leaving you outside a good deal while I'm inside seeing patients."

"I'll take my sewing," she told him, trying to be as matter-of-fact as he was. "That is, if you don't mind."

She was smiling as happily as a child over being allowed to go, and he smiled down at her, pleased, too.

"Not unless it's too big," he told her with an attempt at firmness which failed utterly.

She went off, singing under her breath, as usual, to get a very small sewing-bag, with a little piece of to-be-hemstitched pink silk in it, and John looked over at his mother.

"She certainly has the prettiest ways!" he said involuntarily.

"You're a good lover, Johnny," his mother rejoined appreciatively.

"Nonsense!" said John before he thought, and then pulled himself up. "That is—I don't think a man would have to be in love with her to see that," he ended lamely. "I thought they were attractive before I——"

"Exactly," retorted his mother with distinct skepticism. "That's why you—" She paused in mimicry of his breaking off, and, then, as Joy came back, gave him an affectionate little push toward the door. She followed them out to the gate and leaned over it, watching them. "Good-by, children!" she called after them. "Don't be late for luncheon!"

"Don't stand out there in the wind with no wraps, Mother," advised John.

"Nonsense!" she replied with spirit. "You have Isabel De Guenther's rheumatism on your mind, that's what's the matter with you. The idea of a woman of her intelligence giving up to inflammatory rheumatism is simply ridiculous. You don't get things unless you give up to them."

It was a beautiful doctrine, and doubtless had much to do with making Mrs. Hewitt the healthy and dauntless person she was, but it had its limitations, and John reminded her of them inexorably.

"You have neuritis when you catch cold in the wind, and you know it," he told her. "Do go in, Mother, to please me."

"You know I'll be back again as soon as you're out of sight," she observed. But she did go in.

Alas for the power of elderly ladies to keep off neuritis by defiance! When they came back at twelve-thirty Mrs. Hewitt was nowhere to be seen.

"Mrs. Hewitt says she has a slight headache, and will you please not wait luncheon for her: she's having it upstairs," was the message they received.

"Very well," said John gravely, and he and Joy proceeded to have luncheon alone together.

He glanced smilingly across the table at Joy as she poured his tea with steady little hands.

"It looks very much as if you were going to have to take charge, more or less," he said. "That's our friend the neuritis. Mother never admits it's anything but a headache the first day. Do you think you can look after things?"

"Why not, if she wants me to?" asked Joy.

"Well, I can imagine you standing on a drawbridge or a portcullis, or whatever it was they trimmed medieval castles with, and waving your hands to the knights going by," began John teasingly; "but it's a stretch of imagination to fancy a medieval princess pouring my tea and seeing that my papers are in order ..."

"You know I can't help having red hair," protested Joy, coming straight to the point. "And if your grandfather had always dressed you in costumes, you couldn't get to be modern all at once, either. I think I'm doing very well."

John threw back his fair head and laughed.

The idea of his grandfather, who had been a wholesale hardware merchant, with a New England temperament to match, "dressing him in costumes," was an amusing one, and he said as much.

Joy laughed, too.

"Well, there, you see!" she said triumphantly. "There's a great deal in not having handicaps. Why, there was a poet used to write things as if he were me, all about that, and I couldn't stop him. One began:

'I was a princess in an ivory tower: Why did you sit below and sing to me?'"

"Well," said John, as she paused indignantly, "I'll be the goat. Why did he sit below and sing to you?"

"Because he wanted the pull Grandfather could give him, as far as I could make out," replied Joy with vigor. "And I don't call it a bit nice way to act!"

She did not quite know why John laughed this time. But she was very glad that he was not bored at being with her.

"Oh, Joy, Joy!" he said. "I take it back. You are not medieval—entirely. Or, if you are, princesses in ivory towers are more delightful figures than I've always thought them."

"We aim to please," said Joy demurely. "But I have to explain that a lot, it seems to me. I had it out with Clarence Rutherford only a day or so ago."

"Oh, you did?" considered John. "Well—don't try to please too hard. Remember that you are supposed to please me; but you don't have to extend your efforts beyond my family circle."

He was only half in earnest, but he was in earnest at least half. She wondered just what he meant for a moment, then it occurred to her that he meant Clarence, no less. She was on the verge of saying comfortingly:

"Clarence is just trying to make me fall in love with him. He doesn't count a bit."

But she stopped herself, remembering that Aunt Lucilla would never have said such an unwise thing, let alone Gail.

"I must go now and see how your mother is, as soon as we are through," she told him instead.

She found Mrs. Hewitt surrounded by more hot-water bottles than she had ever thought existed, and reduced to the point where she was nearly willing to confess to neuritis.

"I have pains all over me, child," she announced, "and as long as you are here I shall continue to describe them, so you'd better run. And if you tell John it's neuritis I shall probably take you over to Phyllis' fountain and drown you the first day I'm up. It will be an annoyingly chilly death if the weather keeps on as it is now——"

She stopped in order to give a little wriggle and a little moan, and saw John standing in the doorway.

"How's the neuritis, Mother?" he inquired sympathetically.

"You know perfectly well," said his mother without surprise, "that I can't spare one of these hot-water bottles to throw at you, John, and I think you're taking a despicable advantage."

"I'll get you some more hot water," said he placidly, collecting two red bags and a gray one, and crossing to her stationary washstand.

"There's a lower stratum you might get, Joy," suggested Mrs. Hewitt, and Joy reached down at the hint and secured the two remaining bottles, which she filled when John was through.

"That's much better," Mrs. Hewitt thanked them, with what was very like a purr.

"Incidentally," said John with concern in his voice, "it's about all anybody can do for you till the weather changes; that and being careful of your diet."

"Yes, and I got it this morning standing out in the damp and chill, watching you out of sight. Watching people out of sight is unlucky, anyway," said his mother. "I might as well say it, if you won't. And I don't expect to be able to get up tomorrow, which is Thursday."

"Thursday?" asked John, sitting down on the couch at the foot of the bed. "Is Thursday some special feast?"

"Thursday's the cook's day out, usually," explained Joy practically. "But she doesn't need to worry. Dear, if you'll tell me what to do——"

"Usually Nora attends to things that day," explained Mrs. Hewitt sadly, but with a trace of hope in her voice, "but tomorrow she has a funeral she must attend. Quite a close funeral, she explained to me; the remains was a dear friend!"

Joy smiled down on Mrs. Hewitt like a Rossetti angel.

"You don't need to worry a bit," she consoled. "How many meals will she be gone?"

"Only one," Mrs. Hewitt told her, with what was obviously a lightened heart. "Dinner."

"Just dinner for us three? Why, I can manage that easily," said Joy confidently. "At least—I hope I'll suit. I really can cook."

"You blessed angel! Of course you'll suit!" said Mrs. Hewitt. "I'm so glad. John does like good meals."

She moaned a little, rather as if it was a luxury, and turned cautiously over.

"You don't have to stay with me any longer, children," she said. "The last responsibility is off my conscience. And I may state, in passing, John, that I never imagined you had sense enough to pick out anybody as satisfactory as Joy."

They both laughed a little, and then John said, abruptly, that he had to go soon, and swept Joy off with him. Outside the door he stopped short.

"See here, Joy, you mustn't do things like that," he said abruptly. "You're a guest, not a maid."

She set her back against the closed door they had just emerged from and looked up at him.

"Please let me go on playing," she begged him with a little break in her voice. "You know I never had any mother to speak of, any more than she had any daughter, and—and—please!"

He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face to look at it keenly.

"Do you really like her so, child?" he said.

Joy hoped he would not feel her cheek burn under his touch.

"Yes," she answered simply. "And—and now I must go and plan a dazzling menu, please, and look in the icebox without hurting the cook's feelings. It's a case of, 'Look down into the icebox, Melisande!' as Clarence Rutherford would put it."

But she did not say the last sentence aloud. She only laughed as the phrase presented itself to her.

"Now, what are you laughing at?" demanded John.

"If I told you," said Joy like an impertinent child, "you'd know. And now, dear sir, you have to go out on your rounds. Be sure to be back in time for dinner—my dinner. I'm going to plan it tonight, even if I don't cook it."

He didn't seem angry at her—only amused.

"You plan a dinner—fairy princess!" he teased her, looking down at her picturesque little figure from his capable, broad-shouldered height.

"See if I can't!" said Joy defiantly.

And he saw.

When he got back that evening, cold and tired and a little unhappy over a child in his care who did not seem to be gaining, Joy met him at the door, drawing him into the warmth and light with two little warm hands. She had dressed herself in the little blue muslin frock she had bought herself the morning before. It had a white fichu crossing and tying behind, which gave her the look, somehow, of belonging in the house. Her hair was parted demurely and pinned into a great coil at the back of her head, held by a comb that he recognized as his mother's. What he did not recognize or remember was that he had told her once that his dream-girl "had her hair parted—and wore blue—and was connected somehow with an open fire." But he knew that she looked very sweet and lovely and very much as if she belonged where she was.

"Oh, come in, dear!" she cried. "You're tired. Come to the fire a minute before you go upstairs."

She spoke almost as if she were his wife, and he looked less tired as he came to her.

"I like being welcomed home this way," he told her, putting his arm around her, instead of releasing her, and going with her into the living-room. "Why, Joy, I take it all back about your not being able to keep house. One look at you would make anybody sure of it.... Are you doing it all for Mother, dear?" he broke off unexpectedly to ask her. "Aren't you doing it a little bit for me"

She looked up at him, flushing.

"Yes—a little bit—" she said breathlessly. Then she made herself speak more lightly. "I did make the dressing and the pudding sauce myself," she admitted as gaily as she could for a fast-beating heart. "But I hoped there weren't traces. Is there flour on my face?"

She smiled flashingly at him and tipped her face up provokingly, slipping from his hold where they stood by the fire together. He made one step close to her again.

"You know perfectly well what to expect for a question like that," he said with an unaccustomed excitement in his voice, and kissed her.

Usually when he did that Joy made some struggle to escape. But tonight, in the firelight, a little tired and very glad to see him, she kissed him back, as if she were veritably his.

He dropped on one knee beside the blaze, drawing her down on the hearth-rug by him.

"I feel like the man in the fairy-stories," he said in a voice Joy did not quite know, "who catches an elf-girl in some unfair way, and finds her turn to a dear human woman in his house. Joy ... will she stay human?"

Joy's heart beat furiously as she knelt there, held close to his side. The little head with its great coil of glittering hair drooped.

"She—she always was human," she half whispered, her throat tightening with excitement. She could feel the blood stealing up over her face.

"That is no answer, Joy, my dear," he said softly.

But it was at this moment that a voice behind the curtains said, "Dinner is served."

Joy sprang up, but John stayed where he was, his broad shoulders and fair head bent a little forward as he looked into the blaze.

She touched his arm timidly.

"John—please—you must go up and see your mother before dinner."

He roused himself from whatever he had been thinking of and turned to her.

"I must, certainly," he replied, springing up. "I think I am answered.... Am I not, dear?"

"Why, yes," said Joy with a little surprise, but as gently and confidently as ever. "I answered you. I always do what you tell me, don't I?"

He touched her hair lightly and smiled for an answer as he passed her on his way up. She heard him whistling light-heartedly above, as she, too, stood staring into the fire.

She hadn't thought that any one could be so very kind and lovely as John was being to her tonight. She could feel yet the pressure of his arm as he held her beside him. And it was going to last a great deal longer—weeks longer! She could be as happy and as much with him and as much to him as she wanted to. There would be Clarence's mocking love-making, too, for flattery and amusement. And when she had to go back home, at last, she would have so much happiness, so much good times, so much love to remember, that it would keep her warm and happy for years and years!

When John returned, Ms hair damp and nearly straight with brushing, and his eyes still bright with laughter, she was sitting at the head of the table, waiting for him happily.

"It's a nice world, isn't it?" she suggested like a child. "And do you like whipped cream in your tomato bisque?"

"It is, and I do, very much. Am I to have it?"

Joy nodded proudly, her eyes shining.

"I don't know about the world, but you are going to have the whipped cream," she said, as she felt for the electric push-button in the floor with one small, circling foot.

"I might as well tell you now," said John gaily, "that the bell you are trying to step on is disconnected. Mother unhooked it eight months ago, because when she was excited she always forgot and stamped on it. I think we use a glass and a knife."

"Oh!" said Joy. "Well, I haven't the technique—would you?"

But Nora came in with the soup just then without having been rung for, having evidently been hovering sympathetically near.

"Pardon me, Doctor, but the bell is connected up," she breathed. "I hooked it up myself as soon as Mrs. Hewitt gave Miss Havenith the housekeeping."

It had evidently been a sore point with Nora—and, if the truth were told, with John, who had an orderly mind. Although he adored his flyaway, irresponsible mother, it was in spite of her ways and not because of them.

"Do you think you are apt to get excited and step on the bell?" he asked Joy.

She shook her head.

"I like things the way they're planned," she confessed. "They go along more easily."

"I suppose," he meditated aloud, "you might even put a man's collars in the same place twice running."

"Where else?" demanded Joy, who was so thoughtful of such things that she was even intrusted with certain duties of the sort for Grandfather.

"Well, Mother hasn't repeated herself for twenty-eight years," said John a little wistfully. "She says she doesn't intend to get in a rut, nor let me."

Joy laughed aloud.

"It must take lots of spare time, hunting new spots!" she said. "I'm afraid I'd think life was too short to take all that trouble."

"I'm coming to the conclusion that there's nothing you can't do," he said irrelevantly. "But I suppose you had a very able godmother—princesses do, don't they?"

"I have a wishing ring," Joy explained, entering into the play. "It's very well trained. All I have to do is to tell it things, and it sees to them immediately."

John went on eating his soup.

"You look as if you wanted to ask it to do something," she pursued.

He looked thoughtful.

"As a matter of fact, I do; but it seems an unfair advantage to take not only of a docile wishing ring, but of you," he stated.

"Try us and see," invited Joy, ringing, with a visible satisfaction in things, for the next course.

So John took courage.

"It's socks," he confessed with a boyish shame-facedness. "I—I'd like to see how you'd look doing them. I can't quite make myself see you, even now.... I suppose I'm silly—I'd like to see you sitting under the light in there, sewing for me, just once."

"You mean mending, not sewing," Joy told him cheerfully. However the wishing ring may have felt about the request, the princess was frankly delighted, "Have you got many? I do them very fast!"

John still looked doubtful. He still seemed to feel that it was a mean advantage to take of the most domesticated ring and princess.

"You see," he explained, "Mother's idea is—and it's likely a very good one—that when socks have holes you throw 'em away and get more. She doesn't make allowance, though, for one's getting attached to a pair. And I bought six pairs lately that I liked awfully well, and I hated to see them die.... They're just little holes."

"I'll get them and do them as soon as we're through dinner," she promised. "Won't your mother mind?"

"She'll be delighted," John promised sincerely. "But she hasn't them. I have."

Accordingly, after dinner Joy demanded them, and John produced them, while she got out her mending-basket, something he had never suspected her of possessing, he told her.

She sat down under the lamp with her work, tying on the little sewing-apron Mrs. Hewitt had given her the day before.

"Why, they scarcely have holes at all," she marveled. "I can do lots more than these."

"There are lots more," said John rather mournfully. But he did not feel particularly mournful. He was absorbed in the picture she made sitting there by the lamp, near the fire, her red mouth smiling to itself a little, and her black lashes shadowing her cheeks as her hands moved deftly at her work. John himself, on the other side of the fire, had a paper across his knees, but he forgot to read it, watching her. She seemed to turn the place into a home, sitting there quietly happy, swiftly setting her tiny, accurately woven stitches.

John's mother was an adorable playmate, but responsibilities were, to her, something to laugh about. She had always declared that John should have been her father, not her son; and he had always tried to fill the role as best he could. But there had always been things, though he had never admitted it to himself, that he had missed. It would have been pleasant to him if there had been some one who shared his interest in the looks of the place and in the gardens and orchards that were his special pride. He would have liked to have his mother care about his patients, to play for him in the evenings, perhaps, and to think about his tastes in little things. But though a tall harp stood in a corner of the living-room, and a piano was somewhere else, they were not often touched. Mrs. Hewitt was passionately interested in people. She loved traveling and house-parties and fads of all kinds—but she had no roots to speak of. John had never felt so much as if his house was his home as he did tonight, with the cold rain dashing against the windows outside, and inside the warm light, and the busy girl sitting across from him, sewing, and smiling to herself.

She looked up, as he glanced across at her contentedly, and spoke.

"I thought you seemed a little down tonight when you came in, John. How is the little La Guardia girl? You were having something of a struggle over her treatment the last time I went with you."

"By Jove, you have a memory!" said John, seeming a little startled. "The child is worse today, and it was on my mind. How on earth did you guess it, Joy?"

She only laughed softly.

"Don't you suppose I'm interested in your affairs? I don't like you to be worried. And I knew Giulia La Guardia was the only patient who wasn't doing well at last accounts. Just what is the trouble?"

John leaned forward and began to tell her about the child. Her blue eyes glanced up and down, back and forth, from him to her sewing, as she listened, and occasionally asked a question. They had both forgotten everything but the room and themselves, when they heard a genial male voice in the hall.

"No, indeed, my dear girl," it said, "I don't need to be announced in the very least. I'll go straight in."

And in just as brief a time as it might take an active young man to shed his overshoes and his raincoat, in walked Clarence Rutherford, as gay as always, and unusually secure of his welcome.



CHAPTER ELEVEN

PIRATE COUSINS TO THE RESCUE

"Thought I'd drop in and tell you some inspiriting news, it's such a beastly night," said he with empressement. "—Princess Melisande! What have they been doing to you?" he broke off to ask tenderly under his breath. "Our little princess turned into a Cinderella!"

His tone was calculated to induce self-pity in the breast of an oyster. But Joy, though she liked it mildly, did not feel moved to tears. Clarence was an interruption, even if a flattering one.

"My mother is ill," explained John, when Clarence had greeted him also in his most setting-at-ease manner. ("Kind of a man who'd try to make you welcome in your own house!" he growled under his breath. John also felt interrupted.)

But Clarence established himself friendlily in a third chair, and told Joy with charming masterfulness that she was to put down her work immediately and listen to him.

"We're going to get up a Gilbert and Sullivan opera," said he. "Now it stands to reason that we have to have you. I can tell by the pretty way you speak you have a good stage delivery, and you have all sorts of presence. Question is, have you a voice? If so, much honor shall be yours."

"Well, I've had lessons for years, and they say so," offered Joy modestly. "It's mezzo-soprano—lyric."

Both men looked at her in surprise. People were always being surprised at things she knew—as if she had ever done anything in her life but be trained—for no particular purpose, as it had seemed. And now everything she knew seemed to be going to be useful, one way or another. Harp lessons, singing lessons, lessons in the proper way to speak Grandfather's poetry—there had never seemed to be any particular point to any of them. And now everything was falling into line.

"Go on," said Clarence. "But I forgot, you said you couldn't dance."

"Only the kind that people do in—bare feet and Greek draperies, and I hate that," Joy answered deprecatingly.

"You are a Philistine," said Clarence. "But it's attractive."

"One of Grandfather's friends does it for a living, and taught me, as a token of affection and esteem, she called it. Would it be any use?"

"Use?" said Clarence rapturously. "You are exactly what the doctor ordered. If I can stun Gail into submission you shall be our leading lady, with all the real star parts in your grasp. Rehearsals at ten sharp, and I'm the director. Me voici!"

He rose and made her a deep bow.

He had, apparently, quite forgotten John, who still sat quietly with his paper across his knees, listening to them.

"And where do I come in?" he asked with a little twinkle in his eyes.

"Oh-oh yes," returned Clarence genially, "my dear fellow, how could we have forgotten you? Good old John, to want a part!"

He sounded to Joy rather too much as if he was saying, "Good old Fido!"

"It's something like saying it to a large dog with a bite, too," she meditated naughtily. "Clarence may find that out in a minute."

She went on with her domestic duties, mending the tiny holes in the socks in her lap, and smiling secretly to herself. It did not occur to her, but if any one had told her a month before that she would be sitting alone with two interesting men, watching their relations becoming more and more strained on her account, she would have denied it flatly. Now that it was happening it seemed quite natural. It had doubtless seemed quite natural to Aunt Lucilla.... She darned on placidly, while Clarence continued his infuriating efforts to put John at ease.

"There'll be a delightful part for you, old man," he assured his friend tenderly. "Don't worry about that. You'll have your chance."

The idea of a dominant, large-ideaed, hardworking John Hewitt hungering for "his chance" in an amateur comic opera struck Joy as so funny that she couldn't repress a small giggle and a glance across at him. John caught her look and gave her an answering gleam of amusement.

"You have the kindest heart in the world, Rutherford," said he sedately, "and I'll never forget it of you. ... Joy, my dear, would you mind running upstairs and seeing if Mother needs anything? And you may put away those socks you've been doing in my top drawer at the same time."

Joy stiffened a little at the tone of easy authority, and then caught John's eye again. The amused look was still there—that, and a look of certainty that she would help him play his hand. He was getting neatly back at Clarence!

She rose meekly.

"Yes, John," she said in the very tone she would have used if the alternative had been a beating, and excusing herself to Clarence in the same meek voice, took herself and her completed work upstairs.

A glance at her room through the crack of the door told Joy that Mrs. Hewitt was sleeping sweetly. She opened the door of John's room with a more fearful heart. It seemed a little frightening to go into his own private room where he lived. She pushed open the door and tiptoed in.

It was a large room, very orderly, with a faint, fresh smell of cigars and toilet water about it—the smell that no amount of airing can ever quite drive out of a man's room. Joy liked it. The dresser, flanked by a tie-rack, faced her as she came in. She ran to it, jerked out a drawer and stuffed in the socks hurriedly, and turned to go down again. In the middle of the room she paused for a moment. It was all so intimately, dearly John, and she did love John so!... And what was she, after all, with all her independences and certainties, but an ignorant, unwise child whom two wise grown men were using for a pet or a plaything—how could she tell which?

She felt suddenly little and frightened and helpless. The current of mischief and merriment dropped away from her for a minute, here where everything, from the class picture on the wall to the pipe on the bureau, spoke so of John—of what everything about him meant to her—about what going away from him would mean. She flung herself on her knees beside the narrow iron cot in the corner, her arms out over the pillow where his head rested.

"Oh, God, please make it all come straight and right!" she begged. "I don't suppose I did what I ought to, and maybe I'm not now, but please do let things come out the way they should! And if you can't make us both happy, make John—but—oh, God, please try to tuck me in too—I do want to be happy so!"

She knelt there a little longer, with her arms thrown out over the pillow. Saying her prayers always comforted her. She waited till she was quieter. Then she rose resolutely and dried her eyes, and went downstairs again, to make her report.

She found that Clarence was gone.

"I got rid of him," John explained serenely to her questioning glance. "You didn't need him particularly, did you, kiddie?"

Joy lifted her eyebrows.

"Not particularly," she replied, "but I should have liked to say good-night to him."

"I felt exactly that way myself," responded John cheerfully, "so I did. I was like the man in the Ibsen parody, who said, 'I will not only make him feel, but be at home!'" He paused a moment, and looked graver. "Come here, kiddie," he said.

Joy had been standing just inside the door all this time, on tiptoe for flight. She came slowly over in response to his beckoning hand, and he drew her down to a stool beside him, keeping his arm around her.

"Little girl," he said, "you're young, and you're inexperienced, and I don't want to see you let Rutherford go too far. I'd rather you didn't take part in this affair he's getting up."

Joy started back from his encircling arm, and looked at him reproachfully.

"Oh, John! Why, I want to dreadfully!"

"It isn't that I want to take any pleasure away from you," he explained. "It's simply that the opera would of necessity throw you into closer contact with Clarence—and I don't think you quite understand what Clarence is. He is very attractive, but, as I have told you before, he is not a man I would trust. A man who goes as deliberately about making women in love with him as he does, with a frank admission to other men that he collects them, isn't a man I want you to have much to do with."

Joy moved away from the arm entirely. She felt hurt.

"In other words, you're afraid he'll toy with my young affections?" she answered flippantly. "Very well—let him try! Goodness knows he's labeled loudly enough. Every time he comes within a mile somebody says that about him. Everything about him says it for itself, for the matter of that. It isn't any secret. Let him toy! It amuses him and doesn't hurt me."

"If I could be sure it wouldn't hurt you—" said John in a low voice. "He is very fascinating, Joy."

There was a note of pain in John's voice, but Joy did not heed it.

"You are hurting me!" she said angrily, rising. "How can you——"

She did not finish. She had been going to say, "How can you talk that way when I belong to you?" but she had not the courage. He could never know how much she belonged to him. "I very much want to be in this opera, and I think I shall," she said definitely.

"I have no way of preventing you," he answered coldly.

"But can't you trust me not to be silly?" she asked in a softer tone. "Oh, John, I'll promise not to let Clarence break my heart. I promise not to let anything break it. Good-night."

She gathered up her mending-basket, set her chair carefully where it had belonged, and went slowly out of the room without another word.

She did not know how John would greet her next morning. But he proved to be no more of a malice-bearing animal than she, and when she smiled brightly at him over the coffee-cups he smiled back in quite as friendly a fashion, and they had a very cheerful breakfast together—so cheerful that John was late getting out on his rounds. At the door he paused, looking back at her.

"Look here, kiddie, I wasn't fair about that thing last night," he said. "I've been thinking it over. I haven't a right in the world to ask you to keep out of something that would give you pleasure. Go on and play all the parts there are in it if you like. I'll be in it myself, in the 'nice part' Rutherford is so considerately saving up for me—" he grinned—"and——"

"And if you see me being swept off my feet you can wave your handkerchief, or something," ended Joy for him, and they both laughed. And so peace was restored, and Joy went on about her morning duties with a happy heart. It seemed to her, as she thought of him while she worked, that he had been unwontedly tender of her as he bade her good-by. She could not think why. At any rate she was very happy, and she sang as she sat at the living-room desk, after her morning inspection of the ice-box, writing out the list for the marketing, and the menus for that day's luncheon and dinner.

The maids took a deep interest in her, and if instant obedience and willing service meant anything, approved of her. This was the day when she was going to have to get the dinner all herself, and she was looking forward to it with pleasure. She had never been left to herself to do anything at home, because Grandmother and old Elizabeth had seen her toddle into the kitchen and "want to help" when she was four, and they therefore honestly thought she was four still where judgment was concerned.

As she sat and hummed to herself and wrote, the telephone rang. She sprang to it with that unquestioned obedience which telephone-bells cow us into, and listened. The Harrington children had called her up a couple of times, and she thought it might be Philip. Or maybe Clarence. But instead, she heard Gail's slow, assured voice.

"Clarence has been telling me the sad story of your life," she drawled, "and implores me to rescue you. I'm coming over to do it in a moment or so—as soon as I can detach Harold Gray from my side.... I've told him he also must devote himself to your service, so expect him along some time today."

She hung up without waiting for an answer, before Joy could do anything. She sat back in her chair, staring out the window in dismay. She had no idea what Clarence might have said about anything, but she devoutly wished he hadn't said it. She did not want Gail in her house. She caught herself up. That was the way she was coming to think of it—her house!

"Well, it isn't," she reminded herself. "After all, I'm a pilgrim and a stranger, and Gail is an old friend."

She returned to her list and her planning, though the fun was all out of it; and when Gail arrived a half-hour later, a bunch of chrysanthemums in her belt and a small grip in her hand, she greeted her with admirable calm.

She wished for a moment that Clarence had seen fit to come himself. He might say too familiar things, but at least there was an undertone of admiration about him very comforting in Gail's half-scornful presence. Also he sat on Gail occasionally in a calm and brotherly manner which cheered.

"Poor little Cinderella!" Gail greeted her. "I hear that Mrs. Hewitt has dropped all the housekeeping on your shoulders, John makes you do all the sewing—including his clothes, I suppose—and treats you like a ten-year-old child. Even allowing for Clarence's passionate transports you seem to be quite painfully noble in your acquiescence.... I have come to see to this!"

Joy stiffened.

"Thank you, I am perfectly happy," she stated untruthfully. "Won't you sit down?"

Gail flung her hat and cloak on a distant settee, and dropped her grip at her feet.

"Not till I go up and see poor^dear Mamma Hewitt," she answered. "Poor darling, she must be lonely!"

She sauntered out of the room, leaving Joy at the desk. She was down again in a few minutes. Gail never seemed to hurry. She merely got where she wanted to be with no visible effort. She nodded to Joy as she entered the room again, and dropped into a morris chair.

"Mrs. Hewitt says I am to go as far as I like," she informed Joy, half-amusedly. "Mother never seems to want any help at home, thank goodness, and all I have to do over there is to amuse little friends who drop in. You get tired of that after awhile. I told Clarence to send away any suitors who might trail over!"

She flung her arms up over her head and laughed a little to herself, stretching her whole indolent, graceful body.

"I like new things to amuse myself with," she informed Joy. "Now you'll send the maids in."

Joy did not like any of this. And she found herself more and more certain that she did not like Gail Maddox.

"If she has all those lovers," she thought resentfully, like a child, "why doesn't she stay home and play with them instead of coming over here where we were perfectly happy without her?"

But she was too proud to do anything about it, so instead of going up to Mrs. Hewitt's bedroom to appeal to Caesar she went to the kitchen without further comment, and informed the maids that Mrs. Hewitt had decided Miss Maddox was to have charge for the day.

The lively chorus of growls with which this was received cheered Joy's unregenerate heart. She did not stay to either soothe or encourage the rebellion.

"I've told the maids," she said colorlessly to Gail, returning.

"Good infant," said Gail, and proceeded to gather the flowers out of the vases where Joy had herself arranged them a half-hour before, and rearrange them.

Joy watched her for a minute or so. Then—"You aren't going to need me?" she asked with a misleading quietness. "Because if you aren't I—I have something to do for a little while."

"Not a bit. Run along," granted Gail. "I'll have some toil ready for you when you get back, if you like."

Joy was like the lady in the poem, who died in such a hurry.

"She did not stop to don her coat, She did not stop to smooth her bed."

She fled hatless in the direction of a place that had always meant soothed feelings and comfort generally, the Harrington house. Phyllis wouldn't be there, to be sure, but the place would have her peace and sunniness about it.

The children were ranging up and down the garden paths with squeals and shouts of happiness which were, apparently, merely because of life in general. They fell upon her with still wilder shouts; or at least Philip did, while Angela clung as far up as she could reach.

Joy hugged all the children she could reach with a warm sense of gratitude to them for wanting her, and (still led by gratitude) entered enthusiastically into tag herself. It was quite new to her, because she had never played children's games, but she found that she liked it exceedingly.... Suppose Gail did go slidingly around explaining to everybody convincingly that everybody else was in love with her—suppose it was even true? Why, even then—when you're young and alive it's fun to go running up and down a garden in the stimulating October air.

They ended in the big swing. Philip insisted on doing most of the pushing, because, as he explained, they were all girls and he wasn't. Joy held little Angela fast, and gave herself up to the delight of being swung. Philip pushed her higher and higher, till they were both screaming with pleasure, and, when the swing was at the top, could see over the tall hedge to the road outside.

There was something chugging inquiringly out there. And it was—it was, indeed, John's little doctor-car. And it held John, and it was slowing up. As these facts, one by one, became apparent to Joy and Angela in their excursions above the hedge, there was great happiness in the garden.

"I knew he'd come!—He said he'd come!" announced Philip gleefully, pushing like mad. "He said he would! He's been here every day since they went. I asked him yesterday"—these sentences were interspersed with the pantings necessary to pushing a swingful of ladies—"I asked him whyn't he stay for dinner, and he said—he said he wanted to go home an' have luncheon wiv Joy. So I s'pose he'll stay today, long's you're here."

In Joy's naughty mind a Great Idea sprang to birth. Whyn't he stay, indeed? He didn't know about Gail's coming to brighten his fireside, and there wasn't any reason why he should.

"He'll stay if I can make him," she told Philip gaily.

In the back of her head—she should unquestionably have had her hands slapped—there was a beautiful and complete picture of Gail being insolently alluring to three empty chairs and a luncheon table and four unoccupied walls.

"See John!" screamed Angela, trying to clap her hands, and having to be grabbed hastily so she shouldn't fall out of the swing. "Johnny! Johnny! Come in!"

John looked up in time to see the swing before it went downward again. He waved his hand as it came up, and the third time it rose Joy saw the car still, but no John. He was coming in.

He appeared a moment later, striding over the lawn. The children dashed for him, as usual.

"Johnny, Johnny!" they clamored. "She says you can stay to lunch! She says she will if you will."

With the way made so easy for her erring feet, what could Joy say but "Don't you want to?"

She did not insist.

But John accepted on the spot with unsuspecting heartiness, and Philip solved the last problem by scampering off over the rustling leaves to telephone that John wouldn't be home for luncheon.

So they had a very merry luncheon, though an occasional whiff of guilt made Joy fall silent—which was not noticeable, because Philip's conversation flowed on brightly in all the breaks, and sometimes when there weren't any.

"Want me to take you back, Joy?" John asked when they were done, looking down at her quizzically, as he had a trick of doing. "Gail must want you by this time."

"Gail!" stammered Joy. Then her courage came back, as it usually did when she summoned it, and she laughed.

"Heavens, I am discovered!" she quoted. "Why, John, you don't mean to tell me you ran away too?"

"I didn't run away," countered John. "I promised Philip yesterday that I'd stay here to luncheon with him. In fact, I think I promised to summon you. I stopped at the house to do it just now and found you here already. I explained matters to Gail, and she is up in Mother's room, having her luncheon there."

He turned to the children. "Say good-by to Joy now, infants—I'm going to take her away with me."

"You do that a great deal of the time, it seems to me," observed Philip regretfully. "But of course, I suppose she really does belong to you."

"Exactly," laughed John, lifting the little boy up to kiss him. "She does. Come, my property."

They got into the car amicably, laughing over Philip. But John wasn't through with her.

"Was it quite courteous, my dear," he asked gently, but with a certain firmness, "to leave Gail that way? It was only a chance that I was able to explain it. In a sense she was a guest in your house."

Joy flamed up.

"Was it quite courteous of Gail," she demanded passionately, "to come in and take my house away from me, and demand that I hand her over the housekeeping—no, not demand it, calmly take it?"

John looked a little perplexed for the moment, which gave Joy time to calm down a little, and remind herself that men were like that.

"Somehow one doesn't expect Gail to be considerate," he explained finally. "It—well, it isn't one of her qualities. I think I heard her say once that she had never found it necessary. But you—I expect so much more of you, Joy!"

One would suppose that this might have been soothing. John seemed to consider it so. But it wasn't.

"She's so charming that nobody expects anything else of her," Joy flashed back, "and I have to be good, because all people can like me for is my goodness—is that what you mean?"

And she stood up, as the car slowed before the Hewitt house, and sprang out. She had seen Clarence Rutherford sunning himself expectantly on the steps.

"There's the man who sent her over, if you approve of it all so highly," were her departing words to John. "I promise not to be inhospitable to him!"

She waved her hand.

"Mr. Rutherford!" she called. "Come on down and go off somewhere with me!"

Clarence unfolded himself with more haste than usual, and obliged.

"To the end of the world, Sorcerette, or any little place like that," he said sweetly. "I have no car, alas, but I can telephone for one."

"No, don't," said Joy, whose one idea was to get away. "Just go into the house and bring me my cap and any wrap you can find."

She did not dare look back to John. She felt she was being everything she oughtn't to, but she also felt that she had cause.

"Here's your hat," said Clarence, coming out with it, and refraining from completing the quotation. "Where do you want to go? I have many beautiful plans to offer you, principally about your being leading lady in my comic opera. You are going to have to get an extension of parole from the dear ones at home."

"Oh, do you really think I can act in it?" asked Joy happily as they went down the leafy road together. She gave a little frisk as she spoke.

"Of course you can," said he. "As a matter of fact, that's my principal reason for getting it up. I have a book that contains all the Gilbert librettos in my most bulging pocket. You and I will wander out into the wonderful autumn woods, and sit down on a soft, pleasant log, and pick out the opera, and the cast, and be happy generally. Only I won't play unless, as. I explained last night, you are a leading lady with a real star part. As I'm a wonderful stage manager I feel strongly that it will be thus."

"Thank you," said Joy amiably but absently. Something appalling had just occurred to her.

"Good gracious," she told him, "it's a special occasion, and the cook and the waitress are both going off to funerals or something, and Gail is going to have to get that whole dinner single-handed!"



CHAPTER TWELVE

DINNER FOR FIVE

Clarence smiled most agreeably.

"You should try to be more of an optimist, dear Joy," he reproved. "Try to live up to your name."

"I got it out of Blake," said Joy, "or they did—and I never did see why you should live up to a name your grandfather pinned on you out of a poetry book."

"Pardon this seeming curiosity," hinted Clarence, "but didn't you ever have any parents, not even to the extent of their having a chance to name you?"

"They died before I was born," Joy explained. "At least, as much as they could. My father quite did and my mother died before I was a week old. So Grandfather had it all to do, as far as naming went. You know that horrid poem—

"I have no name— I am but three days old:"

"And it's called Infant Joy, and so was I."

"They seem to have begun wrecking your taste for literature early," observed Clarence.

"Oh—literature!" said Joy wearily.

"Your tone hints that we didn't come off to discuss the poets. You are quite right, Sorcerette. When two charming young persons like ourselves are alone together on a wonderful fall afternoon they should discuss only each other. And you must admit that my references to literature were only incidental to yourself."

"Well, anyway," stated Joy, pausing as they strolled, and beginning to braid into a garland a handful of wild asters she had gathered, "anyway, I ought to go back to the house and help Gail get dinner. John likes things just so."

"Heavens, how marital!" sighed Clarence, wincing. Then suddenly he seemed more in earnest than Joy had ever known him. "Can't you ever talk or think of anything but the admirable John? How on earth did he get you so thoroughly broken in?"

Joy's cheeks flamed.

"He didn't 'break me in,'" she defended. "But I think I ought to see to it that things are all right. You see, when your cousin came and offered to take over the housekeeping—if she wasn't your cousin, I might say she got it away from me—she thought she was helping herself to a 'nice, clane, aisy job,' as the Irishman said about being a bishop. It really isn't fair to let her in for work she didn't expect."

The look Clarence bent on her this time held genuine admiration.

"I think it is exceedingly fair," was all he said.

"Really?" she asked. She certainly did not want to go back to the house, and, noble as Clarence might think her, she didn't feel a bit like taking orders from Gail.

"She has made her bed—or it may even be, her beds," said Clarence. "Now why don't you let her lie in it, or them?"

"Well, I don't want to go home," said Joy a little sadly.

"Let us be optimists, as I suggested some yards back," said Clarence cheerfully. "Let us think of the wonderful effect it will all have on Gail's moral nature. By the time she has produced the eight-course dinner which I gather the worthy Dr. Hewitt requires to keep him the good citizen he is, she will be ennobled to a terrible degree. You have heard of the ennobling influence of toil, dear child?"

"I have, but I never believed in it," said Joy. "It makes you cross, especially peeling potatoes, and it's bad for your hands. And judging by the number of maids who steal, it doesn't work at all."

"I suppose," Clarence resigned himself, "that if Melisande were still spared to us in the flesh, she really would have talked this way, except that she would have used a few more dots. But one is an idealist. One is jarred. If you could recite, in your soft, clear-cut voice that is so admirably adapted for poetry, a few stanzas of something heartbreaking——" voluntarily.

Joy, not unnaturally, lost patience.

"I have spent my whole life, or a lot more of it than I want to, reciting heartbreaking poetry," she told him. "If you want it, go buy a phonograph record. And if you want me out here in the woods with you, stop talking about it!"

She really shouldn't have been so cross. Clarence was supposed to be very clever when he talked. But just then she was only half listening to him, and there came a sudden vision of the night before—the cozy room, and the wood fire, and John across from her, smiling gravely at her, and talking in a way that didn't make her feel, as Clarence's way did, that he was laughing at her underneath, when he thought she couldn't see.

John had told her once that his ideal girl wore something white or blue, and had her hair parted, and was connected in his mind some way with a wood fire. And he had talked and acted as if she was that girl. She'd had on the little blue dress that she'd bought, and made look modern with a fichu of Mrs. Hewitt's....

Clarence's voice interrupted her thoughts, rather plaintively.

"Dear Joy! I will buy a phonograph record! I will buy a whole album of them. I will purchase a copy of the Last Ravings of John McCullough, and have it rave to me the last thing every night, as a penance, if you will only stop looking off into space, and give at least a fair imitation of knowing that I exist."

Joy's heart misgave her. She really wasn't being very polite.

"Of course you exist," she said penitently. "And you are very nice and polite, in your way, and you must make allowance for my not being clever. I keep telling you that all the time."

"I am delighted that you are not, as you call it, clever," said Clarence with undoubted sincerity. "You lack verbal dexterity of a certain kind, because you have never associated freely with people you could be disrespectful to. But you are quite a new kind of girl, or else a survival, and I adore you for it. I never thought I was going to adore any one so much. Why, I even think it is humorous when you sit on me, and that, my dear, is a very bad symptom. In short, I am very much in love with you."