CHAPTER SEVENA VERY CHARMING GENTLEMAN"You look lovely," said Phyllis heartily. She herself was radiant in a rose satin that made her look, as her small son remarked ecstatically, like a valentine. "Mustn't it be horrid to be a man and always wear the same black clothes?""M'yes," answered Joy absent-mindedly. "If I look as nice as you do I don't have to worry. But—but will Gail Maddox be very much dressed?""She will," replied Phyllis decisively. "If I know Gail, she'll look like a Christmas tree. But don't let that weigh on your mind, dear child. Nobody could look better than you do, if Viola and I did combine two of your frocks into one. Could they, Viola?"The colored girl, who had been doing the masses of Joy's bronze hair while her mistress, kneeling by the dressing-table, put the finishing touches to some frock-draperies, giggled."Well dressed? Why, Miss Joy looks like the vampire in the movie show!""Final praise!" sighed Phyllis. "You never told me I was as well dressed as a vampire, Viola.""You couldn't live up to vampiring, nohow, Mrs. Harrington, nor you shouldn't want to, not with that goldy hair of yours," said Viola reprovingly."Virtue is thrust upon me, in other words," said Phyllis. "Evidently you have possibilities of crime, Joy!"They went down, laughing, to where Allan and John were waiting for them, Allan walking the floor in his usual quick, boyish fashion, John sitting at a table reading, by way of economizing time. Being a doctor, he had a way of snapping up odds and ends of time and doing things with them.He looked up from his paper as Joy's light footsteps pattered down the stairs, and continued to look at her. The green and silver of her gown glittered and flowed around her. Viola had done her hair high, and the wealth of it showed more, even, than when it was down in its accustomed braids. Her surprising black brows and lashes, with the innocence of her blue eyes, and the half-wistful, half-daring expression she had, made her seem a combination of sophistication and childishness such as John had never seen before."Shall I do you credit?" she asked him softly over her shoulder, as he held her wrap for her.Her heart beat hard as she said it. She felt as if she was going into open battle, and she wanted all the heartening she could get."Tell me now that you like me better than you do Gail Maddox!" was what she wanted to say. But she knew she couldn't, not without being thought a cat. "I can't get over finding motors scattered all over everything!" was what she heard herself saying inconsequently instead as they went out. She did not dare give him time to answer her first impulsive question.But he answered it just the same."You do me great credit, my dear. I never knew you were quite so beautiful." He said it gravely, but none the less sincerely. "It's very pleasant to remember that I have property rights to such a charming person."Property rights! Joy's heart gave a little warm jump. If he could say that—if he could even seem to forget that she was only rented, so to speak...Before she thought she had reached up and caught his hand in a warm, furtive grasp for a moment. She took it away again directly, but it had comforted her to touch him. He was so strong and sothere.... Also, Viola's words comforted her; if she looked like a vampire, why, maybe, with the aid of the wishing ring and Aunt Lucilla's ghost, she could live up to it. Having her hair done as high and her dress cut as low as anybody's also gave her courage. Altogether it was, if not a perfectly self-assured, at least a very poised-looking little figure that came smiling into Mrs. Hewitt's embrace from the motor, with her lover close behind her, like a bodyguard."You little angel! You look perfect!" said her mother-in-law-elect rapturously. "And you match my lavender grandeur perfectly. That's a sweet frock, Phyllis. Hurry down, girls, you want to have a little time to rest before you have to stand up for years and receive."It was early still when they came down from the dressing-rooms, and no guests had arrived yet. So they settled themselves in the dining-room, informally, to wait and visit a little."One hasnochance for fun with an earnest-minded son," Mrs. Hewitt complained amiably. "This is the first doings of any sort I have ever had that John was even remotely connected with. A nice little daughter that would dance and flirt and turn the house upside down—that was what I was entitled to—and I got a brilliant young physician who specializes on theos innominata, or something equally thrilling! I sometimes wonder how he ever found time to annex you, Joy!"Joy colored. It was a random shaft, but it caught her breath. Then—"He didn't," she said gallantly. "I simply rubbed my ring and wished for him, and he came.""I'll be bound he didn't come hard," said herenfant terribleof a prospective mother-in-law placidly. "Johnny, keep away from those cakes! They're for much, much later, and for your guests, not the likes of you!""They are excellent. We need moral support in our ordeal," returned her son, sauntering up, with his usual dignity unimpaired by a plate of fancy cakes in each hand. "Never mind your cruel mother-in-law, Joy. Take a lot—take two!""I will, anyway," interposed Allan placidly, reaching a long, unexpected brown hand over his friend's shoulder and securing three. "Phyllis and I need as much moral support as anybody.""Phyllis is the only one who is minding her manners," Mrs. Hewitt observed with a firmness that she patently didn't mean in the least. "Phyllis, my dear, go get some of the sandwiches. We may as well lunch thoroughly. We have heaps of time before the 'gesses' get here, anyway."They were all playing like a lot of children. Phyllis, flushed and laughing, raided the kitchen with her husband and came back with more kinds of sandwiches than Joy had known existed. They sat about on cushions on the floor, because the chairs had been taken out for dancing later, and the floor waxed. Joy laughed with the rest, and lunched sumptuously on the cakes the guests ought to have had, and thought for the thousandth time what an ideal mother-in-law was hers at the moment, and how many of the people in the world were the realest of real folks, and how much like Christmas every-day life was getting to be..."I see you are eating up everything before the really deserving poor arrive," said a slow, coolly amused voice behind Joy, who sat with her back to the entrance.Joy did not need Mrs. Hewitt's equally calm "Good-evening, Gail. Since when have you been deserving?" to know who had entered."Came to help you receive," stated Gail further, still indolently, bringing herself further into the circle as she spoke, where Joy could see her. "I brought a stray cousin along—sex, male. I knew you wouldn't care—men are a godsend in New England towns. Here he is."The cousin in question was evidently motioned to, for he appeared in the range of Joy's vision with a charming certainty of welcome, and the two merged themselves with the circle without more ceremony. They had evidently made their way to the dressing-rooms before coming to hunt for the family.While Gail introduced her cousin a little more thoroughly, Joy gave her a furtive, but still more thorough, inspection. She seemed twenty-five or six. She was very slim, with lines like a boy more than a girl; sallow, with large, steady blue-gray eyes and heavy lashes, and lips that were so full that they were sullen-looking when her face was still. She was not unusually pretty—indeed, by Phyllis' rose-and-golden beauty she looked dingy—but she had something arresting about her, and the carriage and manner of a girl who is insolently certain that whatever she says or does is perfect because she does it. She had on a straight blue chiffon frock, cut unusually low: so low that it was continually slipping off one thin shoulder. Allan confided to Joy afterward that Gail's shoulder-straps worried him to madness.Joy watched Miss Maddox with fascinated eyes. "I'm soyoung!" she thought forlornly, "and all the rest of them are so dreadfully grown-up!"She felt as if Gail Maddox, with her brilliant, careless sentences, and her half-insolent confidence, owned everybody there much more thanshedid: and she felt little and underdressed and outclassed to a point where even Gail might pity her, and probably did.... And if there is a more abjectly awful feeling than that the Other Girl pities you, nobody has discovered it yet.... Gail might even know how much of a pretender she was. If John—but no. John wasn't like that. He was—"fantastically honorable," she had heard Phyllis call it. John hadn't told—he wouldn't tell if his own happiness depended on it.... And Joy let her thoughts stray off into a maze of wondering as to whether she would rather have her self-respect saved by not having Gail know, or whether, if it would break John's heart to be separated forever from Gail, she oughtn't to tell him to tell.Gail, lounging in a low chair she had dragged across the waxed floor in the face of all outcries, with one electric-blue-shod foot stretched out before her, looked exactly the person you'd care least to have know anything they could scorn you about. She could scorn so well and so convincingly, Joy felt, listening to her. There wouldn't be a thing left of you when she got through."I feel as alone as Robinson Crusoe," thought Joy forlornly.She rose restlessly and picked up the tray which had borne their illegal sandwiches, with the idea of carrying it and herself out of sight. She wanted a minute to brace herself in.As she did it, Allan rose, too, unexpectedly, as he did most things. "Here, I'll take some of those," he offered, and helped her carry the debris out.They set down their burdens on a pantry table, whence three scandalized maids whisked them somewhere else again, gazing the while reproachfully at the invaders."I haven't any use for that girl," stated Allan plainly, as they went back. "Don't let her fuss you, Joy."Joy looked gratefully up at him. The whole world, then, didn't prefer Gail Maddox to her!"She makes me feel exactly like a small dog that has stolen a bone and got caught," Joy acknowledged directly, with a little shamefaced laugh."She'll do her best in that line," responded Allan, who seemed to have no great affection for the lady. "Don't let her bother you. He's your bone—hang on to him. In short, sic 'em!"They both laughed, and Joy came back with her bronze head high and an access of fresh courage. She sat down this time between John and the cousin, whose name she had not heard. But she began talking hard to him. Occasionally she tossed John, fenced in beside her, a cheerful word. He seemed perfectly satisfied at first, but the cousin did not. He wanted Joy all to himself, it appeared, and a fiancé more or less seemed to have no bearing on the case, as far as he was concerned.Presently John woke up to this fact and began the effort to repossess himself of his lawful property. Joy cast a mischievous glance at Allan, sitting on the arm of his wife's chair (chairs had become the order of the day), and Allan grinned happily, by some means telegraphing the situation to Phyllis. Every one was happy except John, and perhaps Gail, who presently eyed the three and used her usual weapon of lazy frankness."It makes me furious to see both of you making violent love to Joy Havenith," she said indolently. "Clarence, go start the victrola, my good man. This must be put a stop to."Clarence lifted himself from the floor by Joy, but he calmly took her hand along with him, and raised her, too."She's going to christen the floor with me," he informed his cousin. "Come on, Miss Joy!"The isolation that ordinarily doth hedge an engaged girl, where men are concerned, seemed to trouble Clarence not at all. He was, by the way, in spite of the fact that he would some day be too stout, one of the best-looking men who ever lived. He had a good deal of his cousin's lazy assurance—in him it sometimes verged on impudence, but never beyond the getting-away-with point—and a heavenly smile. His other name was, unbelievably, Rutherford, which almost took the curse off the Clarence, as he said, but not quite. And if he had gone into the movies he would have made millions, beyond a doubt.He drew Joy across the floor with him, in her green-and-silver draperies, and began to wind the victrola, which had been tucked into a nook where Mrs. Hewitt had vainly hoped it would be quite hidden. There was to be an orchestra afterwards for the authorized dancing.Clarence put on "Poor Butterfly," and encircling Joy proceeded to dance away with her."But I don't know how to dance," she gasped as she felt herself being drawn smoothly across the floor."That doesn't matter, Sorcerette, dear," said Clarence blandly. "Just let go—be clay in the hands of the potter. I'll do the dancing for two. Hear me?"Joy did as she was told, and—marvel of marvels!—found herself following him easily. She was really dancing!"But why did you call me that?" she demanded, like a child, as she got her breath. To her apprehensive mind the name sounded as if Gail had not only learned her dark secret but had passed it on to her dear Cousin Clarence."Because you look it," said he promptly, in a voice that softened from word to word. "...Harrington is a good dancer, isn't he? Phyllis looks all right, but I fancy she guides hard. Those tall women often do.... Why, anybody with brows and lashes like yours, and hair that color, combined with that angelic please-guide-me-through-a-hard-world expression simply shrieks aloud for a name like that. A sorcerette is a cross between a seraph and a little witch. There's no telling what she might do to you!""Oh!" cooed Joy.It sounded like a very happy "Oh," and Clarence, experienced love-pirate though he was, hadn't a way in the world of knowing that Joy's pleasure came of being still undiscovered, not of his winning ways.She danced on with him to the very last note of the record, enraptured to find that she really could dance, and came back to the end of the room where Mrs. Hewitt still sat; her eyes starry with delight."Oh, I can dance when I just go where the man takes me!" she cried. "I never knew I could!""You dance very well," said John's quiet voice from behind his mother's chair. "Will you dance with me now?"Joy, regarding him, saw that he was vexed. Most people would not have noticed it, but very few of his moods escaped Joy. He was a little graver than usual, and his voice was quieter."If I can," she answered. "I thought you were dancing this with Miss Maddox.""I didn't think it would show proper courtesy to my fiancée to dance first with some one else," John answered.Clarence had set the music going again, and was swinging round the room with Gail. As it began, John, with no more words, drew Joy out on the floor with him.She looked up in surprise at his words."Why—why, I didn't know I was that much of a fiancée to you. I thought probably you'd rather be with Gail. And—and I didn't know I was going to dance anyway. I didn't know I could!"He looked down at her again, apparently to see whether she was in earnest, holding her off for a moment as they danced.She hoped he would deny that he preferred being with Gail, but he did not."We are going through our month of relationshipright," he told her definitely, smiling, but looking down at her with the steady, steel-colored light in his gray eyes that she knew meant "no appeal." "Gail does not enter into it at all. But I admit that Rutherford's quickness put me in the wrong.""If only," thought Joy, acutely conscious of his firm hold, "instead of laying down the law that way, he would let go and admit that he was angry!" For he certainly was, and it wasn't at all her fault, unless going where Clarence took her was a crime. Johnhadn'tthought of dancing first. Was he the kind of person who always thought he was right even when he knew he wasn't? If so, maybe a monthwaslong enough.... But the thought of the end of the month hurt, no matter how unreasonable she tried to think John, and she threw down her arms—the only way, if she had known, to make John throw down his."Are you angry at me?" she half whispered. "I—please don't be angry. Nobody ever was, and I don't want to be silly, but I don't believe I could stand it."He swept her rhythmically on, but she could feel his arm relax and hold her more warmly, and his wonderful gray eyes softened again as they looked into hers."Poor little thing! I keep forgetting that you're just a child. Sometimes you aren't, you know.""No, sometimes I'm not," Joy echoed. Then she laughed up at him impishly. "You say this thing is going to be done right?" she mocked. "Very well, then, when Mr. Rutherford is nice to me you ought to be nicer. When he sits down close to me and tells me I'm a sorcerette—""A what?" demanded John swiftly. "See here, Joy, I'm practically in charge of you, and you're very young, you know, and can't be expected to know much about men. Rutherford is attractive and all that, but he's a man I wouldn't trust the other side of a biscuit. Any man can tell you that. Allan—""He talks just like a poet," said Joy innocently. How could John know that this was an insult, not a compliment, in Joy's mind? She had seen any amount of Clarences—ignoring her, to be sure, but still saying Clarence things to others in her hearing—all her days."That may be," said John. "I'm no judge of poets, and I suppose you are.... See here, Joy, there's an inhabitant—two of 'em—coming in the doorway. Mother'll be wanting you to stand in a silly line and pass people along to her, or away from her, or something. Come here with me and we'll finish this. You're getting a wrong impression of what I mean."Joy found herself being steered masterfully into a little semi-dark room that opened off the long parlor. John planted her in a low chair in a corner and pulled up a stool for himself just opposite."They won't find us for at least ten minutes, unless we wigwag. Now—what's a sorcerette?"His tone, in spite of his carelessness, betrayed a certain anxiety to learn. Joy answered him with fullness and simplicity."A sorcerette is somebody with coloring like mine, and a cross between a seraph and a little witch," she replied innocently. "That's what Clarence said. But Ithinkhe made up the name himself," she added conscientiously, as if that would be some help.John grinned a little in spite of himself."I don't like the idea particularly of his making the name up himself," he remarked; "but there is something in what Rutherford said!""I'm very glad you think so," said Joy with a transparent meekness. "And now that you've found out, isn't it time you went back to your duties?"He looked at her doubtfully, where she sat in the half-light with her head held high and her hands crossed on her green-and-silver lap. He could not quite make out her expression.But he had not much more chance for cross-questioning, because guests were beginning to come thickly, and his mother was sending out agonized scouting parties for the feature of the evening.Phyllis, knowing the rooms of old, discovered her. She swooped down on the pair, where they were sitting in the little dim room."You wretched people, this is no time for that sort of thing!" she exclaimed, shoving them before her. "Please try to remember that you will, in all likelihood, spend a lifetime together. Joy, three severe New England spinsters have already taken Gail Maddox for you. Hurry!"The suggestion was quite enough, as Phyllis may have known it would be. Joy whisked into her place, which was opposite the double doors, between Mrs. Hewitt and Phyllis, and taking her burden of white chrysanthemums on one arm, proceeded to be as charming to her future patients-in-law as she knew how.Mrs. Hewitt and Phyllis cast glances of astonished admiration at each other over her head. They neither of them had thought of Joy as anything but a sweet child, or an affectionate child—a darling, but shy and unused to the world. But she was managing her share of the evening's pageant as if she had run a salon for twenty years. It did not occur to them that the explanation was that she practically had been brought up in one. She had been a part of the bi-weekly receptions given to the small and great of the earth by Havenith the poet ever since she was old enough to come into the parlors and could be trusted not to cry or snatch cake."Good gracious, Joy,wheredid you learn to drive people four-in-hand this way?" breathed Phyllis admiringly, in a lull. "Iknow, if I'd had to talk to two Miss Peabodys and three Miss Brearleys and a stray Jonesallat once, at least five of them would have hated me forever after. And you kept them going like a juggler's balls!""They're not half as hard as the people at Grandfather's afternoons," answered Joy. "He had almost every kind of person—everybody wanted to see him, you know, and he felt it his duty to gratify as many as he could, he said. Oh, Phyllis,tenBrearleys and Peabodys are nothing to trying to make three Celtic poets and a vers-librist talk pleasantly to each other!""You're a darling," said Phyllis irrelevantly."I see you've been working virtuously hard," put in Gail pleasantly, sauntering up. "Now,Igave up being noble-hearted to the uninteresting some time ago. There's very little in it. I collected a suitor or so early in the evening, and we've been telling each other what we really thought of all the worst guests, in the little room off. You ought to hear John's description of—""She shan't—it's not for your young ears," said Clarence possessively from where he stood, a little behind Gail. Gail had three men with her—Clarence, John, and a slim youth who looked younger than he proved to be, and who answered to the name of Tiddy.All Joy's feelings of triumph and innocent satisfaction in having won the liking of Mrs. Hewitt's guests faded. She felt as Gail had made her feel before—foolishly good and ridiculously young and altogether unsuccessful in life. For a moment the mood held her in a very crushed state of mind: then she caught Clarence's eyes fixed upon her with a look of amused admiration. It spurred her."I've been doing my duty by my future lord and master," she said lightly. "But now you put it that way, he doesn't sound like a worthy cause a bit."The men laughed, though Joy's words hadn't sounded particularly witty to herself. "I'm going to abjure duty now," she went on hurriedly. "The orchestra's playing that thing people can dance me to——"She held her hand and arm gracefully high, in the old minuet pose, and laughed up at Clarence.Hewasn't supposed to be her lover, and yet he saw through Gail when John didn't——"By Jove, I can do the minuet!" he said eagerly. "Can you, Miss Joy?"She smiled and nodded."Grandma told me all about it,Taught me so I could not doubt it,"she sang softly."We'll do it—we'll do it for the happy villagers!" proclaimed Clarence."Here, Tiddy, go cut a girl out of the herd, and find Harrington, too. We're the bell-cows. All you others have to do is to obediently follow us—the men follow me and the women tag around after Miss Joy—which last seems wrong, but can't be helped.""Not at all," said John amiably. "Far be it from me to seem to steal your thunder, Rutherford, but I, too, was in the village pageant last year, and I minuet excellently. All my grateful patients said so. You know, if you led off, they might take you for the man who's going to marry Miss Havenith."Clarence couldn't very well do or say anything to his host, but he looked far from pleased as John took Joy's hand and quietly led her into line. Tiddy came up just then with a pretty, dark little girl whom he had selected with great judgment from the guests as being just of a height between Joy and Gail. He had also enlisted the orchestra, for it began to play "La Cinquantaine" as they all took their places facing each other. They were all laughing, even Clarence. The guests, catching the spirit of the thing, began to laugh and applaud, and—it seemed like magic that it could be done so swiftly—formed two more sets in the rest of the room, while the elders, against the wall, watched approvingly."I thought nobody but me danced minuets any more," Joy whispered to John as, her eyes alight with happiness, she crossed him in the changes of the lovely old dance."There happened to be a historical pageant here last summer," he explained to her, "and there were eight minuet sets in the Revolutionary episode, so we had to learn. Mother hounded me into it. I'm glad now she did.""Why?" inquired Joy innocently the next time she met him."I like to maintain my rights," he answered with a little gleam of fun in his eyes.But Joy felt fairly certain that the gleam of fun had behind it a gleam of decision. Certainly John's motto was, "What's mine's mine!"—even when it was rented.They finished to applause, and as the orchestra ended its minuet it slid on into a modern dance, and so did each of the couples, dancing on out on the floor.Joy sank down at the end of the waltz on a seat by the wall, with John beside her.He bent over her."Having a good time, kiddie?" he asked her gently. She nodded, her eyes like stars."Oh, I'mpeople, at last!" she said with a soft exultance. "I've always looked on and looked on, like a doll or a mechanical figure—and I'm real—I'm in the midst of things! And it's all you and the wishing ring! ... John, did you see? Your people—they really liked me!""Of course they did, you little goosie," he told her, smiling down at her. "You have more personal charm than almost any girl I ever knew. I don't know any one who doesn't like you.""Gail doesn't," Joy ventured.John shook his head."You don't understand Gail," he said. "She's a mighty brilliant girl. She doesn't often like other girls, I admit that—but she took to you. I could see it.""Could you?" flashed Joy. "Men see so much! ... She's beckoning to you."She flung her head back angrily. Nobody likes to be told she doesn't understand another girl—and the fact that the girl is mighty brilliant doesn't make you feel better about it."I'll be back in just a moment," said John obliviously, and went with what seemed to Joy unnecessary docility.She stood there alone, her hands clasped hard, her head up—to all appearance a vivid, triumphant little figure. Her heart was beating like mad and her cheeks burnt. She had just found out something about herself, something that a wiser, older woman would have known a long time ago: as long ago as when the Wishing Ring Man stood, the light glinting on his fair hair and sturdy shoulders, in the opening of Grandfather's hall door.She was in love with John—furiously, wildly, heart-breakingly in love with him. And she was going to have to live close by him for a month, knowing that, and keeping him from knowing it—and then go away from him and never see him any more."This is our dance, Sorcerette," said Clarence's voice in her ear.CHAPTER EIGHTA FOUNTAIN IN FAIRYLANDJoy had supposed, when she finally went to sleep at three in the morning, that she would waken with all the excitement gone and feeling very unhappy. She had always heard that it made you unhappy to be in love.Instead, she opened her eyes with the excitement of it all still pulsing through her. The fact that John was in the world and she could care for him seemed almost enough to account for the sense of happiness that possessed her as she pattered over to the window and looked out. And what little more was needed to account for her exhilaration could be found in the wonderful September morning outside. There probablyweretroubles somewhere or other, such as darkened city parlors, minor poets, and sophisticated seekers after John, but somehow she and they didn't connect. The air was so tingling and sunny, and the garden was so beautiful, and being young and free and in the country was so heavenly that she dressed and ran down, and sang along the garden paths as she picked herself a big bunch of golden chrysanthemums and purple and pink asters.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 waslovely!... 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!Youate 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 justlovelittle 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, Ihaveto 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, "menaresuch 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,nothingyou 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 unhappyIwould 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 somebodywouldtake 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, MissAddison!" 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."Awheelbarrow!" 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, whatdoyou 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 awheelbarrow!"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 justfoughtit, 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 settlesthat!""Well, have some more tea, anyway, now the worst is over," said her hostess hospitably.... "Awheelbarrow!"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!""Whereishe?" 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 Allanwillsay?"
CHAPTER SEVENA VERY CHARMING GENTLEMAN"You look lovely," said Phyllis heartily. She herself was radiant in a rose satin that made her look, as her small son remarked ecstatically, like a valentine. "Mustn't it be horrid to be a man and always wear the same black clothes?""M'yes," answered Joy absent-mindedly. "If I look as nice as you do I don't have to worry. But—but will Gail Maddox be very much dressed?""She will," replied Phyllis decisively. "If I know Gail, she'll look like a Christmas tree. But don't let that weigh on your mind, dear child. Nobody could look better than you do, if Viola and I did combine two of your frocks into one. Could they, Viola?"The colored girl, who had been doing the masses of Joy's bronze hair while her mistress, kneeling by the dressing-table, put the finishing touches to some frock-draperies, giggled."Well dressed? Why, Miss Joy looks like the vampire in the movie show!""Final praise!" sighed Phyllis. "You never told me I was as well dressed as a vampire, Viola.""You couldn't live up to vampiring, nohow, Mrs. Harrington, nor you shouldn't want to, not with that goldy hair of yours," said Viola reprovingly."Virtue is thrust upon me, in other words," said Phyllis. "Evidently you have possibilities of crime, Joy!"They went down, laughing, to where Allan and John were waiting for them, Allan walking the floor in his usual quick, boyish fashion, John sitting at a table reading, by way of economizing time. Being a doctor, he had a way of snapping up odds and ends of time and doing things with them.He looked up from his paper as Joy's light footsteps pattered down the stairs, and continued to look at her. The green and silver of her gown glittered and flowed around her. Viola had done her hair high, and the wealth of it showed more, even, than when it was down in its accustomed braids. Her surprising black brows and lashes, with the innocence of her blue eyes, and the half-wistful, half-daring expression she had, made her seem a combination of sophistication and childishness such as John had never seen before."Shall I do you credit?" she asked him softly over her shoulder, as he held her wrap for her.Her heart beat hard as she said it. She felt as if she was going into open battle, and she wanted all the heartening she could get."Tell me now that you like me better than you do Gail Maddox!" was what she wanted to say. But she knew she couldn't, not without being thought a cat. "I can't get over finding motors scattered all over everything!" was what she heard herself saying inconsequently instead as they went out. She did not dare give him time to answer her first impulsive question.But he answered it just the same."You do me great credit, my dear. I never knew you were quite so beautiful." He said it gravely, but none the less sincerely. "It's very pleasant to remember that I have property rights to such a charming person."Property rights! Joy's heart gave a little warm jump. If he could say that—if he could even seem to forget that she was only rented, so to speak...Before she thought she had reached up and caught his hand in a warm, furtive grasp for a moment. She took it away again directly, but it had comforted her to touch him. He was so strong and sothere.... Also, Viola's words comforted her; if she looked like a vampire, why, maybe, with the aid of the wishing ring and Aunt Lucilla's ghost, she could live up to it. Having her hair done as high and her dress cut as low as anybody's also gave her courage. Altogether it was, if not a perfectly self-assured, at least a very poised-looking little figure that came smiling into Mrs. Hewitt's embrace from the motor, with her lover close behind her, like a bodyguard."You little angel! You look perfect!" said her mother-in-law-elect rapturously. "And you match my lavender grandeur perfectly. That's a sweet frock, Phyllis. Hurry down, girls, you want to have a little time to rest before you have to stand up for years and receive."It was early still when they came down from the dressing-rooms, and no guests had arrived yet. So they settled themselves in the dining-room, informally, to wait and visit a little."One hasnochance for fun with an earnest-minded son," Mrs. Hewitt complained amiably. "This is the first doings of any sort I have ever had that John was even remotely connected with. A nice little daughter that would dance and flirt and turn the house upside down—that was what I was entitled to—and I got a brilliant young physician who specializes on theos innominata, or something equally thrilling! I sometimes wonder how he ever found time to annex you, Joy!"Joy colored. It was a random shaft, but it caught her breath. Then—"He didn't," she said gallantly. "I simply rubbed my ring and wished for him, and he came.""I'll be bound he didn't come hard," said herenfant terribleof a prospective mother-in-law placidly. "Johnny, keep away from those cakes! They're for much, much later, and for your guests, not the likes of you!""They are excellent. We need moral support in our ordeal," returned her son, sauntering up, with his usual dignity unimpaired by a plate of fancy cakes in each hand. "Never mind your cruel mother-in-law, Joy. Take a lot—take two!""I will, anyway," interposed Allan placidly, reaching a long, unexpected brown hand over his friend's shoulder and securing three. "Phyllis and I need as much moral support as anybody.""Phyllis is the only one who is minding her manners," Mrs. Hewitt observed with a firmness that she patently didn't mean in the least. "Phyllis, my dear, go get some of the sandwiches. We may as well lunch thoroughly. We have heaps of time before the 'gesses' get here, anyway."They were all playing like a lot of children. Phyllis, flushed and laughing, raided the kitchen with her husband and came back with more kinds of sandwiches than Joy had known existed. They sat about on cushions on the floor, because the chairs had been taken out for dancing later, and the floor waxed. Joy laughed with the rest, and lunched sumptuously on the cakes the guests ought to have had, and thought for the thousandth time what an ideal mother-in-law was hers at the moment, and how many of the people in the world were the realest of real folks, and how much like Christmas every-day life was getting to be..."I see you are eating up everything before the really deserving poor arrive," said a slow, coolly amused voice behind Joy, who sat with her back to the entrance.Joy did not need Mrs. Hewitt's equally calm "Good-evening, Gail. Since when have you been deserving?" to know who had entered."Came to help you receive," stated Gail further, still indolently, bringing herself further into the circle as she spoke, where Joy could see her. "I brought a stray cousin along—sex, male. I knew you wouldn't care—men are a godsend in New England towns. Here he is."The cousin in question was evidently motioned to, for he appeared in the range of Joy's vision with a charming certainty of welcome, and the two merged themselves with the circle without more ceremony. They had evidently made their way to the dressing-rooms before coming to hunt for the family.While Gail introduced her cousin a little more thoroughly, Joy gave her a furtive, but still more thorough, inspection. She seemed twenty-five or six. She was very slim, with lines like a boy more than a girl; sallow, with large, steady blue-gray eyes and heavy lashes, and lips that were so full that they were sullen-looking when her face was still. She was not unusually pretty—indeed, by Phyllis' rose-and-golden beauty she looked dingy—but she had something arresting about her, and the carriage and manner of a girl who is insolently certain that whatever she says or does is perfect because she does it. She had on a straight blue chiffon frock, cut unusually low: so low that it was continually slipping off one thin shoulder. Allan confided to Joy afterward that Gail's shoulder-straps worried him to madness.Joy watched Miss Maddox with fascinated eyes. "I'm soyoung!" she thought forlornly, "and all the rest of them are so dreadfully grown-up!"She felt as if Gail Maddox, with her brilliant, careless sentences, and her half-insolent confidence, owned everybody there much more thanshedid: and she felt little and underdressed and outclassed to a point where even Gail might pity her, and probably did.... And if there is a more abjectly awful feeling than that the Other Girl pities you, nobody has discovered it yet.... Gail might even know how much of a pretender she was. If John—but no. John wasn't like that. He was—"fantastically honorable," she had heard Phyllis call it. John hadn't told—he wouldn't tell if his own happiness depended on it.... And Joy let her thoughts stray off into a maze of wondering as to whether she would rather have her self-respect saved by not having Gail know, or whether, if it would break John's heart to be separated forever from Gail, she oughtn't to tell him to tell.Gail, lounging in a low chair she had dragged across the waxed floor in the face of all outcries, with one electric-blue-shod foot stretched out before her, looked exactly the person you'd care least to have know anything they could scorn you about. She could scorn so well and so convincingly, Joy felt, listening to her. There wouldn't be a thing left of you when she got through."I feel as alone as Robinson Crusoe," thought Joy forlornly.She rose restlessly and picked up the tray which had borne their illegal sandwiches, with the idea of carrying it and herself out of sight. She wanted a minute to brace herself in.As she did it, Allan rose, too, unexpectedly, as he did most things. "Here, I'll take some of those," he offered, and helped her carry the debris out.They set down their burdens on a pantry table, whence three scandalized maids whisked them somewhere else again, gazing the while reproachfully at the invaders."I haven't any use for that girl," stated Allan plainly, as they went back. "Don't let her fuss you, Joy."Joy looked gratefully up at him. The whole world, then, didn't prefer Gail Maddox to her!"She makes me feel exactly like a small dog that has stolen a bone and got caught," Joy acknowledged directly, with a little shamefaced laugh."She'll do her best in that line," responded Allan, who seemed to have no great affection for the lady. "Don't let her bother you. He's your bone—hang on to him. In short, sic 'em!"They both laughed, and Joy came back with her bronze head high and an access of fresh courage. She sat down this time between John and the cousin, whose name she had not heard. But she began talking hard to him. Occasionally she tossed John, fenced in beside her, a cheerful word. He seemed perfectly satisfied at first, but the cousin did not. He wanted Joy all to himself, it appeared, and a fiancé more or less seemed to have no bearing on the case, as far as he was concerned.Presently John woke up to this fact and began the effort to repossess himself of his lawful property. Joy cast a mischievous glance at Allan, sitting on the arm of his wife's chair (chairs had become the order of the day), and Allan grinned happily, by some means telegraphing the situation to Phyllis. Every one was happy except John, and perhaps Gail, who presently eyed the three and used her usual weapon of lazy frankness."It makes me furious to see both of you making violent love to Joy Havenith," she said indolently. "Clarence, go start the victrola, my good man. This must be put a stop to."Clarence lifted himself from the floor by Joy, but he calmly took her hand along with him, and raised her, too."She's going to christen the floor with me," he informed his cousin. "Come on, Miss Joy!"The isolation that ordinarily doth hedge an engaged girl, where men are concerned, seemed to trouble Clarence not at all. He was, by the way, in spite of the fact that he would some day be too stout, one of the best-looking men who ever lived. He had a good deal of his cousin's lazy assurance—in him it sometimes verged on impudence, but never beyond the getting-away-with point—and a heavenly smile. His other name was, unbelievably, Rutherford, which almost took the curse off the Clarence, as he said, but not quite. And if he had gone into the movies he would have made millions, beyond a doubt.He drew Joy across the floor with him, in her green-and-silver draperies, and began to wind the victrola, which had been tucked into a nook where Mrs. Hewitt had vainly hoped it would be quite hidden. There was to be an orchestra afterwards for the authorized dancing.Clarence put on "Poor Butterfly," and encircling Joy proceeded to dance away with her."But I don't know how to dance," she gasped as she felt herself being drawn smoothly across the floor."That doesn't matter, Sorcerette, dear," said Clarence blandly. "Just let go—be clay in the hands of the potter. I'll do the dancing for two. Hear me?"Joy did as she was told, and—marvel of marvels!—found herself following him easily. She was really dancing!"But why did you call me that?" she demanded, like a child, as she got her breath. To her apprehensive mind the name sounded as if Gail had not only learned her dark secret but had passed it on to her dear Cousin Clarence."Because you look it," said he promptly, in a voice that softened from word to word. "...Harrington is a good dancer, isn't he? Phyllis looks all right, but I fancy she guides hard. Those tall women often do.... Why, anybody with brows and lashes like yours, and hair that color, combined with that angelic please-guide-me-through-a-hard-world expression simply shrieks aloud for a name like that. A sorcerette is a cross between a seraph and a little witch. There's no telling what she might do to you!""Oh!" cooed Joy.It sounded like a very happy "Oh," and Clarence, experienced love-pirate though he was, hadn't a way in the world of knowing that Joy's pleasure came of being still undiscovered, not of his winning ways.She danced on with him to the very last note of the record, enraptured to find that she really could dance, and came back to the end of the room where Mrs. Hewitt still sat; her eyes starry with delight."Oh, I can dance when I just go where the man takes me!" she cried. "I never knew I could!""You dance very well," said John's quiet voice from behind his mother's chair. "Will you dance with me now?"Joy, regarding him, saw that he was vexed. Most people would not have noticed it, but very few of his moods escaped Joy. He was a little graver than usual, and his voice was quieter."If I can," she answered. "I thought you were dancing this with Miss Maddox.""I didn't think it would show proper courtesy to my fiancée to dance first with some one else," John answered.Clarence had set the music going again, and was swinging round the room with Gail. As it began, John, with no more words, drew Joy out on the floor with him.She looked up in surprise at his words."Why—why, I didn't know I was that much of a fiancée to you. I thought probably you'd rather be with Gail. And—and I didn't know I was going to dance anyway. I didn't know I could!"He looked down at her again, apparently to see whether she was in earnest, holding her off for a moment as they danced.She hoped he would deny that he preferred being with Gail, but he did not."We are going through our month of relationshipright," he told her definitely, smiling, but looking down at her with the steady, steel-colored light in his gray eyes that she knew meant "no appeal." "Gail does not enter into it at all. But I admit that Rutherford's quickness put me in the wrong.""If only," thought Joy, acutely conscious of his firm hold, "instead of laying down the law that way, he would let go and admit that he was angry!" For he certainly was, and it wasn't at all her fault, unless going where Clarence took her was a crime. Johnhadn'tthought of dancing first. Was he the kind of person who always thought he was right even when he knew he wasn't? If so, maybe a monthwaslong enough.... But the thought of the end of the month hurt, no matter how unreasonable she tried to think John, and she threw down her arms—the only way, if she had known, to make John throw down his."Are you angry at me?" she half whispered. "I—please don't be angry. Nobody ever was, and I don't want to be silly, but I don't believe I could stand it."He swept her rhythmically on, but she could feel his arm relax and hold her more warmly, and his wonderful gray eyes softened again as they looked into hers."Poor little thing! I keep forgetting that you're just a child. Sometimes you aren't, you know.""No, sometimes I'm not," Joy echoed. Then she laughed up at him impishly. "You say this thing is going to be done right?" she mocked. "Very well, then, when Mr. Rutherford is nice to me you ought to be nicer. When he sits down close to me and tells me I'm a sorcerette—""A what?" demanded John swiftly. "See here, Joy, I'm practically in charge of you, and you're very young, you know, and can't be expected to know much about men. Rutherford is attractive and all that, but he's a man I wouldn't trust the other side of a biscuit. Any man can tell you that. Allan—""He talks just like a poet," said Joy innocently. How could John know that this was an insult, not a compliment, in Joy's mind? She had seen any amount of Clarences—ignoring her, to be sure, but still saying Clarence things to others in her hearing—all her days."That may be," said John. "I'm no judge of poets, and I suppose you are.... See here, Joy, there's an inhabitant—two of 'em—coming in the doorway. Mother'll be wanting you to stand in a silly line and pass people along to her, or away from her, or something. Come here with me and we'll finish this. You're getting a wrong impression of what I mean."Joy found herself being steered masterfully into a little semi-dark room that opened off the long parlor. John planted her in a low chair in a corner and pulled up a stool for himself just opposite."They won't find us for at least ten minutes, unless we wigwag. Now—what's a sorcerette?"His tone, in spite of his carelessness, betrayed a certain anxiety to learn. Joy answered him with fullness and simplicity."A sorcerette is somebody with coloring like mine, and a cross between a seraph and a little witch," she replied innocently. "That's what Clarence said. But Ithinkhe made up the name himself," she added conscientiously, as if that would be some help.John grinned a little in spite of himself."I don't like the idea particularly of his making the name up himself," he remarked; "but there is something in what Rutherford said!""I'm very glad you think so," said Joy with a transparent meekness. "And now that you've found out, isn't it time you went back to your duties?"He looked at her doubtfully, where she sat in the half-light with her head held high and her hands crossed on her green-and-silver lap. He could not quite make out her expression.But he had not much more chance for cross-questioning, because guests were beginning to come thickly, and his mother was sending out agonized scouting parties for the feature of the evening.Phyllis, knowing the rooms of old, discovered her. She swooped down on the pair, where they were sitting in the little dim room."You wretched people, this is no time for that sort of thing!" she exclaimed, shoving them before her. "Please try to remember that you will, in all likelihood, spend a lifetime together. Joy, three severe New England spinsters have already taken Gail Maddox for you. Hurry!"The suggestion was quite enough, as Phyllis may have known it would be. Joy whisked into her place, which was opposite the double doors, between Mrs. Hewitt and Phyllis, and taking her burden of white chrysanthemums on one arm, proceeded to be as charming to her future patients-in-law as she knew how.Mrs. Hewitt and Phyllis cast glances of astonished admiration at each other over her head. They neither of them had thought of Joy as anything but a sweet child, or an affectionate child—a darling, but shy and unused to the world. But she was managing her share of the evening's pageant as if she had run a salon for twenty years. It did not occur to them that the explanation was that she practically had been brought up in one. She had been a part of the bi-weekly receptions given to the small and great of the earth by Havenith the poet ever since she was old enough to come into the parlors and could be trusted not to cry or snatch cake."Good gracious, Joy,wheredid you learn to drive people four-in-hand this way?" breathed Phyllis admiringly, in a lull. "Iknow, if I'd had to talk to two Miss Peabodys and three Miss Brearleys and a stray Jonesallat once, at least five of them would have hated me forever after. And you kept them going like a juggler's balls!""They're not half as hard as the people at Grandfather's afternoons," answered Joy. "He had almost every kind of person—everybody wanted to see him, you know, and he felt it his duty to gratify as many as he could, he said. Oh, Phyllis,tenBrearleys and Peabodys are nothing to trying to make three Celtic poets and a vers-librist talk pleasantly to each other!""You're a darling," said Phyllis irrelevantly."I see you've been working virtuously hard," put in Gail pleasantly, sauntering up. "Now,Igave up being noble-hearted to the uninteresting some time ago. There's very little in it. I collected a suitor or so early in the evening, and we've been telling each other what we really thought of all the worst guests, in the little room off. You ought to hear John's description of—""She shan't—it's not for your young ears," said Clarence possessively from where he stood, a little behind Gail. Gail had three men with her—Clarence, John, and a slim youth who looked younger than he proved to be, and who answered to the name of Tiddy.All Joy's feelings of triumph and innocent satisfaction in having won the liking of Mrs. Hewitt's guests faded. She felt as Gail had made her feel before—foolishly good and ridiculously young and altogether unsuccessful in life. For a moment the mood held her in a very crushed state of mind: then she caught Clarence's eyes fixed upon her with a look of amused admiration. It spurred her."I've been doing my duty by my future lord and master," she said lightly. "But now you put it that way, he doesn't sound like a worthy cause a bit."The men laughed, though Joy's words hadn't sounded particularly witty to herself. "I'm going to abjure duty now," she went on hurriedly. "The orchestra's playing that thing people can dance me to——"She held her hand and arm gracefully high, in the old minuet pose, and laughed up at Clarence.Hewasn't supposed to be her lover, and yet he saw through Gail when John didn't——"By Jove, I can do the minuet!" he said eagerly. "Can you, Miss Joy?"She smiled and nodded."Grandma told me all about it,Taught me so I could not doubt it,"she sang softly."We'll do it—we'll do it for the happy villagers!" proclaimed Clarence."Here, Tiddy, go cut a girl out of the herd, and find Harrington, too. We're the bell-cows. All you others have to do is to obediently follow us—the men follow me and the women tag around after Miss Joy—which last seems wrong, but can't be helped.""Not at all," said John amiably. "Far be it from me to seem to steal your thunder, Rutherford, but I, too, was in the village pageant last year, and I minuet excellently. All my grateful patients said so. You know, if you led off, they might take you for the man who's going to marry Miss Havenith."Clarence couldn't very well do or say anything to his host, but he looked far from pleased as John took Joy's hand and quietly led her into line. Tiddy came up just then with a pretty, dark little girl whom he had selected with great judgment from the guests as being just of a height between Joy and Gail. He had also enlisted the orchestra, for it began to play "La Cinquantaine" as they all took their places facing each other. They were all laughing, even Clarence. The guests, catching the spirit of the thing, began to laugh and applaud, and—it seemed like magic that it could be done so swiftly—formed two more sets in the rest of the room, while the elders, against the wall, watched approvingly."I thought nobody but me danced minuets any more," Joy whispered to John as, her eyes alight with happiness, she crossed him in the changes of the lovely old dance."There happened to be a historical pageant here last summer," he explained to her, "and there were eight minuet sets in the Revolutionary episode, so we had to learn. Mother hounded me into it. I'm glad now she did.""Why?" inquired Joy innocently the next time she met him."I like to maintain my rights," he answered with a little gleam of fun in his eyes.But Joy felt fairly certain that the gleam of fun had behind it a gleam of decision. Certainly John's motto was, "What's mine's mine!"—even when it was rented.They finished to applause, and as the orchestra ended its minuet it slid on into a modern dance, and so did each of the couples, dancing on out on the floor.Joy sank down at the end of the waltz on a seat by the wall, with John beside her.He bent over her."Having a good time, kiddie?" he asked her gently. She nodded, her eyes like stars."Oh, I'mpeople, at last!" she said with a soft exultance. "I've always looked on and looked on, like a doll or a mechanical figure—and I'm real—I'm in the midst of things! And it's all you and the wishing ring! ... John, did you see? Your people—they really liked me!""Of course they did, you little goosie," he told her, smiling down at her. "You have more personal charm than almost any girl I ever knew. I don't know any one who doesn't like you.""Gail doesn't," Joy ventured.John shook his head."You don't understand Gail," he said. "She's a mighty brilliant girl. She doesn't often like other girls, I admit that—but she took to you. I could see it.""Could you?" flashed Joy. "Men see so much! ... She's beckoning to you."She flung her head back angrily. Nobody likes to be told she doesn't understand another girl—and the fact that the girl is mighty brilliant doesn't make you feel better about it."I'll be back in just a moment," said John obliviously, and went with what seemed to Joy unnecessary docility.She stood there alone, her hands clasped hard, her head up—to all appearance a vivid, triumphant little figure. Her heart was beating like mad and her cheeks burnt. She had just found out something about herself, something that a wiser, older woman would have known a long time ago: as long ago as when the Wishing Ring Man stood, the light glinting on his fair hair and sturdy shoulders, in the opening of Grandfather's hall door.She was in love with John—furiously, wildly, heart-breakingly in love with him. And she was going to have to live close by him for a month, knowing that, and keeping him from knowing it—and then go away from him and never see him any more."This is our dance, Sorcerette," said Clarence's voice in her ear.CHAPTER EIGHTA FOUNTAIN IN FAIRYLANDJoy had supposed, when she finally went to sleep at three in the morning, that she would waken with all the excitement gone and feeling very unhappy. She had always heard that it made you unhappy to be in love.Instead, she opened her eyes with the excitement of it all still pulsing through her. The fact that John was in the world and she could care for him seemed almost enough to account for the sense of happiness that possessed her as she pattered over to the window and looked out. And what little more was needed to account for her exhilaration could be found in the wonderful September morning outside. There probablyweretroubles somewhere or other, such as darkened city parlors, minor poets, and sophisticated seekers after John, but somehow she and they didn't connect. The air was so tingling and sunny, and the garden was so beautiful, and being young and free and in the country was so heavenly that she dressed and ran down, and sang along the garden paths as she picked herself a big bunch of golden chrysanthemums and purple and pink asters.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 waslovely!... 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!Youate 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 justlovelittle 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, Ihaveto 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, "menaresuch 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,nothingyou 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 unhappyIwould 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 somebodywouldtake 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, MissAddison!" 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."Awheelbarrow!" 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, whatdoyou 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 awheelbarrow!"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 justfoughtit, 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 settlesthat!""Well, have some more tea, anyway, now the worst is over," said her hostess hospitably.... "Awheelbarrow!"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!""Whereishe?" 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 Allanwillsay?"
CHAPTER SEVENA VERY CHARMING GENTLEMAN"You look lovely," said Phyllis heartily. She herself was radiant in a rose satin that made her look, as her small son remarked ecstatically, like a valentine. "Mustn't it be horrid to be a man and always wear the same black clothes?""M'yes," answered Joy absent-mindedly. "If I look as nice as you do I don't have to worry. But—but will Gail Maddox be very much dressed?""She will," replied Phyllis decisively. "If I know Gail, she'll look like a Christmas tree. But don't let that weigh on your mind, dear child. Nobody could look better than you do, if Viola and I did combine two of your frocks into one. Could they, Viola?"The colored girl, who had been doing the masses of Joy's bronze hair while her mistress, kneeling by the dressing-table, put the finishing touches to some frock-draperies, giggled."Well dressed? Why, Miss Joy looks like the vampire in the movie show!""Final praise!" sighed Phyllis. "You never told me I was as well dressed as a vampire, Viola.""You couldn't live up to vampiring, nohow, Mrs. Harrington, nor you shouldn't want to, not with that goldy hair of yours," said Viola reprovingly."Virtue is thrust upon me, in other words," said Phyllis. "Evidently you have possibilities of crime, Joy!"They went down, laughing, to where Allan and John were waiting for them, Allan walking the floor in his usual quick, boyish fashion, John sitting at a table reading, by way of economizing time. Being a doctor, he had a way of snapping up odds and ends of time and doing things with them.He looked up from his paper as Joy's light footsteps pattered down the stairs, and continued to look at her. The green and silver of her gown glittered and flowed around her. Viola had done her hair high, and the wealth of it showed more, even, than when it was down in its accustomed braids. Her surprising black brows and lashes, with the innocence of her blue eyes, and the half-wistful, half-daring expression she had, made her seem a combination of sophistication and childishness such as John had never seen before."Shall I do you credit?" she asked him softly over her shoulder, as he held her wrap for her.Her heart beat hard as she said it. She felt as if she was going into open battle, and she wanted all the heartening she could get."Tell me now that you like me better than you do Gail Maddox!" was what she wanted to say. But she knew she couldn't, not without being thought a cat. "I can't get over finding motors scattered all over everything!" was what she heard herself saying inconsequently instead as they went out. She did not dare give him time to answer her first impulsive question.But he answered it just the same."You do me great credit, my dear. I never knew you were quite so beautiful." He said it gravely, but none the less sincerely. "It's very pleasant to remember that I have property rights to such a charming person."Property rights! Joy's heart gave a little warm jump. If he could say that—if he could even seem to forget that she was only rented, so to speak...Before she thought she had reached up and caught his hand in a warm, furtive grasp for a moment. She took it away again directly, but it had comforted her to touch him. He was so strong and sothere.... Also, Viola's words comforted her; if she looked like a vampire, why, maybe, with the aid of the wishing ring and Aunt Lucilla's ghost, she could live up to it. Having her hair done as high and her dress cut as low as anybody's also gave her courage. Altogether it was, if not a perfectly self-assured, at least a very poised-looking little figure that came smiling into Mrs. Hewitt's embrace from the motor, with her lover close behind her, like a bodyguard."You little angel! You look perfect!" said her mother-in-law-elect rapturously. "And you match my lavender grandeur perfectly. That's a sweet frock, Phyllis. Hurry down, girls, you want to have a little time to rest before you have to stand up for years and receive."It was early still when they came down from the dressing-rooms, and no guests had arrived yet. So they settled themselves in the dining-room, informally, to wait and visit a little."One hasnochance for fun with an earnest-minded son," Mrs. Hewitt complained amiably. "This is the first doings of any sort I have ever had that John was even remotely connected with. A nice little daughter that would dance and flirt and turn the house upside down—that was what I was entitled to—and I got a brilliant young physician who specializes on theos innominata, or something equally thrilling! I sometimes wonder how he ever found time to annex you, Joy!"Joy colored. It was a random shaft, but it caught her breath. Then—"He didn't," she said gallantly. "I simply rubbed my ring and wished for him, and he came.""I'll be bound he didn't come hard," said herenfant terribleof a prospective mother-in-law placidly. "Johnny, keep away from those cakes! They're for much, much later, and for your guests, not the likes of you!""They are excellent. We need moral support in our ordeal," returned her son, sauntering up, with his usual dignity unimpaired by a plate of fancy cakes in each hand. "Never mind your cruel mother-in-law, Joy. Take a lot—take two!""I will, anyway," interposed Allan placidly, reaching a long, unexpected brown hand over his friend's shoulder and securing three. "Phyllis and I need as much moral support as anybody.""Phyllis is the only one who is minding her manners," Mrs. Hewitt observed with a firmness that she patently didn't mean in the least. "Phyllis, my dear, go get some of the sandwiches. We may as well lunch thoroughly. We have heaps of time before the 'gesses' get here, anyway."They were all playing like a lot of children. Phyllis, flushed and laughing, raided the kitchen with her husband and came back with more kinds of sandwiches than Joy had known existed. They sat about on cushions on the floor, because the chairs had been taken out for dancing later, and the floor waxed. Joy laughed with the rest, and lunched sumptuously on the cakes the guests ought to have had, and thought for the thousandth time what an ideal mother-in-law was hers at the moment, and how many of the people in the world were the realest of real folks, and how much like Christmas every-day life was getting to be..."I see you are eating up everything before the really deserving poor arrive," said a slow, coolly amused voice behind Joy, who sat with her back to the entrance.Joy did not need Mrs. Hewitt's equally calm "Good-evening, Gail. Since when have you been deserving?" to know who had entered."Came to help you receive," stated Gail further, still indolently, bringing herself further into the circle as she spoke, where Joy could see her. "I brought a stray cousin along—sex, male. I knew you wouldn't care—men are a godsend in New England towns. Here he is."The cousin in question was evidently motioned to, for he appeared in the range of Joy's vision with a charming certainty of welcome, and the two merged themselves with the circle without more ceremony. They had evidently made their way to the dressing-rooms before coming to hunt for the family.While Gail introduced her cousin a little more thoroughly, Joy gave her a furtive, but still more thorough, inspection. She seemed twenty-five or six. She was very slim, with lines like a boy more than a girl; sallow, with large, steady blue-gray eyes and heavy lashes, and lips that were so full that they were sullen-looking when her face was still. She was not unusually pretty—indeed, by Phyllis' rose-and-golden beauty she looked dingy—but she had something arresting about her, and the carriage and manner of a girl who is insolently certain that whatever she says or does is perfect because she does it. She had on a straight blue chiffon frock, cut unusually low: so low that it was continually slipping off one thin shoulder. Allan confided to Joy afterward that Gail's shoulder-straps worried him to madness.Joy watched Miss Maddox with fascinated eyes. "I'm soyoung!" she thought forlornly, "and all the rest of them are so dreadfully grown-up!"She felt as if Gail Maddox, with her brilliant, careless sentences, and her half-insolent confidence, owned everybody there much more thanshedid: and she felt little and underdressed and outclassed to a point where even Gail might pity her, and probably did.... And if there is a more abjectly awful feeling than that the Other Girl pities you, nobody has discovered it yet.... Gail might even know how much of a pretender she was. If John—but no. John wasn't like that. He was—"fantastically honorable," she had heard Phyllis call it. John hadn't told—he wouldn't tell if his own happiness depended on it.... And Joy let her thoughts stray off into a maze of wondering as to whether she would rather have her self-respect saved by not having Gail know, or whether, if it would break John's heart to be separated forever from Gail, she oughtn't to tell him to tell.Gail, lounging in a low chair she had dragged across the waxed floor in the face of all outcries, with one electric-blue-shod foot stretched out before her, looked exactly the person you'd care least to have know anything they could scorn you about. She could scorn so well and so convincingly, Joy felt, listening to her. There wouldn't be a thing left of you when she got through."I feel as alone as Robinson Crusoe," thought Joy forlornly.She rose restlessly and picked up the tray which had borne their illegal sandwiches, with the idea of carrying it and herself out of sight. She wanted a minute to brace herself in.As she did it, Allan rose, too, unexpectedly, as he did most things. "Here, I'll take some of those," he offered, and helped her carry the debris out.They set down their burdens on a pantry table, whence three scandalized maids whisked them somewhere else again, gazing the while reproachfully at the invaders."I haven't any use for that girl," stated Allan plainly, as they went back. "Don't let her fuss you, Joy."Joy looked gratefully up at him. The whole world, then, didn't prefer Gail Maddox to her!"She makes me feel exactly like a small dog that has stolen a bone and got caught," Joy acknowledged directly, with a little shamefaced laugh."She'll do her best in that line," responded Allan, who seemed to have no great affection for the lady. "Don't let her bother you. He's your bone—hang on to him. In short, sic 'em!"They both laughed, and Joy came back with her bronze head high and an access of fresh courage. She sat down this time between John and the cousin, whose name she had not heard. But she began talking hard to him. Occasionally she tossed John, fenced in beside her, a cheerful word. He seemed perfectly satisfied at first, but the cousin did not. He wanted Joy all to himself, it appeared, and a fiancé more or less seemed to have no bearing on the case, as far as he was concerned.Presently John woke up to this fact and began the effort to repossess himself of his lawful property. Joy cast a mischievous glance at Allan, sitting on the arm of his wife's chair (chairs had become the order of the day), and Allan grinned happily, by some means telegraphing the situation to Phyllis. Every one was happy except John, and perhaps Gail, who presently eyed the three and used her usual weapon of lazy frankness."It makes me furious to see both of you making violent love to Joy Havenith," she said indolently. "Clarence, go start the victrola, my good man. This must be put a stop to."Clarence lifted himself from the floor by Joy, but he calmly took her hand along with him, and raised her, too."She's going to christen the floor with me," he informed his cousin. "Come on, Miss Joy!"The isolation that ordinarily doth hedge an engaged girl, where men are concerned, seemed to trouble Clarence not at all. He was, by the way, in spite of the fact that he would some day be too stout, one of the best-looking men who ever lived. He had a good deal of his cousin's lazy assurance—in him it sometimes verged on impudence, but never beyond the getting-away-with point—and a heavenly smile. His other name was, unbelievably, Rutherford, which almost took the curse off the Clarence, as he said, but not quite. And if he had gone into the movies he would have made millions, beyond a doubt.He drew Joy across the floor with him, in her green-and-silver draperies, and began to wind the victrola, which had been tucked into a nook where Mrs. Hewitt had vainly hoped it would be quite hidden. There was to be an orchestra afterwards for the authorized dancing.Clarence put on "Poor Butterfly," and encircling Joy proceeded to dance away with her."But I don't know how to dance," she gasped as she felt herself being drawn smoothly across the floor."That doesn't matter, Sorcerette, dear," said Clarence blandly. "Just let go—be clay in the hands of the potter. I'll do the dancing for two. Hear me?"Joy did as she was told, and—marvel of marvels!—found herself following him easily. She was really dancing!"But why did you call me that?" she demanded, like a child, as she got her breath. To her apprehensive mind the name sounded as if Gail had not only learned her dark secret but had passed it on to her dear Cousin Clarence."Because you look it," said he promptly, in a voice that softened from word to word. "...Harrington is a good dancer, isn't he? Phyllis looks all right, but I fancy she guides hard. Those tall women often do.... Why, anybody with brows and lashes like yours, and hair that color, combined with that angelic please-guide-me-through-a-hard-world expression simply shrieks aloud for a name like that. A sorcerette is a cross between a seraph and a little witch. There's no telling what she might do to you!""Oh!" cooed Joy.It sounded like a very happy "Oh," and Clarence, experienced love-pirate though he was, hadn't a way in the world of knowing that Joy's pleasure came of being still undiscovered, not of his winning ways.She danced on with him to the very last note of the record, enraptured to find that she really could dance, and came back to the end of the room where Mrs. Hewitt still sat; her eyes starry with delight."Oh, I can dance when I just go where the man takes me!" she cried. "I never knew I could!""You dance very well," said John's quiet voice from behind his mother's chair. "Will you dance with me now?"Joy, regarding him, saw that he was vexed. Most people would not have noticed it, but very few of his moods escaped Joy. He was a little graver than usual, and his voice was quieter."If I can," she answered. "I thought you were dancing this with Miss Maddox.""I didn't think it would show proper courtesy to my fiancée to dance first with some one else," John answered.Clarence had set the music going again, and was swinging round the room with Gail. As it began, John, with no more words, drew Joy out on the floor with him.She looked up in surprise at his words."Why—why, I didn't know I was that much of a fiancée to you. I thought probably you'd rather be with Gail. And—and I didn't know I was going to dance anyway. I didn't know I could!"He looked down at her again, apparently to see whether she was in earnest, holding her off for a moment as they danced.She hoped he would deny that he preferred being with Gail, but he did not."We are going through our month of relationshipright," he told her definitely, smiling, but looking down at her with the steady, steel-colored light in his gray eyes that she knew meant "no appeal." "Gail does not enter into it at all. But I admit that Rutherford's quickness put me in the wrong.""If only," thought Joy, acutely conscious of his firm hold, "instead of laying down the law that way, he would let go and admit that he was angry!" For he certainly was, and it wasn't at all her fault, unless going where Clarence took her was a crime. Johnhadn'tthought of dancing first. Was he the kind of person who always thought he was right even when he knew he wasn't? If so, maybe a monthwaslong enough.... But the thought of the end of the month hurt, no matter how unreasonable she tried to think John, and she threw down her arms—the only way, if she had known, to make John throw down his."Are you angry at me?" she half whispered. "I—please don't be angry. Nobody ever was, and I don't want to be silly, but I don't believe I could stand it."He swept her rhythmically on, but she could feel his arm relax and hold her more warmly, and his wonderful gray eyes softened again as they looked into hers."Poor little thing! I keep forgetting that you're just a child. Sometimes you aren't, you know.""No, sometimes I'm not," Joy echoed. Then she laughed up at him impishly. "You say this thing is going to be done right?" she mocked. "Very well, then, when Mr. Rutherford is nice to me you ought to be nicer. When he sits down close to me and tells me I'm a sorcerette—""A what?" demanded John swiftly. "See here, Joy, I'm practically in charge of you, and you're very young, you know, and can't be expected to know much about men. Rutherford is attractive and all that, but he's a man I wouldn't trust the other side of a biscuit. Any man can tell you that. Allan—""He talks just like a poet," said Joy innocently. How could John know that this was an insult, not a compliment, in Joy's mind? She had seen any amount of Clarences—ignoring her, to be sure, but still saying Clarence things to others in her hearing—all her days."That may be," said John. "I'm no judge of poets, and I suppose you are.... See here, Joy, there's an inhabitant—two of 'em—coming in the doorway. Mother'll be wanting you to stand in a silly line and pass people along to her, or away from her, or something. Come here with me and we'll finish this. You're getting a wrong impression of what I mean."Joy found herself being steered masterfully into a little semi-dark room that opened off the long parlor. John planted her in a low chair in a corner and pulled up a stool for himself just opposite."They won't find us for at least ten minutes, unless we wigwag. Now—what's a sorcerette?"His tone, in spite of his carelessness, betrayed a certain anxiety to learn. Joy answered him with fullness and simplicity."A sorcerette is somebody with coloring like mine, and a cross between a seraph and a little witch," she replied innocently. "That's what Clarence said. But Ithinkhe made up the name himself," she added conscientiously, as if that would be some help.John grinned a little in spite of himself."I don't like the idea particularly of his making the name up himself," he remarked; "but there is something in what Rutherford said!""I'm very glad you think so," said Joy with a transparent meekness. "And now that you've found out, isn't it time you went back to your duties?"He looked at her doubtfully, where she sat in the half-light with her head held high and her hands crossed on her green-and-silver lap. He could not quite make out her expression.But he had not much more chance for cross-questioning, because guests were beginning to come thickly, and his mother was sending out agonized scouting parties for the feature of the evening.Phyllis, knowing the rooms of old, discovered her. She swooped down on the pair, where they were sitting in the little dim room."You wretched people, this is no time for that sort of thing!" she exclaimed, shoving them before her. "Please try to remember that you will, in all likelihood, spend a lifetime together. Joy, three severe New England spinsters have already taken Gail Maddox for you. Hurry!"The suggestion was quite enough, as Phyllis may have known it would be. Joy whisked into her place, which was opposite the double doors, between Mrs. Hewitt and Phyllis, and taking her burden of white chrysanthemums on one arm, proceeded to be as charming to her future patients-in-law as she knew how.Mrs. Hewitt and Phyllis cast glances of astonished admiration at each other over her head. They neither of them had thought of Joy as anything but a sweet child, or an affectionate child—a darling, but shy and unused to the world. But she was managing her share of the evening's pageant as if she had run a salon for twenty years. It did not occur to them that the explanation was that she practically had been brought up in one. She had been a part of the bi-weekly receptions given to the small and great of the earth by Havenith the poet ever since she was old enough to come into the parlors and could be trusted not to cry or snatch cake."Good gracious, Joy,wheredid you learn to drive people four-in-hand this way?" breathed Phyllis admiringly, in a lull. "Iknow, if I'd had to talk to two Miss Peabodys and three Miss Brearleys and a stray Jonesallat once, at least five of them would have hated me forever after. And you kept them going like a juggler's balls!""They're not half as hard as the people at Grandfather's afternoons," answered Joy. "He had almost every kind of person—everybody wanted to see him, you know, and he felt it his duty to gratify as many as he could, he said. Oh, Phyllis,tenBrearleys and Peabodys are nothing to trying to make three Celtic poets and a vers-librist talk pleasantly to each other!""You're a darling," said Phyllis irrelevantly."I see you've been working virtuously hard," put in Gail pleasantly, sauntering up. "Now,Igave up being noble-hearted to the uninteresting some time ago. There's very little in it. I collected a suitor or so early in the evening, and we've been telling each other what we really thought of all the worst guests, in the little room off. You ought to hear John's description of—""She shan't—it's not for your young ears," said Clarence possessively from where he stood, a little behind Gail. Gail had three men with her—Clarence, John, and a slim youth who looked younger than he proved to be, and who answered to the name of Tiddy.All Joy's feelings of triumph and innocent satisfaction in having won the liking of Mrs. Hewitt's guests faded. She felt as Gail had made her feel before—foolishly good and ridiculously young and altogether unsuccessful in life. For a moment the mood held her in a very crushed state of mind: then she caught Clarence's eyes fixed upon her with a look of amused admiration. It spurred her."I've been doing my duty by my future lord and master," she said lightly. "But now you put it that way, he doesn't sound like a worthy cause a bit."The men laughed, though Joy's words hadn't sounded particularly witty to herself. "I'm going to abjure duty now," she went on hurriedly. "The orchestra's playing that thing people can dance me to——"She held her hand and arm gracefully high, in the old minuet pose, and laughed up at Clarence.Hewasn't supposed to be her lover, and yet he saw through Gail when John didn't——"By Jove, I can do the minuet!" he said eagerly. "Can you, Miss Joy?"She smiled and nodded."Grandma told me all about it,Taught me so I could not doubt it,"she sang softly."We'll do it—we'll do it for the happy villagers!" proclaimed Clarence."Here, Tiddy, go cut a girl out of the herd, and find Harrington, too. We're the bell-cows. All you others have to do is to obediently follow us—the men follow me and the women tag around after Miss Joy—which last seems wrong, but can't be helped.""Not at all," said John amiably. "Far be it from me to seem to steal your thunder, Rutherford, but I, too, was in the village pageant last year, and I minuet excellently. All my grateful patients said so. You know, if you led off, they might take you for the man who's going to marry Miss Havenith."Clarence couldn't very well do or say anything to his host, but he looked far from pleased as John took Joy's hand and quietly led her into line. Tiddy came up just then with a pretty, dark little girl whom he had selected with great judgment from the guests as being just of a height between Joy and Gail. He had also enlisted the orchestra, for it began to play "La Cinquantaine" as they all took their places facing each other. They were all laughing, even Clarence. The guests, catching the spirit of the thing, began to laugh and applaud, and—it seemed like magic that it could be done so swiftly—formed two more sets in the rest of the room, while the elders, against the wall, watched approvingly."I thought nobody but me danced minuets any more," Joy whispered to John as, her eyes alight with happiness, she crossed him in the changes of the lovely old dance."There happened to be a historical pageant here last summer," he explained to her, "and there were eight minuet sets in the Revolutionary episode, so we had to learn. Mother hounded me into it. I'm glad now she did.""Why?" inquired Joy innocently the next time she met him."I like to maintain my rights," he answered with a little gleam of fun in his eyes.But Joy felt fairly certain that the gleam of fun had behind it a gleam of decision. Certainly John's motto was, "What's mine's mine!"—even when it was rented.They finished to applause, and as the orchestra ended its minuet it slid on into a modern dance, and so did each of the couples, dancing on out on the floor.Joy sank down at the end of the waltz on a seat by the wall, with John beside her.He bent over her."Having a good time, kiddie?" he asked her gently. She nodded, her eyes like stars."Oh, I'mpeople, at last!" she said with a soft exultance. "I've always looked on and looked on, like a doll or a mechanical figure—and I'm real—I'm in the midst of things! And it's all you and the wishing ring! ... John, did you see? Your people—they really liked me!""Of course they did, you little goosie," he told her, smiling down at her. "You have more personal charm than almost any girl I ever knew. I don't know any one who doesn't like you.""Gail doesn't," Joy ventured.John shook his head."You don't understand Gail," he said. "She's a mighty brilliant girl. She doesn't often like other girls, I admit that—but she took to you. I could see it.""Could you?" flashed Joy. "Men see so much! ... She's beckoning to you."She flung her head back angrily. Nobody likes to be told she doesn't understand another girl—and the fact that the girl is mighty brilliant doesn't make you feel better about it."I'll be back in just a moment," said John obliviously, and went with what seemed to Joy unnecessary docility.She stood there alone, her hands clasped hard, her head up—to all appearance a vivid, triumphant little figure. Her heart was beating like mad and her cheeks burnt. She had just found out something about herself, something that a wiser, older woman would have known a long time ago: as long ago as when the Wishing Ring Man stood, the light glinting on his fair hair and sturdy shoulders, in the opening of Grandfather's hall door.She was in love with John—furiously, wildly, heart-breakingly in love with him. And she was going to have to live close by him for a month, knowing that, and keeping him from knowing it—and then go away from him and never see him any more."This is our dance, Sorcerette," said Clarence's voice in her ear.CHAPTER EIGHTA FOUNTAIN IN FAIRYLANDJoy had supposed, when she finally went to sleep at three in the morning, that she would waken with all the excitement gone and feeling very unhappy. She had always heard that it made you unhappy to be in love.Instead, she opened her eyes with the excitement of it all still pulsing through her. The fact that John was in the world and she could care for him seemed almost enough to account for the sense of happiness that possessed her as she pattered over to the window and looked out. And what little more was needed to account for her exhilaration could be found in the wonderful September morning outside. There probablyweretroubles somewhere or other, such as darkened city parlors, minor poets, and sophisticated seekers after John, but somehow she and they didn't connect. The air was so tingling and sunny, and the garden was so beautiful, and being young and free and in the country was so heavenly that she dressed and ran down, and sang along the garden paths as she picked herself a big bunch of golden chrysanthemums and purple and pink asters.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 waslovely!... 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!Youate 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 justlovelittle 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, Ihaveto 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, "menaresuch 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,nothingyou 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 unhappyIwould 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 somebodywouldtake 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, MissAddison!" 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."Awheelbarrow!" 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, whatdoyou 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 awheelbarrow!"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 justfoughtit, 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 settlesthat!""Well, have some more tea, anyway, now the worst is over," said her hostess hospitably.... "Awheelbarrow!"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!""Whereishe?" 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 Allanwillsay?"
"You look lovely," said Phyllis heartily. She herself was radiant in a rose satin that made her look, as her small son remarked ecstatically, like a valentine. "Mustn't it be horrid to be a man and always wear the same black clothes?"
"M'yes," answered Joy absent-mindedly. "If I look as nice as you do I don't have to worry. But—but will Gail Maddox be very much dressed?"
"She will," replied Phyllis decisively. "If I know Gail, she'll look like a Christmas tree. But don't let that weigh on your mind, dear child. Nobody could look better than you do, if Viola and I did combine two of your frocks into one. Could they, Viola?"
The colored girl, who had been doing the masses of Joy's bronze hair while her mistress, kneeling by the dressing-table, put the finishing touches to some frock-draperies, giggled.
"Well dressed? Why, Miss Joy looks like the vampire in the movie show!"
"Final praise!" sighed Phyllis. "You never told me I was as well dressed as a vampire, Viola."
"You couldn't live up to vampiring, nohow, Mrs. Harrington, nor you shouldn't want to, not with that goldy hair of yours," said Viola reprovingly.
"Virtue is thrust upon me, in other words," said Phyllis. "Evidently you have possibilities of crime, Joy!"
They went down, laughing, to where Allan and John were waiting for them, Allan walking the floor in his usual quick, boyish fashion, John sitting at a table reading, by way of economizing time. Being a doctor, he had a way of snapping up odds and ends of time and doing things with them.
He looked up from his paper as Joy's light footsteps pattered down the stairs, and continued to look at her. The green and silver of her gown glittered and flowed around her. Viola had done her hair high, and the wealth of it showed more, even, than when it was down in its accustomed braids. Her surprising black brows and lashes, with the innocence of her blue eyes, and the half-wistful, half-daring expression she had, made her seem a combination of sophistication and childishness such as John had never seen before.
"Shall I do you credit?" she asked him softly over her shoulder, as he held her wrap for her.
Her heart beat hard as she said it. She felt as if she was going into open battle, and she wanted all the heartening she could get.
"Tell me now that you like me better than you do Gail Maddox!" was what she wanted to say. But she knew she couldn't, not without being thought a cat. "I can't get over finding motors scattered all over everything!" was what she heard herself saying inconsequently instead as they went out. She did not dare give him time to answer her first impulsive question.
But he answered it just the same.
"You do me great credit, my dear. I never knew you were quite so beautiful." He said it gravely, but none the less sincerely. "It's very pleasant to remember that I have property rights to such a charming person."
Property rights! Joy's heart gave a little warm jump. If he could say that—if he could even seem to forget that she was only rented, so to speak...
Before she thought she had reached up and caught his hand in a warm, furtive grasp for a moment. She took it away again directly, but it had comforted her to touch him. He was so strong and sothere.... Also, Viola's words comforted her; if she looked like a vampire, why, maybe, with the aid of the wishing ring and Aunt Lucilla's ghost, she could live up to it. Having her hair done as high and her dress cut as low as anybody's also gave her courage. Altogether it was, if not a perfectly self-assured, at least a very poised-looking little figure that came smiling into Mrs. Hewitt's embrace from the motor, with her lover close behind her, like a bodyguard.
"You little angel! You look perfect!" said her mother-in-law-elect rapturously. "And you match my lavender grandeur perfectly. That's a sweet frock, Phyllis. Hurry down, girls, you want to have a little time to rest before you have to stand up for years and receive."
It was early still when they came down from the dressing-rooms, and no guests had arrived yet. So they settled themselves in the dining-room, informally, to wait and visit a little.
"One hasnochance for fun with an earnest-minded son," Mrs. Hewitt complained amiably. "This is the first doings of any sort I have ever had that John was even remotely connected with. A nice little daughter that would dance and flirt and turn the house upside down—that was what I was entitled to—and I got a brilliant young physician who specializes on theos innominata, or something equally thrilling! I sometimes wonder how he ever found time to annex you, Joy!"
Joy colored. It was a random shaft, but it caught her breath. Then—"He didn't," she said gallantly. "I simply rubbed my ring and wished for him, and he came."
"I'll be bound he didn't come hard," said herenfant terribleof a prospective mother-in-law placidly. "Johnny, keep away from those cakes! They're for much, much later, and for your guests, not the likes of you!"
"They are excellent. We need moral support in our ordeal," returned her son, sauntering up, with his usual dignity unimpaired by a plate of fancy cakes in each hand. "Never mind your cruel mother-in-law, Joy. Take a lot—take two!"
"I will, anyway," interposed Allan placidly, reaching a long, unexpected brown hand over his friend's shoulder and securing three. "Phyllis and I need as much moral support as anybody."
"Phyllis is the only one who is minding her manners," Mrs. Hewitt observed with a firmness that she patently didn't mean in the least. "Phyllis, my dear, go get some of the sandwiches. We may as well lunch thoroughly. We have heaps of time before the 'gesses' get here, anyway."
They were all playing like a lot of children. Phyllis, flushed and laughing, raided the kitchen with her husband and came back with more kinds of sandwiches than Joy had known existed. They sat about on cushions on the floor, because the chairs had been taken out for dancing later, and the floor waxed. Joy laughed with the rest, and lunched sumptuously on the cakes the guests ought to have had, and thought for the thousandth time what an ideal mother-in-law was hers at the moment, and how many of the people in the world were the realest of real folks, and how much like Christmas every-day life was getting to be...
"I see you are eating up everything before the really deserving poor arrive," said a slow, coolly amused voice behind Joy, who sat with her back to the entrance.
Joy did not need Mrs. Hewitt's equally calm "Good-evening, Gail. Since when have you been deserving?" to know who had entered.
"Came to help you receive," stated Gail further, still indolently, bringing herself further into the circle as she spoke, where Joy could see her. "I brought a stray cousin along—sex, male. I knew you wouldn't care—men are a godsend in New England towns. Here he is."
The cousin in question was evidently motioned to, for he appeared in the range of Joy's vision with a charming certainty of welcome, and the two merged themselves with the circle without more ceremony. They had evidently made their way to the dressing-rooms before coming to hunt for the family.
While Gail introduced her cousin a little more thoroughly, Joy gave her a furtive, but still more thorough, inspection. She seemed twenty-five or six. She was very slim, with lines like a boy more than a girl; sallow, with large, steady blue-gray eyes and heavy lashes, and lips that were so full that they were sullen-looking when her face was still. She was not unusually pretty—indeed, by Phyllis' rose-and-golden beauty she looked dingy—but she had something arresting about her, and the carriage and manner of a girl who is insolently certain that whatever she says or does is perfect because she does it. She had on a straight blue chiffon frock, cut unusually low: so low that it was continually slipping off one thin shoulder. Allan confided to Joy afterward that Gail's shoulder-straps worried him to madness.
Joy watched Miss Maddox with fascinated eyes. "I'm soyoung!" she thought forlornly, "and all the rest of them are so dreadfully grown-up!"
She felt as if Gail Maddox, with her brilliant, careless sentences, and her half-insolent confidence, owned everybody there much more thanshedid: and she felt little and underdressed and outclassed to a point where even Gail might pity her, and probably did.... And if there is a more abjectly awful feeling than that the Other Girl pities you, nobody has discovered it yet.... Gail might even know how much of a pretender she was. If John—but no. John wasn't like that. He was—"fantastically honorable," she had heard Phyllis call it. John hadn't told—he wouldn't tell if his own happiness depended on it.... And Joy let her thoughts stray off into a maze of wondering as to whether she would rather have her self-respect saved by not having Gail know, or whether, if it would break John's heart to be separated forever from Gail, she oughtn't to tell him to tell.
Gail, lounging in a low chair she had dragged across the waxed floor in the face of all outcries, with one electric-blue-shod foot stretched out before her, looked exactly the person you'd care least to have know anything they could scorn you about. She could scorn so well and so convincingly, Joy felt, listening to her. There wouldn't be a thing left of you when she got through.
"I feel as alone as Robinson Crusoe," thought Joy forlornly.
She rose restlessly and picked up the tray which had borne their illegal sandwiches, with the idea of carrying it and herself out of sight. She wanted a minute to brace herself in.
As she did it, Allan rose, too, unexpectedly, as he did most things. "Here, I'll take some of those," he offered, and helped her carry the debris out.
They set down their burdens on a pantry table, whence three scandalized maids whisked them somewhere else again, gazing the while reproachfully at the invaders.
"I haven't any use for that girl," stated Allan plainly, as they went back. "Don't let her fuss you, Joy."
Joy looked gratefully up at him. The whole world, then, didn't prefer Gail Maddox to her!
"She makes me feel exactly like a small dog that has stolen a bone and got caught," Joy acknowledged directly, with a little shamefaced laugh.
"She'll do her best in that line," responded Allan, who seemed to have no great affection for the lady. "Don't let her bother you. He's your bone—hang on to him. In short, sic 'em!"
They both laughed, and Joy came back with her bronze head high and an access of fresh courage. She sat down this time between John and the cousin, whose name she had not heard. But she began talking hard to him. Occasionally she tossed John, fenced in beside her, a cheerful word. He seemed perfectly satisfied at first, but the cousin did not. He wanted Joy all to himself, it appeared, and a fiancé more or less seemed to have no bearing on the case, as far as he was concerned.
Presently John woke up to this fact and began the effort to repossess himself of his lawful property. Joy cast a mischievous glance at Allan, sitting on the arm of his wife's chair (chairs had become the order of the day), and Allan grinned happily, by some means telegraphing the situation to Phyllis. Every one was happy except John, and perhaps Gail, who presently eyed the three and used her usual weapon of lazy frankness.
"It makes me furious to see both of you making violent love to Joy Havenith," she said indolently. "Clarence, go start the victrola, my good man. This must be put a stop to."
Clarence lifted himself from the floor by Joy, but he calmly took her hand along with him, and raised her, too.
"She's going to christen the floor with me," he informed his cousin. "Come on, Miss Joy!"
The isolation that ordinarily doth hedge an engaged girl, where men are concerned, seemed to trouble Clarence not at all. He was, by the way, in spite of the fact that he would some day be too stout, one of the best-looking men who ever lived. He had a good deal of his cousin's lazy assurance—in him it sometimes verged on impudence, but never beyond the getting-away-with point—and a heavenly smile. His other name was, unbelievably, Rutherford, which almost took the curse off the Clarence, as he said, but not quite. And if he had gone into the movies he would have made millions, beyond a doubt.
He drew Joy across the floor with him, in her green-and-silver draperies, and began to wind the victrola, which had been tucked into a nook where Mrs. Hewitt had vainly hoped it would be quite hidden. There was to be an orchestra afterwards for the authorized dancing.
Clarence put on "Poor Butterfly," and encircling Joy proceeded to dance away with her.
"But I don't know how to dance," she gasped as she felt herself being drawn smoothly across the floor.
"That doesn't matter, Sorcerette, dear," said Clarence blandly. "Just let go—be clay in the hands of the potter. I'll do the dancing for two. Hear me?"
Joy did as she was told, and—marvel of marvels!—found herself following him easily. She was really dancing!
"But why did you call me that?" she demanded, like a child, as she got her breath. To her apprehensive mind the name sounded as if Gail had not only learned her dark secret but had passed it on to her dear Cousin Clarence.
"Because you look it," said he promptly, in a voice that softened from word to word. "...Harrington is a good dancer, isn't he? Phyllis looks all right, but I fancy she guides hard. Those tall women often do.... Why, anybody with brows and lashes like yours, and hair that color, combined with that angelic please-guide-me-through-a-hard-world expression simply shrieks aloud for a name like that. A sorcerette is a cross between a seraph and a little witch. There's no telling what she might do to you!"
"Oh!" cooed Joy.
It sounded like a very happy "Oh," and Clarence, experienced love-pirate though he was, hadn't a way in the world of knowing that Joy's pleasure came of being still undiscovered, not of his winning ways.
She danced on with him to the very last note of the record, enraptured to find that she really could dance, and came back to the end of the room where Mrs. Hewitt still sat; her eyes starry with delight.
"Oh, I can dance when I just go where the man takes me!" she cried. "I never knew I could!"
"You dance very well," said John's quiet voice from behind his mother's chair. "Will you dance with me now?"
Joy, regarding him, saw that he was vexed. Most people would not have noticed it, but very few of his moods escaped Joy. He was a little graver than usual, and his voice was quieter.
"If I can," she answered. "I thought you were dancing this with Miss Maddox."
"I didn't think it would show proper courtesy to my fiancée to dance first with some one else," John answered.
Clarence had set the music going again, and was swinging round the room with Gail. As it began, John, with no more words, drew Joy out on the floor with him.
She looked up in surprise at his words.
"Why—why, I didn't know I was that much of a fiancée to you. I thought probably you'd rather be with Gail. And—and I didn't know I was going to dance anyway. I didn't know I could!"
He looked down at her again, apparently to see whether she was in earnest, holding her off for a moment as they danced.
She hoped he would deny that he preferred being with Gail, but he did not.
"We are going through our month of relationshipright," he told her definitely, smiling, but looking down at her with the steady, steel-colored light in his gray eyes that she knew meant "no appeal." "Gail does not enter into it at all. But I admit that Rutherford's quickness put me in the wrong."
"If only," thought Joy, acutely conscious of his firm hold, "instead of laying down the law that way, he would let go and admit that he was angry!" For he certainly was, and it wasn't at all her fault, unless going where Clarence took her was a crime. Johnhadn'tthought of dancing first. Was he the kind of person who always thought he was right even when he knew he wasn't? If so, maybe a monthwaslong enough.... But the thought of the end of the month hurt, no matter how unreasonable she tried to think John, and she threw down her arms—the only way, if she had known, to make John throw down his.
"Are you angry at me?" she half whispered. "I—please don't be angry. Nobody ever was, and I don't want to be silly, but I don't believe I could stand it."
He swept her rhythmically on, but she could feel his arm relax and hold her more warmly, and his wonderful gray eyes softened again as they looked into hers.
"Poor little thing! I keep forgetting that you're just a child. Sometimes you aren't, you know."
"No, sometimes I'm not," Joy echoed. Then she laughed up at him impishly. "You say this thing is going to be done right?" she mocked. "Very well, then, when Mr. Rutherford is nice to me you ought to be nicer. When he sits down close to me and tells me I'm a sorcerette—"
"A what?" demanded John swiftly. "See here, Joy, I'm practically in charge of you, and you're very young, you know, and can't be expected to know much about men. Rutherford is attractive and all that, but he's a man I wouldn't trust the other side of a biscuit. Any man can tell you that. Allan—"
"He talks just like a poet," said Joy innocently. How could John know that this was an insult, not a compliment, in Joy's mind? She had seen any amount of Clarences—ignoring her, to be sure, but still saying Clarence things to others in her hearing—all her days.
"That may be," said John. "I'm no judge of poets, and I suppose you are.... See here, Joy, there's an inhabitant—two of 'em—coming in the doorway. Mother'll be wanting you to stand in a silly line and pass people along to her, or away from her, or something. Come here with me and we'll finish this. You're getting a wrong impression of what I mean."
Joy found herself being steered masterfully into a little semi-dark room that opened off the long parlor. John planted her in a low chair in a corner and pulled up a stool for himself just opposite.
"They won't find us for at least ten minutes, unless we wigwag. Now—what's a sorcerette?"
His tone, in spite of his carelessness, betrayed a certain anxiety to learn. Joy answered him with fullness and simplicity.
"A sorcerette is somebody with coloring like mine, and a cross between a seraph and a little witch," she replied innocently. "That's what Clarence said. But Ithinkhe made up the name himself," she added conscientiously, as if that would be some help.
John grinned a little in spite of himself.
"I don't like the idea particularly of his making the name up himself," he remarked; "but there is something in what Rutherford said!"
"I'm very glad you think so," said Joy with a transparent meekness. "And now that you've found out, isn't it time you went back to your duties?"
He looked at her doubtfully, where she sat in the half-light with her head held high and her hands crossed on her green-and-silver lap. He could not quite make out her expression.
But he had not much more chance for cross-questioning, because guests were beginning to come thickly, and his mother was sending out agonized scouting parties for the feature of the evening.
Phyllis, knowing the rooms of old, discovered her. She swooped down on the pair, where they were sitting in the little dim room.
"You wretched people, this is no time for that sort of thing!" she exclaimed, shoving them before her. "Please try to remember that you will, in all likelihood, spend a lifetime together. Joy, three severe New England spinsters have already taken Gail Maddox for you. Hurry!"
The suggestion was quite enough, as Phyllis may have known it would be. Joy whisked into her place, which was opposite the double doors, between Mrs. Hewitt and Phyllis, and taking her burden of white chrysanthemums on one arm, proceeded to be as charming to her future patients-in-law as she knew how.
Mrs. Hewitt and Phyllis cast glances of astonished admiration at each other over her head. They neither of them had thought of Joy as anything but a sweet child, or an affectionate child—a darling, but shy and unused to the world. But she was managing her share of the evening's pageant as if she had run a salon for twenty years. It did not occur to them that the explanation was that she practically had been brought up in one. She had been a part of the bi-weekly receptions given to the small and great of the earth by Havenith the poet ever since she was old enough to come into the parlors and could be trusted not to cry or snatch cake.
"Good gracious, Joy,wheredid you learn to drive people four-in-hand this way?" breathed Phyllis admiringly, in a lull. "Iknow, if I'd had to talk to two Miss Peabodys and three Miss Brearleys and a stray Jonesallat once, at least five of them would have hated me forever after. And you kept them going like a juggler's balls!"
"They're not half as hard as the people at Grandfather's afternoons," answered Joy. "He had almost every kind of person—everybody wanted to see him, you know, and he felt it his duty to gratify as many as he could, he said. Oh, Phyllis,tenBrearleys and Peabodys are nothing to trying to make three Celtic poets and a vers-librist talk pleasantly to each other!"
"You're a darling," said Phyllis irrelevantly.
"I see you've been working virtuously hard," put in Gail pleasantly, sauntering up. "Now,Igave up being noble-hearted to the uninteresting some time ago. There's very little in it. I collected a suitor or so early in the evening, and we've been telling each other what we really thought of all the worst guests, in the little room off. You ought to hear John's description of—"
"She shan't—it's not for your young ears," said Clarence possessively from where he stood, a little behind Gail. Gail had three men with her—Clarence, John, and a slim youth who looked younger than he proved to be, and who answered to the name of Tiddy.
All Joy's feelings of triumph and innocent satisfaction in having won the liking of Mrs. Hewitt's guests faded. She felt as Gail had made her feel before—foolishly good and ridiculously young and altogether unsuccessful in life. For a moment the mood held her in a very crushed state of mind: then she caught Clarence's eyes fixed upon her with a look of amused admiration. It spurred her.
"I've been doing my duty by my future lord and master," she said lightly. "But now you put it that way, he doesn't sound like a worthy cause a bit."
The men laughed, though Joy's words hadn't sounded particularly witty to herself. "I'm going to abjure duty now," she went on hurriedly. "The orchestra's playing that thing people can dance me to——"
She held her hand and arm gracefully high, in the old minuet pose, and laughed up at Clarence.Hewasn't supposed to be her lover, and yet he saw through Gail when John didn't——
"By Jove, I can do the minuet!" he said eagerly. "Can you, Miss Joy?"
She smiled and nodded.
"Grandma told me all about it,Taught me so I could not doubt it,"
she sang softly.
"We'll do it—we'll do it for the happy villagers!" proclaimed Clarence.
"Here, Tiddy, go cut a girl out of the herd, and find Harrington, too. We're the bell-cows. All you others have to do is to obediently follow us—the men follow me and the women tag around after Miss Joy—which last seems wrong, but can't be helped."
"Not at all," said John amiably. "Far be it from me to seem to steal your thunder, Rutherford, but I, too, was in the village pageant last year, and I minuet excellently. All my grateful patients said so. You know, if you led off, they might take you for the man who's going to marry Miss Havenith."
Clarence couldn't very well do or say anything to his host, but he looked far from pleased as John took Joy's hand and quietly led her into line. Tiddy came up just then with a pretty, dark little girl whom he had selected with great judgment from the guests as being just of a height between Joy and Gail. He had also enlisted the orchestra, for it began to play "La Cinquantaine" as they all took their places facing each other. They were all laughing, even Clarence. The guests, catching the spirit of the thing, began to laugh and applaud, and—it seemed like magic that it could be done so swiftly—formed two more sets in the rest of the room, while the elders, against the wall, watched approvingly.
"I thought nobody but me danced minuets any more," Joy whispered to John as, her eyes alight with happiness, she crossed him in the changes of the lovely old dance.
"There happened to be a historical pageant here last summer," he explained to her, "and there were eight minuet sets in the Revolutionary episode, so we had to learn. Mother hounded me into it. I'm glad now she did."
"Why?" inquired Joy innocently the next time she met him.
"I like to maintain my rights," he answered with a little gleam of fun in his eyes.
But Joy felt fairly certain that the gleam of fun had behind it a gleam of decision. Certainly John's motto was, "What's mine's mine!"—even when it was rented.
They finished to applause, and as the orchestra ended its minuet it slid on into a modern dance, and so did each of the couples, dancing on out on the floor.
Joy sank down at the end of the waltz on a seat by the wall, with John beside her.
He bent over her.
"Having a good time, kiddie?" he asked her gently. She nodded, her eyes like stars.
"Oh, I'mpeople, at last!" she said with a soft exultance. "I've always looked on and looked on, like a doll or a mechanical figure—and I'm real—I'm in the midst of things! And it's all you and the wishing ring! ... John, did you see? Your people—they really liked me!"
"Of course they did, you little goosie," he told her, smiling down at her. "You have more personal charm than almost any girl I ever knew. I don't know any one who doesn't like you."
"Gail doesn't," Joy ventured.
John shook his head.
"You don't understand Gail," he said. "She's a mighty brilliant girl. She doesn't often like other girls, I admit that—but she took to you. I could see it."
"Could you?" flashed Joy. "Men see so much! ... She's beckoning to you."
She flung her head back angrily. Nobody likes to be told she doesn't understand another girl—and the fact that the girl is mighty brilliant doesn't make you feel better about it.
"I'll be back in just a moment," said John obliviously, and went with what seemed to Joy unnecessary docility.
She stood there alone, her hands clasped hard, her head up—to all appearance a vivid, triumphant little figure. Her heart was beating like mad and her cheeks burnt. She had just found out something about herself, something that a wiser, older woman would have known a long time ago: as long ago as when the Wishing Ring Man stood, the light glinting on his fair hair and sturdy shoulders, in the opening of Grandfather's hall door.
She was in love with John—furiously, wildly, heart-breakingly in love with him. And she was going to have to live close by him for a month, knowing that, and keeping him from knowing it—and then go away from him and never see him any more.
"This is our dance, Sorcerette," said Clarence's voice in her ear.
Joy had supposed, when she finally went to sleep at three in the morning, that she would waken with all the excitement gone and feeling very unhappy. She had always heard that it made you unhappy to be in love.
Instead, she opened her eyes with the excitement of it all still pulsing through her. The fact that John was in the world and she could care for him seemed almost enough to account for the sense of happiness that possessed her as she pattered over to the window and looked out. And what little more was needed to account for her exhilaration could be found in the wonderful September morning outside. There probablyweretroubles somewhere or other, such as darkened city parlors, minor poets, and sophisticated seekers after John, but somehow she and they didn't connect. The air was so tingling and sunny, and the garden was so beautiful, and being young and free and in the country was so heavenly that she dressed and ran down, and sang along the garden paths as she picked herself a big bunch of golden chrysanthemums and purple and pink asters.
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 waslovely!... 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!Youate 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 justlovelittle 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, Ihaveto 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, "menaresuch 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,nothingyou 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 unhappyIwould 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 somebodywouldtake 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, MissAddison!" 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.
"Awheelbarrow!" 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, whatdoyou 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 awheelbarrow!"
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 justfoughtit, 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 settlesthat!"
"Well, have some more tea, anyway, now the worst is over," said her hostess hospitably.... "Awheelbarrow!"
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!"
"Whereishe?" 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 Allanwillsay?"