cottage inn really was. It appeared that the inn itself lived in the
middle, as a sort of parent; and all around it sprang up small
cottages, where you and yours could dwell, and never associate with
anybody you didn't want to, except at mealtime, or lingering about a
little afterwards, or at dances. And if you were unusually exclusive
(also unusually rich), they took you over your meals, and you never
saw anybody at all. Joy was exceedingly glad that Grandfather was
only comfortably off, because she liked, best of all the day's
round, the little times before and after dinner when she could sit
on the porch and watch people, and decide whom she was going to like
most, and whom she was going to be most like.
She wore her brown woolen frock all day long the first day, changing
to the gray silk in the evening--the dear gray silk, all little
glints of embroidery and little falls of chiffon!--and the gray hat
with it. She was waiting for her grandparents to ask her where she
got it, but they were so occupied with getting themselves settled,
and seeing that their place and hers at table were sufficiently far
from the noisier crowds of people not to be a strain on
Grandfather's nerves and Joy's, that nothing was said. As a matter
of fact, Grandfather thought Grandmother had bought it for her, and
Grandmother thought Grandfather had; so each said pretty things
about it to the other, without coming straight out, as their
courteous custom with each other was; and the secret was still Joy's.
By the second day Joy saw that people were beginning to find out who
Grandfather was. So she deliberately ran away. Not badly, nor far;
she only had a waiter who seemed to want to be nice to her make her
up a little packet of sandwiches, and then she took to the nearest
woods. She quite intended to be back for dinner; she wouldn't have
missed the pageant of sunburned, laughing people streaming in, for
anything; not even at the risk of being asked if she, too, wrote
poetry.
The woods gained, she leaned back against a big oak tree with a
rested sigh. There might be all the poetry in the world a half mile
off, but here you couldn't see anything but trees and more trees,
all autumn reds and browns and yellows, and the two little brown
paths that crossed near where she sat. Her blue, black-lashed eyes
rested happily on a great bough of scarlet and yellow maple leaves.
"I haven't got to say one _word_ about them," she breathed.
"_Nice_ leaves!"
Then she felt vaguely penitent; and in spite of the scenery, began
to think about Grandfather, and therefore poetry, again--so firm a
clutch has habit. There in the wonderful tingling air, with the late
sunset glimmering a little through the trees, an old poem began to
sing itself through her head. For, though she didn't think so, Joy
_did_ like poetry.
It was out of Bryant's "Library of Poetry and Song" that she had
been brought up on. The book always opened of itself under Joy's
hand to "Poems of Fancy."
"..._And I galloped and I galloped on my steed as white as milk,
My gown was of the grass-green and my shoes were of the silk,
My hair was golden-yellow, and it floated to my shoe,
My eyes were like two harebells dipped in little drops of dew_..."
Joy leaned herself back more luxuriously.
"It _is_ like the enchanted forest," she breathed. "I can
almost see the Lady in the poem galloping along, and the Green Gnome
leaping up to stop her. The path out there is wide enough--people
from the inn go riding on it. I remember their saying so, that old
lady with the daughter that wriggles too much."
At this stage in her meditations Joy laughed and ceased wishing. It
was all very well to desire Green Gnomes and golden-haired
fairy-ladies to gallop down the bridle-path, but the chances were
that if any one did come it would be the old lady and her daughter,
on livery horses, and that they would wish to alight and talk to
her. City-bred Joy didn't want to talk. She only wanted to be left
here alone with the trees and the sunset. It was more than time to
dress for dinner, she knew it well, for the sunset was a little less
bright. But she deliberately stayed where she was, the ballad
singing itself dreamily still through her head.
And then she did hear the click of a horse's hoofs, quite plainly.
CHAPTER THREE
PHYLLIS RIDES THROUGH
When Joy could see the rider she was relieved to find that he had no
intention of stopping. Then--a little too late--she sprang up and
ran after him; for the horse was a pony, and the rider a little boy,
laughing too gleefully not to be in mischief, and lashing the pony
on. He was having a perfectly wonderful time, apparently, and seemed
to have a safe seat; but he was certainly much too young to be
galloping through the woods at sunset alone.
Joy fell back panting from her vain chase.
"Why, he wasn't more than four or five," she said half-aloud. "What
_will_ his mother say?"
But the clatter of the light hoofs, and the delighted shouts of the
child, passed like an apparition, leaving Joy half wondering if she
had imagined it all. Though she was still a little concerned,
because somebody was very fond of that mop of flying dusky hair, and
the triumphant little voice that had echoed past her.
"I can wait here, anyway," she decided at once. "Some one may come
looking for him, and I can tell which way he went."
She sat still where she was for a little while longer. She had
nearly made up her mind to follow the child, when, to her great
relief, she heard another horse coming.
"I can send whoever it is after him," she thought, springing up and
running out to the path. "Oh, wait! Please wait!" she called to the
as yet unseen rider.
The horse was pulled to a walk, and its rider slipped to the ground,
coming into Joy's sight with the bridle over her arm, and the animal
following her.
"Did you see--" began the strange lady, just as Joy said:
"Would you please--"
Then each stopped and waited for the other to go on, though the lady
with the big white horse seemed in haste to ask and be gone. She was
the first to continue, rather hurriedly.
"Did you see a little boy on a pony, riding this way?" she asked.
"I'm hunting for him."
While Joy replied she looked admiringly at the speaker. She was much
taller than Joy, and very pretty, with long blue eyes, a creamy
skin, and hair that was the very "golden-yellow" of the ballad. She
might have been anywhere in the later twenties, but Joy learned
afterwards that she was thirty-two. To Joy's eyes she was the fairy
lady of the ballad come true; for she had evidently flung herself on
her horse just as she was, in a green evening gown with a light
cloak over it. Even in her anxiety for the child she had about her
an atmosphere of bright serenity that made Joy in love with her.
"I was just going to ask you to go after him," Joy replied as she
looked. "He went past here a few minutes ago. I'm sure he is too
little to be riding alone."
"He is indeed," said the golden lady, smiling. "Little villain! But
it seems he doesn't think so! Which way did he go, please?"
"Straight along this path," Joy answered, pointing.
The lady sprang to her horse again.
"Thank you," she called back, then more and more faintly, "I haven't
much time--now, to be--grateful as I should be. We'll--come--back--"
The last words were hardly distinguishable from the echo of the
flying hoofs. The ballad-lady was gone.
The whole thing seemed to Joy like something out of a pageant. She
wondered if the lovely lady in green was the little boy's mother, or
his sister or aunt.
"It was a little like the Green Gnome poem, except that she was
hunting for him, and that the little boy was pretty," she thought.
In the poem the Gnome had turned to a "tall and comely man" when the
lady kissed him. She liked the lady; there had been something so gay
and friendly about her, just in those few words, that Joy's heart
felt warmed. Very few people near her own age came close enough to
stately little Joy to be as friendly as the lady had been--or as the
wishing-ring man had been.
"Somewhere," Joy decided happily, "there must be lots of people like
them, if I could only find the place. I'm sure I shall some day."
She sat on in the gathering twilight, waiting for them to return. As
she sat the thought of the wishing-ring man came back again.
Wherever he was, he was wishing her well, and remembering her--he
had said--what was it--he'd had a "human five minutes" with her. Her
heart beat unreasonably, as if he might be coming down the brown
path in the twilight, this instant,--as if the golden lady might
bring him back with her.
It was nearly dark, and the wind was getting colder, when the hoofs
sounded down the path again. There were three of them now--and Joy's
heart gave a little spring, till she saw that the man riding the
other horse was no one she knew. The pony was riderless, and he was
leading it, while the naughty little boy who had caused all the
trouble was perched in front of the lady's saddle, most impenitently
conversational. She had one arm tight around him, as if she did not
want to lose him again, and she was smiling down at him and
answering him gaily as he talked. Punishment was evidently waived,
or so far in the future as not to worry anybody. The child's clear
little assured voiced came to her, sitting in the shadows.
"But if God takes care of me, Faver, I don't see why I need a nurse
bovvering," he was expostulating.
Joy didn't hear just how his family met this objection. She saw that
the lady looked about for her, and could not see her in the
gathering darkness.
Then she went back to the hotel, where she was very late for dinner.
She looked around for the riders, but she did not see them. Evidently
they were having dinner taken over.
* * * * *
Phyllis Harrington, rather regretfully, hooked a dog-chain to the
porch railing of the cottage she and her husband had just hired. It
was an entirely unnecessary part of the family bull-terrier's
wardrobe, and she intended to use it as an instrument of justice. So
she called her small son. She believed in making the punishment fit
the crime, and Philip had flagrantly run away, quite against orders,
the evening before.
He appeared at her summons, smiling angelically. Philip Harrington
had not the smallest visible excuse for being the son of his
parents, for his father was not particularly dark, and his mother
distinctly gold-blond. Philip threw back, it was supposed, to the
family Pirate, a semi-mythical person whom Phyllis said she'd had
some thirteen generations ago. Phyllis was a New Englander. The
Pirate must have been dark; at least Philip had tragic, enormous
brown eyes with dense lashes, a mop of straight black hair, and a
dusky skin, deeply rose-red at cheeks and lips. He also possessed
the gentle, solemn courtesy of a Spanish grandee, which the Pirate
may or may not have been. He was full of charm of manner, and
combined a spirit of fearless loving-kindness to all the world with
an inability to see why he shouldn't always have his own way; which
made him difficult to manage.
"You goin' to chain me up, Mother?" he inquired affectionately,
nestling up to her.
"Yes," explained his mother, hardening her heart, "little boys who run
away from home like little dogs have to be treated like little dogs."
"Oh, _I'll_ be a little dog," replied Philip, entering
agreeably into the idea, and backing up to be chained. "No, I'll be
a big dog. I'll run around an' jerk my chain an' say 'Woof! Woof!'
like the Hewitts' setter. And Foxy 'n I'll have bones together!" His
small Velásquez face lighted rapturously at the prospect. "Here,
Foxy, Foxy!"
The black French bull whose chain Philip was using dashed up at the
summons. He was middle-aged, but he had a young heart still, and his
tail vibrated madly as he bounded between Phyllis and her son.
"Oh, he's _got_ a bone!" exclaimed Philip, gleefully dropping
on all fours.
Phyllis stood up from chaining her child, and turned appealingly to
her husband, coming down the steps of the little bungalow with
two-and-a-half-year-old Angela on his shoulder.
"You look like a colored illustration from the _Graphic_," she
said irrelevantly. "You're just in time to assist discipline.
_Look!_" she pointed tragically to her victim.
He would have been happily disputing the opportune bone with Foxy, had
not that faithful animal's devotion led him to hand it over at once.
"Faver, make him take it away from me!" he demanded. "Faver, I'm all
chained up! I'm a little dog!"
Little Angela, who looked like a slim, tiny Christmas-card
_Christ-kind_, and was as fascinating a little demon as ever
coquetted with the world at large, struggled to get down, and
demanded to be chained up and be another little dog. Her father set
her down, whereat she made a bolt for the dog, the bone, and her
happily engaged brother.
"Do you think there's any way of conveying to him that this is not a
new amusement, Allan?" demanded his mother, half-laughing.
"Don't let's try," said Allan promptly. "Everything's going
beautifully. Philip's happy, and Angela's going to be gloriously
dirty in a minute, which will give her nurse something to wash. You
know how bitter Viola is about never getting the children to herself
for a minute."
Phyllis slipped an arm through her tall husband's, as they stood by
the steps together.
"No, but Allan, what _would_ you do?"
Allan laughed.
"Send him back to Wallraven, and tell Johnny Hewitt to see that he's
plunged into the middle of the chickenpox epidemic we fled from. How
would you like that, young man?"
Philip looked up with deprecating politeness, on being directly
addressed.
"Please, Faver, if you don't mind my name's Jinks! You must say,
'Here, Jinks,' and I say 'Woof! Woof!' and wag my tail."
"Say wuff!" echoed Angela, with a dazzling smile at her elders, and
an effort not to tumble over on the grass.
Phyllis pounced on her babies at Allan's alarming suggestion, and
managed to hug them both at once; an ordeal which Philip stood with
every evidence of pleasure, and Angela under protest.
"My poor little lambs! ... Allan, this is the first chickenpox
they've had up there since the summer we came. We'd been married a
month or so, and you weren't quite sure whether you liked me or not.
Do you remember?"
"I remember that first summer," said he. "It's the only part of
those seven years that I do want to remember. But the chickenpox
part of it had escaped me."
"Well, of course," his wife admitted, "in those days children's
diseases were nothing whatever in our lives. But when Johnny Hewitt
refers to it as that wonderful summer seven years ago, I have
discovered that he means it was wonderful because he saved
forty-three out of forty-three cases, not because you and I had
married each other to please your mother, and were finding out that
it was rather nice."
"I'll be hanged if I know to this day what possible niceness there
was for you in being married to a man everybody thought would never
get well," said Allan.
"He was you," explained Phyllis matter-of-factly, sitting down on a
step to look at him better. "Anybody'd fall in love with you, Allan.
You know perfectly well that it even happens now."
"Certainly," said he scornfully. "My well-known beauty and charm
attract all classes; they besiege my path by day and night. By Jove,
Phyllis, there's one now, the flapper I saw in the dining-room
lately. She's doubtless come over to say that she'll wait for me
till you're through, being young. She's pretty, too."
Phyllis laughed, and patted his foot, the only part of him she could
reach without getting up. "Now, now--I meant no harm. You can't help
being attractive.... Why, it's the girl in brown, the one who
started out of a tree like a dryad, and showed me the way Philip had
gone, last night. She was the loveliest creature I ever saw. Look,
Allan, she's like a Rossetti picture."
"She _is_ like a Rossetti," he answered, "but she looks rather
happier. Most of the Rossetti ladies I ever saw hoped to die of
consumption shortly."
Joy, coming slowly over the grass on an errand from her grandfather,
kept her eyes on the ground, because that way it was easier to
remember the message she had to repeat up and down the rows of
cottages dotted among the trees. So it was not until she was quite
close that she knew Phyllis again.
Philip barked her a cheerful greeting, and Phyllis rose to greet her.
"I am Alton Havenith's granddaughter," Joy began, and then
interrupted herself joyfully.
"Oh, it's my lady in green!" she cried. "You didn't see me when you
came back."
"I looked for you," Phyllis explained, holding out both hands in
welcome, "but it was too dark to see you. I thought you had gone
home. Did you say you were Alton Havenith's granddaughter? I love
his poems. I'm Phyllis Harrington, and this is my husband. I'm
eternally grateful to you for helping me find my little boy. You see
I've made sure he won't escape again."
"He isn't chained for life, as you might infer from that," Allan
explained.
Philip ceased being a dog for the moment, and held his hand out
amiably to Joy.
"I'm Philip," he explained, following his mother's example and
introducing himself. "They called me Philip 'cause it was the
nearest thing Faver could get to Phyllis. You see, they didn't know
there was going to be Angela. This is Angela. Isn't she pretty?"
Angela, on being righted and shown off, produced her usual dazzling
smile, and gave Joy a sweet, sidelong look out of her azure
eyes--the look she knew conquered people. They were both, as Phyllis
often said, _such_ satisfactory children for exhibition purposes!
"Oh, aren't they darlings!" cried Joy, forgetting her mission
gladly. "Will--will they mind if I hug them?"
"Not a bit," answered their father, whom Joy had asked. "They are
practically indestructible, and they like petting."
Joy knelt down, putting a shy arm around baby Angela, who, after a
moment's survey of her, kissed her frankly of her own accord, with
two tight little arms around her neck.
Allan had an idea that the newcomer would be more at ease alone with
Phyllis and the children, so he made some excuse about golf (which
he hated) and disappeared. Joy sat down on the grass, with Angela
momentarily in her lap, and Foxy, who hinted that he, too, liked
kind words, at her side.
She had never had so many people (counting dogs) act as if they
liked really her. Foxy and the children didn't care a bit whose
granddaughter she was, and Mrs. Harrington, too, had made friends
with her without minding. But she was conscientious, and she felt
she ought to go on with her errand before she really gave herself up
to the enjoyment of her call.
"My grandfather is giving a reading from his works this evening,"
she said, sitting up mechanically and crossing her hands, "and he
sent me to say that he would be glad if you and Mr. Harrington would
care to come."
"We'd love to," Phyllis answered on the spot. "At his cottage?"
Joy nodded.
"It's fun," Phyllis went on, "leading this semidetached life, with
no responsibilities whatever. There's only one drawback as far as
I'm concerned; if Philip strays off too far somebody may take him
for a rabbit or a deer. The places where there's hunting are only
two miles away. That's why Allan and I were scouring the woods last
night for him. Usually we let him run away as much as he likes, and
the poor child can't understand the new arrangement."
Joy looked down at Philip, who had curled himself into an
indiscriminate heap with the dog, and was taking a nap by way of
whiling away his imprisonment.
"Do you hunt?" she asked.
Phyllis shook her head.
"The way the gun bangs when it goes off worries me. I believe
there's a bangless gun, but even so, you're expected to kill things,
and I think the things are much happier alive. I don't even like the
taste of them cooked. But Allan hunts. He brings game-bags full of
poor little dead things back whenever he's where he can do it. He
hasn't yet, here. We just came, you know."
"I'm so glad you did!" said Joy fervently.
"We were like Old Man Kangaroo--we had to!" smiled Phyllis. "There's
chickenpox at our usual summer home, so we basely fled, leaving
Johnny to struggle against its fearful ravages single-handed."
Joy sat Angela down, because she was beginning to wriggle.
"Is Johnny your brother?" she asked shyly.
Phyllis shook her head.
"I haven't a relative on earth, except these babies--of course
Allan's more of a relative by marriage. No, Johnny Hewitt's the
family doctor, a classmate of Allan's, and a family possession. He
might as well live with us, he's so much about the house and garden.
I suppose this place is very good for the angel-children, but I'm
afraid that in a few days I'm going to wish I was back among the
roses, with Allan and Johnny and a banjo and a moon!"
Joy's eyes lighted.
"Roses?" she said. "Oh, have you a rose-bush!"
Phyllis laughed.
"'Do we keep a bee?' We have a garden full of roses. The gardener
hints mournfully that we ought to take prizes with them, but I know
perfectly well that would mean I couldn't pick them unless he let
me. So I've given him a bush to play with, and he does take prizes
with that. He's colored, so Allan says we have to encourage him to
have ambitions. He's married to the cook. Our having colored
servants shocked the neighbors terribly at first, but they're
hardened to it now. I gave an intelligence office _carte
blanche_ when I was married, and got the ones I have now; and
we're so fond of each other that I simply can't part with them and
get haughty white persons."
Phyllis' one idea in those early days, as Joy learned later, had
been to have a summer staff who were cheerful. The intelligence
office woman had, naturally, chosen happy-minded darkies. And happy
they still remained; also adoring.
The neighbors, though Phyllis did not state this, from being shocked
had become passionately envious. Servants who had stayed eight years
without a change, merely one addition, were things to be watched
hungrily.
"I beg your pardon, but it's luncheon-time, Mrs. Harrington," said
the children's nurse at this point, appearing in the doorway. "May I
have the children?"
Phyllis bent over the sleeping boy and dog and unfastened her son.
The nurse gathered him up affectionately, and went in search of
Angela, who had strayed around the corner of the house a little
while before.
"Oh, I must go," cried Joy, starting to her feet. "They'll be
wondering where I am. And I haven't been to half the cottages."
She turned to go, then looked back at Phyllis wistfully.
"Think of it," she breathed. "A garden full of roses, and two men,
and a banjo, and a moon!"
Her hands locked together over the invisible wishing ring. She
wondered if there was a garden like that anywhere that _he_ lived.
Phyllis Harrington looked thoughtfully after her. There was
something about Joy Havenith that always made people eager to do
pleasant things for her, and watch her enjoying them. She did get so
much pleasure out of life whenever it let her.
"It won't be my fault," said Phyllis, coming to a determination, "if
that child doesn't get a chance at the garden and the moon, and the
men, too!"
When Phyllis made up her mind it generally stayed made. Accordingly,
she went to the reading that night, and afterwards made herself as
lovely to the Haveniths as she knew how, which was a good deal. She
asked them to have tea with her the next day, and continued to be
lovely. She also managed to give them a very fair idea of everything
they might be supposed to need to know about the Harrington family.
When she had finished they had discovered several mutual friends, a
meeting with Mr. Harrington's late mother abroad, the genealogies of
both Allan and Phyllis, and even a common ancestor somewhere in the
seventeen-nineties on Allan's side. The Haveniths thought it had all
just transpired, but Phyllis had really been tactfully offering
references. After about a week of pleasant friendship Phyllis
produced her invitation.
She wanted to take Joy home with her for the last part of September
and the first part of October. Joy was wild with delight at the
idea; but her grandparents would not let her go. They never had
before, and it didn't occur to them that they could now.
"Just for a little while?" she pleaded.
But her grandparents were firm.
"Under no circumstances could we let you go away from us, dear,"
said her grandfather firmly. "I am an old man, and the time will
come soon enough when I shall be with you no longer. If you loved
me, you would not ask it. When your lover comes it will be time
enough."
It sounded true enough. Joy did not exactly know how to meet it.
Then she brightened up.
"If you let me go for a little while, I'm sure I'd miss you
dreadfully, and love you more than ever. I'm sure I would!"
But Grandfather didn't intend to part with his little girl on any
such premise as that, and Grandmother was sure something dreadful
would happen if she was allowed to go.