stared after the tall figure and the little one passing out of the
car. "It's the only cool spot. I suppose in the smoking car, where
Allan is, the windows are open, but this place is too hot to live
in. I wonder if there's any blue-law that forbids opening chair-car
windows. I always forget to tell Allan to get day-coach tickets on
this line, and it never occurs to him to do anything but perish in
the parlor-cars, having been brought up in the lap of luxury. So we
suffer on."
Phyllis laughed as she led the way out to the little platform, and
held to the rail with one hand, letting the wind sweep past her. She
looked like anything but suffering.
"Oh, isn't it one of the loveliest days that ever was!" she
breathed, turning to Joy.
"It's one of the loveliest times that ever was," Joy responded
impulsively. "Oh, Phyllis, I'm so glad I met you!"
"Glad you met John, dear child," Phyllis corrected. "So am I. Glad
_I_ met _you_, I mean, and particularly glad John did. We were
all _so_ afraid he was going to marry Gail Maddox. I think he was
getting a little worried over it himself!"
Joy looked up, startled.
"You mean--he wasn't really thinking of marrying some one else?"
Phyllis anchored her hat more securely, and smiled down out of the
white cloud her veil made around the rose and blue and gold of her.
"He seems principally to have been thinking, in his monumental silence,
of marrying you. But Gail was certainly 'spoken of for the position.'"
"Gail!" Joy murmured worriedly.
She had never thought of this complication.
Phyllis nodded.
"She's as nice as possible, but everybody could see how fearfully
they wouldn't fit--everybody, that is, but the parties concerned.
Gail's one of those people who are always dashing about aimlessly,
doing something because she didn't do it yesterday. And John's the
kind of a man--well, you know the kind he is: dependable,
authoritative, angel-kind, and deadly clever. He's not a _bit_
like Allan," said Allan's wife, as if Allan were the standard
pattern for men. "If I didn't adore Allan too much to be so mean, I
could fool him a dozen times a day, and so could any woman. If it
meant John's life I don't believe I could hoodwink him, any more
than I could another girl. I suppose it comes from diagnosing cases."
"We're almost at Wallraven, Phyllis," Allan spoke from behind them
before Joy could answer. "Better come in and get your caravan in order."
"Coming," said Phyllis simply; and went in to assort her babies.
But Joy had seen the look that passed between the husband and wife,
and it made her a little lonely for the moment. You could see that
they belonged to each other, and how glad they were of it. And
Joy--well, she was only somebody's pretend-sweetheart. Maybe nobody
would ever look at her that way...
She clasped her hands together as she always did when she thought
hard, and felt the touch of her wishing ring. Her heart lightened,
for she remembered how kind John had been to her. Surely he couldn't
pretend to be so pleased about it if he weren't. And if there was
another girl, why, she was only having John borrowed from her.
"It won't hurt her a bit," Joy decided. "And if she really is
flyaway, and all that, maybe a little anxiety will be good for her."
In Joy's heart, too far down for her to find it herself, was a tiny
bit of defiance, and the old, old feeling, "If she wants him, let
her come and get him!" But she wasn't in the least aware of it, and
went back to her seat feeling like an angel.
She found there John, looking perfectly content with life, gathering
up her belongings and his, and obviously expecting to make her his
complete care. When John Hewitt took charge of anybody they were
taken charge of all over; not fussily or so it was a nuisance, but
just comfortably, so that every care vanished.
They got off the train, into the peace and spaciousness of open
country. The station was behind them, a little, neat stone station
like a toy dropped down on the old-fashioned New England
countryside. Joy caught her skirts clear of the car steps and
descended, John guarding her. She smiled down at him before she
sprang to the platform, and he smiled up at her. To any one not in
the secret they seemed like as real lovers as possible.
As Joy stood there, waiting a moment, she felt arms coming round her
from behind, and, turning, startled, she found herself in the
embrace of a tall, white-haired woman with John's kind steel-gray
eyes and an impulsiveness not at all like John's.
"This is the first chance I have ever had to kiss my daughter," said
a swift, soft-noted voice--not at all like an old lady's--"and I've
been wanting one for thirty-odd years. I'm John's mother, my dear,
and I forgive you both on the spot for keeping me in the dark. I
know just why John did it. He didn't want parties given over him, as
he's always saying. But I've foiled him completely... My dear, he's
picked me out exactly the sort of thing I wanted!"
Joy kissed Mrs. Hewitt back willingly. This was just the kind of
mother she had always wanted, too. She spoke out what she thought,
before she thought.
"Are you Grandmother's Grace Carpenter?" she asked. "Why, you're not
a bit old!"
Her mother-in-law laughed as she turned to greet her son, still
holding fast to one of Joy's hands.
"I know you don't like being kissed in public, Johnny, but you know
I always do it, anyhow. You good boy, to actually tell her I liked
having my first name used! He never would do it, you know, Joy,
dear. Phyllis and Allan--where are those two? I have their motor,
commandeered it to come down in. Mine had the fender bitten off by
the village trolley last night. Oh--they're putting in the children."
Joy had scarcely time to answer, but she let her mother-in-law sweep
her along, and install her in the motor between herself and John,
who was holding Angela because Angela insisted.
As they sped down the country lanes Joy sat very still, trying to
forget that this happy time would ever stop. Giving up John was bad
enough--maybe he would be friends with her afterwards if she was
lucky--but giving up John's mother seemed almost too much to ask of
any girl.
"I'm _sure_ I'll never happen on a mother-in-law like this
again!" thought Joy.
"How's Gail, Mother?" she heard John ask quite calmly as they turned
down another leafy lane.
She flushed up, deep rose-red, as she listened for the answer.
"Just back from the city, and more rambunctious than ever," said
Mrs. Hewitt briskly.
Joy clasped her hands over the wishing ring and looked
off--anywhere--not to look at John or his mother. And in her anxiety
she heard a husky whisper from the seat behind her, where Viola was
restraining Philip and Foxy from jumping out into the landscape.
"Don't you fear, honey. Mighty hard work getting a man away from a
red-haired girl!"
Where her courage came from Joy did not know. But as she heard Viola
she sat up straight. And a light came into her eyes--the light of battle.
CHAPTER SIX
ROSE GARDENS AND MEN
"You can come in by the front door, if you'd rather be grand,"
offered Phyllis, "but the only door we can coax the car anywhere
near is the side one. And we had to cut that through."
They halted at a contented-looking old Colonial house set far back
from the country road. The grounds were large, and one whole side of
them was shut off from the road by a high Sleeping Beauty sort of
hedge that hid everything except one inquisitive red rose, sticking
its head out between masses of box. The other side of the house was
surrounded by a green lawn set with tall old trees. A tennis-court
showed at the back, and closer by a red-banded croquet-mallet lay
beneath a tree, with a red ball nestling to it. The whole place
looked sunny and leisurely and happy and spacious and welcoming.
As the motor, after teetering itself cautiously down a side path
that had never in the world been made for motors, stopped, the side
door Phyllis had referred to opened, and a beautiful white wolfhound
sprang out and into the car, where he was welcomed tumultuously by
the children, and greeted without undue enthusiasm by Foxy, whose
disposition had not yet recovered from the baggage car.
Every one piled out, and Philip and the dogs raced back into the
house and to the greetings of a couple of half-visible colored servants.
Phyllis, alighting more leisurely, turned, with the graciousness
that was peculiarly hers, and smiled from the doorway at Joy.
"Welcome, my dear," she said. "And I hope you'll never go away from
our village for good again!"
Joy's throat caught a little. She was only a pretender, a little
visitor in this Abode of the Blest. But, anyway, the Abode of the
Blest was here for a while, and she in it. She looked from Phyllis'
kind, lovely face in the doorway to John, beside her on the step.
His face was as kind as Phyllis' and as handsome in its grave way.
For a month she was going to be happy with them, and she could save
up enough happiness, maybe, for remembering through years of life in
the twilight city house. She was here, and loved and free and young.
Lots of people never got any happiness at all. Joy knew that from
the way she heard them talk. They seemed to mean it usually. A whole
month, then, was lots to the good. She would take every bit there
was of it--yes, love and all!
She put her two hands in Phyllis' impulsively, and kissed her as
they went in. The others followed.
Philip, gamboling rejoicingly about the house with his dear dogs,
bounded toward her as she made her way toward the stairs.
"I got something to ask you when you get your face washed and come
down," he called to her. "'Member to 'mind me."
"All right!" she called back heedlessly, as she followed Mrs. Hewitt
up the wide, shallow-stepped staircase. Mrs. Hewitt seemed to have
constituted herself a committee of welcome, and was accepted on all
sides as being about to stay to dinner.
All the rooms in the house were sunny, and at the window of Joy's
there tapped a spray from a rambler rose. There was so much to see
and hear and smell out the window that Joy had a hard time getting
dressed. She put back on her gray silk. Grandmother had packed all
the pretty picture-frocks for her, but she didn't feel as if she
could stand wearing any of them yet; but she was beginning to think
that these people supposed she had only two dresses. To tell the
truth, she was getting a little tired of wearing first the gray and
then the brown and then doing it over again. But she pinned the
spray of roses that had tempted fate by sticking itself in her
window, on the bosom of her dress, and ran down.
She found that, much as she had looked out the window, she was
earlier than the others. Phyllis and Allan were nowhere to be seen,
and Mrs. Hewitt she knew was above stairs yet, because she had heard
her singing to herself as she moved about the next room. Philip,
exempted from an early bedtime by special dispensation and the
knowledge that he wouldn't go to sleep this first night, anyway, was
being wisely unobtrusive in a corner of the room, spelling out a
fairy-book. The only other occupant of the room, Joy saw, was her
trial fiancé.
It was the first time she had been all alone with John since their
talk in the wood. He had been sitting on the floor by Philip,
explaining to him some necessary fact about the domestic habits of
dragons. He made a motion to rise when she came in.
"Oh, please don't get up!" she begged.
She had been embarrassed when she first saw him, the only occupant
of the room (for small children are most mistakenly supposed not to
count); but, curiously enough, when she saw that he was a little
embarrassed, too, her own courage rose, and she came over quite at
her ease, sinking down at the other side of the convenient Philip.
"You asked me to remind you of something you wanted to say to me,
Philip," she said.
Philip looked up from his book amiably.
"Yes, there was," he said encouragingly, if somewhat vaguely. "Thank
you for aminding me. I just wanted to find out--if you're sure you
don't mind telling me--why you never make a fuss over John. You
know, people that marry each other do. I saw two once--ever so long
ago, but I know they did. Lots."
Joy blushed, but when you've come to Arcady for only a month, and it
really doesn't matter afterwards, you're very irresponsible.
"Why, you see, Philip, the girl isn't supposed to start making the
fusses. You'd better ask John about it--some other time--" she added
hastily.
But as she spoke she had to hold her lips hard to keep them
straight, and looked out of the corner of one black-lashed eye at
John, sitting at his ease on Philip's other side. She had never
found him at a loss, and she desired, most unfairly, to see what he
would do with this impertinence.
"Why don't you, John?" inquired Philip inevitably.
Joy had been so sure John would get out of it with his usual
immovable poise that her own remarks hadn't occurred to her in the
light of provocation. But Dr. Hewitt evidently looked at it that
way, because what he said was quite terrifyingly simple:
"If you'll move a little, Philip."
Philip courteously shoved himself back on the floor from between
them, and for the second time in her life Joy found herself being
kissed by a man.
"I didn't mean that you really _had_ to start things right
away," she heard Philip, dimly, explaining in a tone of courteous
apology, "only when you wanted to, you know."
"It's all right, old fellow," John assured him kindly. "I didn't mind."
It was, indeed, quite a brotherly kiss, but even at that--and in the
resigned way John had explained it there was little room for a
girl's being excited--Joy felt a little dazed. But she didn't intend
to let John see it. She had rented him for the month, so to speak,
and, though it hadn't specially occurred to her, probably this sort
of thing was all in the month's work... It was as near as the
wishing ring could bring her to a real lover...
She raised her surprising eyes to him demurely.
"Thank you," she said with all apparent gratitude. "It was sweet of
you to do that for Philip."
There was no answer possible to that, as far as she knew.
"You needn't say anything," she went on placidly, but with that
spark of excited mischief still in her eyes. "Do you know, Dr.
Hewitt, I'm getting to be much less afraid of you. You certainly
have the _kindest_ heart----"
Here the worm turned. He also got up off the floor, and stood over
her, toweringly, as he answered.
"I haven't a kind heart one bit," he said--and was there a certain
sharpness in his voice?--"kissing you isn't at all hard--"
"Compared to lots of messy things you have to do in the exercise of
your profession?" finished Joy contemplatively, cocking her bronze
head on one side, and looking up at him sweetly, her arms around her
knees. "_I_ know. I've read about them--I've read a lot. You
have to give people blood out of your strong, bared right arm, and
cure them of diphtheria, and scrub floors--oh, no, it's the nurses
do that. 'A physician's life is _not_ a happy one!'"
She laughed, as he stood severely there above her. She had not
realized before that she knew how to tease anybody, least of all the
demigod who had rescued her from the shadows of the reception-halls
at home. But his kissing her had done something to her--it always
seemed to, she reflected--and his matter-of-fact explanation of it
had exasperated her to the point of wanting to pay him back.
"He might at least have _said_ he liked it," she told herself
petulantly. And then after she had laughed, she remembered that if
he did anything too much--if she went too far--he could speak the
word and send her flying out of fairyland... But he wouldn't do
that. He was ever so much too noble, thank goodness!
"People who are noble, really are a comfort," she said cheerfully,
aloud. "Dr. Hewitt, if you don't mind, my spray of roses got caught
in your coat. Of course, if you really want it----"
He detached the spray with something like a jerk and dropped it down
into her lap.
Really you could hardly blame a man for being annoyed a bit. To have
a gentle, grateful little girl you had nobly helped, suddenly perk
up and turn into something quite different--something dimpling and
impish and provocative--would be disturbing to nearly any man.
John had no means of knowing, of course, that Phyllis had said
anything about Gail Maddox, though he might have remembered, at
least, that Joy had red hair and was likely to have a little of the
fire that goes with it. He looked at her all over again, as if there
was somebody else sitting on the floor where little Joy Havenith had
been--somebody rather surprising. He began to wonder about this
young person, with a distinct interest.
"We've found her!" announced Mrs. Hewitt, much to the surprise of
the three in the dining-room, who had not lost anything.
She and Phyllis came in with a triumphant air, and Angela. Angela
was in Phyllis' arms, and adorably asleep, with her goldy-brown
lashes on her pink cheeks and a look of angelhood in every round,
relaxed curve.
"Found her?" inquired John, turning from his position looking down
at Joy. "Who was lost?"
"Do you mean to say," Phyllis demanded, "that you didn't know we'd
lost Angela for the last half-hour?"
"Well, she got lost so very--er--noiselessly," apologized John,
"that it escaped our attention. But she doesn't look as if it had
worn on her much," he added, brightening.
"It didn't," Phyllis answered with an irrepressible laugh, "it wore
on us! I expect Allan's still hunting the grounds over for her--he
and the gardener. The gardener always uses a wooden rake with a
pillow tied to its teeth."
Allan entered at one of the long windows as she spoke.
"Oh, you found her," he remarked. "I thought she wouldn't have been
out of the house."
"Where was she?" demanded Philip, John, and Joy in a polite chorus,
surrounding the center of attraction, who slept on.
"Under the guest-room bed," said Phyllis, putting her daughter down
on a couch as she spoke, and going over to the table, where she
struck the bell for soup, and sat down.
"I crawled under," interjected Mrs. Hewitt proudly, looking every
inch a duchess as she said it, "and there she was! She had eaten
every bit of cheese from the set mousetrap under it; I forgot to
tell you, Phyllis."
"Good gracious!" said Phyllis as the rest sat down about the
table.... "Well, if it hasn't hurt her so far, it mayn't at all. I'm
not going to wake her out of a seraphic slumber like that just to
ask her if she has a pain."
"You don't let _me_ eat cheese at night," said Philip
aggrievedly here, looking up from his plate. "And I knew that
mousetrap was there, and I never touched a scrap of it. It was set
the day we went away from the chickenpox."
"You're a very high-minded child," said his father soothingly.
"And there's charlotte russe for your dessert, Master Philip,"
whispered the waitress: at which Philip forgot his wrongs and
brightened visibly.
The meal went on rather silently after this, because everybody was
rather hungry. Philip grew drowsier and drowsier, till Viola stole
in and led him away, "walking asleep." The grown people went on
talking and laughing around the table.
"With nobody to hush them so he could make a literary criticism,"
Joy thought happily.
Mrs. Hewitt tore herself away with obvious reluctance, about ten or
so, taking John with her. After that Phyllis said that she was
sleepy, but not to let that make anybody else feel they had to be
sleepy, too. Joy had been holding her eyelids up by main force for
some time, because she hadn't wanted to miss any of the talk and
laughter and delightful feeling of being grown up and in the midst
of things. So she went up to bed, almost as drowsily as Philip had
before her.
Just as she was on the point of dropping off to sleep, with the wind
blowing, flower-scented, across her face, she remembered something
that made her sit bolt upright in bed and think. There was going to
be a grand affair for her at Mrs. Hewitt's house the very next
night, and she hadn't a blessed thing to wear! Nothing, that is, but
five art-frocks which she had determined in her heart never to wear
again. But--the wind among the trees was very soothing, and the
wishing ring lay loose and heavy on her finger.
"You'll look after it," Joy murmured drowsily to the ring, and went
to sleep.
Philip wakened her the next morning. He was very clean and rosy from
a recent bath, and he was curled on the quilt at her feet, staring
intently at her.
"Did you know if you look hard at asleep folks' eyes they open?" he
inquired affably. "You see they do. Yours did. Do you mind dogs on
your bed, or Angela?"
Philip was always so perfectly friendly that Joy was very much at
ease with him, which had never been her case before with children.
But, then, she had never met any intimately before. She reached out
a slim white arm from beneath the covers and pulled him down and
kissed him--an operation which he bore with his usual politeness.
"I love dogs, and Angela," she told him. "And I don't mind them on
the bed a bit, if your mother doesn't."
Philip assumed a convenient deafness as to the last clause, and
whistled, whereat his slaves, Ivan, the white wolfhound, Foxy, and
Angela, all appeared joyously and dashed across the floor,
scrambling enthusiastically up on the white counterpane. They were
almost too many for one three-quarters bed, and Joy, on whom most of
the happy family was sitting, could have wished the dogs a little
lighter, even while she gave Angela a hand up. Angela scrambled up
with intense earnestness and loud little pantings, and, finally
seated on a pillow in triumph, smiled broadly and charmingly, her
golden head cocked to one side.
"Doggies went garden, 'is morning," she informed Joy, still smiling
enchantingly. "Oo--a _big_ hole!"
"She means they dug a hole," Philip translated. "You can't always
tell when she's making up things that aren't so; but this is. It's
there now, with worms in it, and a rosebush that fell in. But I
washed all their paws in the bathtub," he added hastily, "and
Angela's frock-front. Didn't I, Angel?"
"Fock-front!" said Angela, beaming and spatting herself happily in
the region named.
Joy cast a wild look around her. Foxy lay across her at her waist
line--yes, there were paw-marks all over the counterpane, and Ivan,
who seemed to have had more than his share of the cleansing, showed
a distinct arc of wetness where his long body had lain at the foot
of the bed.
Philip, following her eyes, slid unobtrusively from her side.
"I--I just thought you'd like to see the dogs, and the baby," he
explained. "Most people do. Mother sent me to tell you it was nine
o'clock, and would you like to get up?"
He made no further references to paws or washings. He merely
whistled again to Angela and the dogs, who were reluctant, but
struggled obediently down from the counterpane, leaving, alas,
distinct traces in all directions.
"If you frow the covers back nobody'll see anything," he hinted from
the doorway, and was gone.
Joy did not take his hint. Instead, she pulled the counterpane off
bodily and put it in the window to sun, and then went on dressing.
Things were so cheerful and sunny and funny in this house.
"Oh, John was right," she thought buoyantly, as she braided her
ropes of hair. "Things do come right if you hope and wish and
_know_ they will!"
The glitter of the ring caught her eyes, in the mirror, between the
bronze ripples of hair, and it reminded her of one thing that was
_not_ settled: her frock for the evening, this wonderful evening
when a party was going to be given for just her!
She asked Phyllis about it as soon as breakfast--a somewhat riotous
meal--was over. She was a little diffident, because she was sure
that any sane grown-up person who was told that there were five good
frocks you hated would tell you you should wear them. But Phyllis
only suggested bringing them down and looking them over. So they did.
"They all have queer things all over them that nobody else wears
except illustrations in historical novels, and they're all of very
good materials," said Joy sadly, laying them out one by one. "And
there isn't one I don't hate to wear. But I never could explain that
to Grandmother, of course."
She looked at Phyllis with a wistful hope in her eyes. Phyllis
thoughtfully lifted the yellow satin skirts of Joy's pet detestation.
"This is a lovely material," she said thoughtfully. "Is it the color
you don't like?"
"N-no," Joy answered doubtfully. "It's the make." Then she burst out
passionately. "I want to look frisky!" she declared. "I want to be
dressed the way John's used to seeing girls. I--I want to look just
as pretty and like folks as Gail Maddox!"