may if you speak to me too severely. See here, Melisande, why did
you go and be all engaged to the worthy Dr. Hewitt? You had four or
five good years of fun ahead of you if you hadn't."
"I mustn't listen to you, if you talk that way," Joy told him quietly.
"Oh, you'd better," said Clarence with placidity. "I'm very interesting."
"You're very vain," Joy told him, laughing at him in spite of herself.
"I am, indeed--it's one of my charms," explained he. "Now that's out
of the way, we'll go on talking."
"Well, go on talking!" Joy answered him childishly, putting her
hands over her ears. "I can go on not listening!"
Clarence accordingly did, while Joy kept her hands over her ears
till her arms were tired and Clarence apparently had no more to say.
Then she dropped them.
"I was reciting the Westminster catechism," Clarence observed blandly.
"I never waste my gems of conversation on deaf ears. Come, Joy of my
life, unbend a little. I don't mean a bit of harm in the world. All I
want is a kind word or two and the pleasure of your society."
Joy looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, and then laughed.
"If you were a poet, here is where you would tell me that the
fetters of wearying and sordid marriage were not for you--that they
wore on your genius," she said unexpectedly.
Clarence gasped. It must have been very much like having the kitten
suddenly turn and offer him rational conversation.
"_Et tu_, Laetitia!" he said in a neat and scholarly manner.
"Joy, you have cruelly deceived me--I thought you were a simple
child of nature."
"I don't know a bit what I am," she answered truthfully, "but the
poets at Grandfather's did talk that way--not to me, but to other
people--and you sounded like them. You aren't really a poet, are you?"
"Well, I've never been overt about it," he evaded. He did not know
what to make of Joy, any more than ever.
Joy, trailing the end of a braid absently in the water, thought a
minute longer, then looked up at him.
"It seems to me," she said suddenly, "that you just mock and mock at
things all the time. I'm not clever, and I can't answer you
cleverly. You might as well make up your mind to it, and then the
way I look won't be a disappointment to you. I know I look like a
medieval princess. It's because I was brought up to. But I'm not the
least bit medieval inside; honestly I'm not. I love to cook and I
love children, and I'm always hungry for my meals. I don't want to
seem discouraging, but I shall really be a dreadful disappointment
to you if you--"
"As long as you have copper-gold hair and sky-blue eyes, _nothing_
you can do will disappoint me," said Clarence caressingly. "Be a
suffragette, if you will--be a war-widow! It's all the same. I can
be just as happy with you--and I intend to be!"
The mockery dropped from his voice for a moment as he said the last
words. Joy looked at him, a little frightened for the moment. She
smiled, then.... She was only nineteen, but she was thoroughly
human, and the spirit of Aunt Lucilla lighted her eyes. She dropped
her black lashes against her pink cheeks and spoke irresponsibly.
"But suppose--suppose I should fall in love with you?" she asked in
a most little-girl voice. "Don't you see how dreadfully unhappy
_I_ would be?"
"Oh, you won't," Clarence assured her in a tone whose casualness did
not quite hide his welcome of the prospect. "We'll just be
interested in each other enough to make it interesting. Why, Joy of
My Life, I wouldn't take anything from good old Hewitt for anything
in the world."
There was a certain amount of conceit in Clarence's voice and
manner, patent even to so inexperienced a person as Joy. He seemed
to think that all he had to do was take! Joy looked at him curiously
for a moment, and then she sighed. Sometimes she almost wished
somebody _would_ take her mind off caring so much for John.
"But this isn't real," she suddenly thought, "the sunshine and the
gaiety and these kind, handsome Harrington people being good to me,
and this Clarence person posing about and trying to toy with my
young affections--why, it's like a fairy tale or a play! ... I just
rubbed the wishing ring, and it happened!"
She forgot Clarence again and began to sing softly under her breath,
watching the ruffled water.
"What are you thinking, Melisande?" asked Clarence softly.
Joy lifted her wide innocent eyes and gave him a discreet version.
"That, after all, this is a glade in Fairyland, and I am the
princess, and you--the dragon," she ended under her breath.
But Clarence, naturally enough, wasn't given to casting himself as a
dragon. He was perfectly certain he was a prince, and said so with
charming frankness.
Joy continued to sing to herself.
"I don't see why I shouldn't kiss your hand, if I'm a prince," he
observed next. "In fact, as nice a little hand as you have really
calls for such."
He reached for it--the nearest, with the wishing ring on it.
She snatched it indignantly away and clasped her hand indignantly
over the ring. That would be profanation!
"I wish somebody would come!" she thought. "I'll have to leave not
only Clarence, but my nice fountain, in a minute." The next thing
she thought was, "What a well-trained wishing ring!" for Viola
appeared between the tall rose trees at the entrance to the little
pleasance.
"Miss Joy, have you seen Philip anywhere?" she asked. "It's his
dinner-time, and I've hunted the house upsidedown for him."
"Nowhere at all," said Joy truthfully, "Oh, is it as late as all
that? I'd better go, Mr. Rutherford."
She followed Viola swiftly out, waving her hand provokingly to
Clarence.
"There's a way out on the other side of the garden," she called back
casually.
"I've found a note from Philip, Viola," Phyllis called as they
neared the house. "He's lunching out, it seems."
She handed Viola the note.
"I hav gon out too Lunchun," it stated briefly. "Yours Sincerely,
Philip Harrington."
"He'll come back," his mother went on, with a perceptible relief in
her voice. "He has a corps of old and middle-aged ladies about the
village who adore him. He's probably at Miss Addison's--she's his
Sunday-school teacher. He really should have come and asked, I
suppose. Well, come in, Joy, and let us eat. Allan won't be
back--he's gone off to some village-improvement thing that seems to
think it would die without him."
They ate in solitary state, except for Angela, and after that
nothing happened, except that they separated with one accord to take
long, generous naps.
Joy was awakened from hers by Phyllis' voice, raised in surprise.
"But, Miss _Addison!_" she was saying, on the porch below Joy's
window, in a tone that was part amusement, part horror.
Joy slipped on her frock and shoes and ran down to share the
excitement. When she got down, Phyllis was just leading the visitor
into the old Colonial living-room, and they were having tea brought
in. Philip was nowhere to be seen.
"A _wheel_barrow!" Phyllis was saying tragically, as she took
her cup from the waitress, who was listening interestedly, if
furtively.
"A wheelbarrow," assented Miss Addison, a pretty, white-haired
spinster. She, too, took a cup.
Phyllis cast up her eyes in horror and, incidentally, saw Joy.
"Come in," she said resignedly. "I'm just hearing how Philip
disported himself at his 'lunchun.'"
"I didn't mean to distress you, but I really thought you should
know, Mrs. Harrington," pursued the visitor plaintively.
"I'm eternally grateful," murmured Phyllis, beginning, as usual, to
be overcome with the funny side of the situation. "But--oh, Joy,
what _do_ you think of my sinful offspring? Miss Addison says
Philip spent the luncheon hour relating to her how his father went
to the saloon in the village, had two glasses of beer, was entirely
overcome, and had to be brought home in--in--" by this time Phyllis
was laughing uncontrollably--"in a _wheel_barrow!"
Joy, too, was aghast for a moment, then the situation became too
much for her, and she also began to laugh.
"Good gracious!" she said.
"And that isn't all!" Phyllis went on hysterically. "After Allan's
friends, or the policeman, or whoever it was, tipped him off the
wheelbarrow onto the front porch (imagine Allan in a wheelbarrow! It
would take two for the length of him!), he staggered in, and would
have beaten me, but that my noble son flung himself between! Then he
was overcome with remorse--wasn't he, Miss Addison?--and signed the
pledge."
"Good gracious!" said Joy, inadequately, again.
"Now, where on earth," demanded Miss Addison, "did he get all that?"
"Only the special angel that watches over bad little boys knows,"
said his mother with conviction. "And it won't tell. I know by
experience that I'll never get it out of Philip. He'll say, sweetly,
'Oh, I just _fought_ it, Muvver!' in as infantile a voice as
possible."
They all three sat and pondered.
"It sounds just like a tract," said Joy at last.
"Exactly like a tract," assented Phyllis. "Do you suppose--in
Sunday-school----"
"I'm his Sunday-school teacher," Miss Addison reminded her
indignantly. "That settles _that!_"
"Well, have some more tea, anyway, now the worst is over," said her
hostess hospitably.... "A _wheel_barrow!"
They continued to sit over their teacups and meditate. Suddenly
Phyllis rose swiftly and made a spring for the bookcase, scattering
sponge-cake as she went.
"I have it, I believe!" she exclaimed. "Well, who'd think--Viola
read this to Philip when he was getting over the scarlatina last
winter. There wasn't another child's book in the house that he
didn't know by heart, and we couldn't borrow on account of the
infection. I took it away from them, but the mischief was done. But
he's never spoken of it or seemed to remember it from that day to
this, and I'd forgotten it, too."
She held up a small, dingy book and opened it to the title-page.
"The Drunkard's Child; or, Little Robert and His Father," it said in
lettering of the eighteen-forties.
It was unmistakably the groundwork of Philip's romance. It had a
woodcut frontispiece of Little Robert in a roundabout and baggy
trousers, inadequately embracing his cowering mother's hoopskirt,
while his father, the Drunkard in question, staggered remorsefully
back. It was all there, even to the wheelbarrow--also inadequate.
"It didn't hurt Philip's great-grandfather," said his mother. "I
don't see why it should have affected Philip as it did. Different
times, different manners, I suppose.... The Drunkard's Child!"
"Where _is_ he?" Joy thought to ask.
"Innocently playing with his little sister in the nursery," said
Phyllis. "Doubtless teaching her that she is a Drunkard's Daughter.
I have him still to deal with.... A wheelbarrow! I wonder what Allan
_will_ say?"
CHAPTER NINE
THE TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE
"It wasn't so much my behavior after I was wheeled home," said
Philip's father mournfully, "as it was my getting so outrageously
drunk on two glasses of beer. That was the final straw. Why couldn't
he have made it several quarts of brandy, or even knockout drops?"
"I hope you don't want an innocent child of that age to know about
knockout drops!" said Clarence Rutherford, the ubiquitous.
"Well, there's something wrong with his environment," said Allan.
"We are his environment," Phyllis reminded him. "As far as I know we
are rather nice people."
The Harringtons, John Hewitt, with Gail and her cousin, not to speak
of Joy, were enjoying an unseasonably hot day in the Harrington
garden. They had all been playing tennis, and now everybody was
sitting or lying about, getting rested. The trees kept the morning
sun from being too much of a nuisance, and there was a tray with
lemonade, and sweet biscuits which were unquestionably going to ruin
everybody's luncheon appetite.
"What that child needs," answered his father, taking another glass
of lemonade and the remaining biscuits, "is young life-companions
his own age."
They had all been racking their brains to think of a punishment that
would fit Philip's crime, or at least some warning that would bring
it home to him. He had been led by Viola, subdued and courteous, to
tell Miss Addison that he had deceived her. He did, very carefully.
"But it _might_ of been my father," he explained as he ended.
"Oughtn't we to be glad that it wasn't my father, Miss Addison?"
Miss Addison, quite nonplused by this unexpected moral turn to the
conversation, had acknowledged defeat, and fed Philip largely. He
had a very good time, apparently, for he grieved to Viola all the
way home over Angela's missing such a pleasant afternoon. When he
returned he flung himself on Allan.
"Oh, Father, _please_ let Angela go, too, next time I go
'pologizing!" he implored. "There were such nice little cakes--just
the kind Mother lets her eat!"
Allan shook his head despairingly.
"Please remove him, Viola," he said. "I want to think."
Not only he, but Phyllis and John, had spent a day thinking. No one
had, as yet, reached any conclusion at all.
"It's all very well for you to be carefree," he said now to John,
who was laughing like the others. "It isn't up to you to see that
the young idea shoots straight."
John's face remained quite cheerful.
"Well, you see, I have Joy's manners and morals to look after," he
said, glancing across at her in a friendly way. "That's enough for
one man."
Joy curled on the warm grass, laughed lazily. She was too pleasantly
tired from tennis to answer. She only curled her feet under her and
burrowed into the grass a little more, like a happy kitten.
It didn't seem as if anything ever need interrupt her happiness. And
as Phyllis had had the happy thought of ordering luncheon brought
out to where they were, there seemed no reason why they should ever
move. There was a feeling of unchangingness about the wonderfully
holding summer weather, and the general lazy routine, that was as
delightful as it was illusive. For the very next day things began to
happen.
They were just finishing breakfast when a telegram came.
"I suppose it's from the De Guenthers, telling us which train to
meet," Phyllis said carelessly, as she opened it.... "Oh!"
"What is it, dear?" asked Allan at her exclamation of distress.
She handed him the telegram.
"Isabel suddenly ill with inflammatory rheumatism. Fear it may
affect heart. Can you come on?"
"They're the nearest thing either of us has to relatives," Phyllis
explained to Joy. "Inflammatory rheumatism! Oh, Allan, we ought to go."
She looked at him across the table, her blue eyes distressed and wide.
"Of course you shall go, my dearest," Allan told her gently, while
Joy wondered what it would be like to have some one speak to her in
that tone. The Harringtons were so careless and joyous in their
relations with each other, so like a light-hearted, casually
intimate brother and sister, that it was only when they were moved,
as now, that their real feelings were apparent.
Joy looked off and out the window, and lost herself in a day-dream,
her hand, as usual, mechanically feeling for the rough carving of
John's ring.
"To be in John's house, close to him, like this, and to have him
speak to me so--wouldn't it be wonderful?" she thought, with a warm
lift of her heart at even the vision of it. She forgot the people
about her for a little, and pictured it to herself.
She had only seen two rooms of the Hewitt house, and that when they
were dressed out of all homelikeness, because of the reception. But
she could think how they would look, with just John Hewitt and
herself going up and down them. They would be happy, too, in this
light-hearted fashion--so happy that they laughed at little things.
They would not talk much about loving each other. But they would
belong to each other, and they would know it. Each of them would
always be there for the other, and know it. They would sit by the
wood fire in the dusk....
"Now to set my house in order," said Phyllis, rising from the table.
"You said the two train, Allan? All right--I can easily be ready for
that, or before, if you like."
She rang for Lily-Anna, who appeared, smiling and comfortable as ever.
"Mr. Harrington and I are going off for some days--perhaps longer,
Lily-Anna," Phyllis explained. "I shall have to leave the children
with you and Viola. Mrs. De Guenther is very ill."
Lily-Anna seemed used to this sort of thing happening, and said she
could manage perfectly well. Indeed, Viola was beamingly amiable
over the prospect, when summoned and told. She volunteered to do any
mending and packing necessary on the spot.
"How beautifully they take it!" marveled Joy when the servants had
gone again, full of shining assurances that all would be well.
"You may well say so!" said Phyllis, lifting her eyebrows. "Their
rapture at getting the children to themselves is almost indecent.
It's all very well to have such attractive infants, but I sometimes
look sadly back to the days when Lily-Anna loved me for myself
alone. And now about you."
"Me?" said Joy in surprise. She had not supposed there was any
question about her.
"You," answered Phyllis decisively. "Here is where I am given a
chance of escape from making a lifelong enemy of your future
mother-in-law." She crossed to the telephone as she spoke, and got
Mrs. Hewitt's number. "This is Phyllis Harrington," Joy heard her
say. "I called up to say that I am yielding in our struggle for
Joy's person. Allan and I have to go away this afternoon. We should
love to have her stay here and chaperone Philip and Angela, but it
seems a waste. Would you like to have her?"
Sounds of fervent acceptance were evidently pouring over the wire,
for Phyllis smiled as she listened.
"She not only wants you," she transmitted to Joy, "but she says that
she'll take no chances on our changing our minds, and is coming for
you in an hour, whether we go or not. She says to tell you that she's
taking you shopping first.... You know, we're to have her back when
we return," she continued firmly to the telephone. "We saw her first."
She hung up the receiver and swept Joy off upstairs with her while
she packed.
"You know, we may never get you again," she warned. "I'm taking a
fearful chance in letting you escape this way. You have to come
back, remember, my child."
"Indeed I will come back," Joy promised fervently.
It seemed so strange that all these people should so completely have
made her one of themselves, even to the point of wanting to keep her
in their homes.
"You are all so good to me!" she said.
"You are exceedingly lovable," explained Phyllis matter-of-factly.
"In fact, Clarence remarked the last time I saw him that you had the
most unusual kind of charm he had ever seen. He said you were like a
sorceress brought up in a nunnery. While I think of it, Joy dear,
Clarence and Gail are two of the most confirmed head-hunters I know.
They ought to marry each other and keep it in the family, but they
won't. I'm not worried about anything Gail can do, but do please
keep your fingers crossed when Clarence drops carelessly in. And
when he starts discussing your souls turn the conversation to the
village water-supply or something as interesting."
Joy smiled a little wistfully.
"John doesn't seem to mind," she said. Then she laughed outright.
"Phyllis, I've seen every one of Clarence's tricks all my life. He's
the only type I'm accustomed to: it's the John and Allan type I
don't know."
"You certainly are a surprise to me," said Phyllis, busily folding a
flesh-colored Georgette waist, and laying it in a tray with
tissue-paper in its sleeves. "I don't seem to be able to teach you
much, which is a good thing. Now you'd better let me help you pack
up enough for a week, for Mrs. Hewitt is due fairly soon."
Joy declined to take any of Phyllis' much-needed time, and went off
to fill her suitcase. It was not until she had put in almost
everything she intended to take that she thought of the wishing ring
again. She looked down at the heavy Oriental carving with what was
almost terror. She had wished for something on it, and once more her
wish had come true. She was going over to be in the house with John,
to see him whenever he was there, to have him--yes, he would have to
pretend, at least, that they were lovers, because of his mother. She
had as nearly what she had wished for as it was possible for a ring
to manage.
"I almost feel as if I had made that poor old lady have the
rheumatism," she thought with a thrill of fear. Then she pulled
herself up--that was nonsense.
"But anyway," Joy told the ring severely, "I won't touch you when I
make wishes after this. I might wish for something in a hurry, and
be terribly sorry afterwards."
But one thing she did wish then, deliberately. She sat back on her
heels and clasped her fingers over the heavy carving of it. "Please,
dear wishing ring, let John be in love with me!" she begged. The
next moment she was scarlet at her own foolishness. The ring
couldn't do that, if it had belonged to Aladdin himself.
So she went on packing. She was a little afraid and excited, going
off to live in the very house with John, but she couldn't help being
a little glad. She would see him for hours and hours every day.
"And oh, dear ring," she whispered, forgetting that she had promised
not to wish any more, "don't let him get tired of having me around!"
She was not quite done when she heard the impatient wail of Mrs.
Hewitt's horn. She stuffed the last things into the heavy suitcase
and ran down, dragging it after her.
Phyllis went out to the car with her, kissing her good-by.
"Now mind, this is only a loan," she told Mrs. Hewitt.
"Nothing of the sort," retorted Mrs. Hewitt with an air of
certainty. "Good-by, my dear. Give my love to Mrs. De Guenther.
Perhaps when you get back I may give an afternoon tea and allow you
to see Joy for a few minutes."
Phyllis laughed, and patted Mrs. Hewitt's gloved hand where it lay
on the steering-wheel.
"Use our place all you like, as usual," she said in sole reply, "and
don't forget to miss me."
"That's one of the loveliest girls that ever lived," said Mrs. Hewitt
as they sped away. "Anybody but Phyllis I _would_ begrudge you to.
Oh, my dear, we're going to have the best time!"
Joy squeezed the hand that should have been, but wasn't, helping the
other hand steer. Mrs. Hewitt was so adorably a young girl inside
her white-haired stateliness!
"We're going to the next village to buy materials," she told Joy
blithely, "and then we're going home to make them up, or I am. It
won't hurt to get a bit of the trousseau under way, and you know I
haven't sewed a thing for my daughter for thirty-four years--not
since the wretched child turned out to be John, and I had to take
all the pink ribbons out and put in blue!"
Mrs. Hewitt's inconsequent good spirits, somehow, took away some of
the dread with which Joy had been looking forward to her sojourn in
John's house. She allowed herself to be motored over to the next
town, where there was fairly good shopping, and went obediently into
the stores. It was not until she saw the lady ordering down for
inspection bolts of crêpe de Chine and wash satin and glove silk in
whites and pinks and flesh-colors, that the full inwardness of the
thing dawned on her. For evidently Mrs. Hewitt had every intention
of paying for all this opulence, and Joy didn't quite see what to do
about it. Nor did the pocket-money her grandfather had given her
when she left him warrant her paying for the things herself, even if
she used it all.
"Please don't get these things," she whispered when she found a
chance. "I--I think I oughtn't to."
"Oughtn't to, indeed," replied Mrs. Hewitt coolly. "'Nobody asked
you, sir, she said!' I'm getting them myself. I may be intending to
make up a set of wash-satin blankets for the Harrington bulldog for
all you know. I don't think he'd be surprised--they treat him like a
long-lost relative now. Now be sensible, darling. Do you think
valenciennes or filet would be better to trim the blankets? Or do
you like these lace and organdy motifs? They'd look charming on a
black bulldog."
Joy laughed in spite of herself.
"There's no doing anything with you," she said.
"Not a thing!" said the triumphant spoiled child whom the world took
for an elderly lady. "Now we'll get down to business. Would you
rather have crêpe or satin for camisoles? Half of each would be a
good plan, I think, if you have no choice."