The Wishing-Ring Man Part 29

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She fled hatless in the direction of a place that had always meant soothed feelings and comfort generally, the Harrington house.

Phyllis wouldn't be there, to be sure, but the place would have her peace and sunniness about it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Johnny! Come in!"

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

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

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

She says she will if you will."

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

She did not insist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joy flamed up.

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

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

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

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

"She's so charming that n.o.body expects anything else of her," Joy flashed back, "and I have to be good, because all people can like me for is my goodness--is that what you mean?"

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

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

She waved her hand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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