The Wishing-Ring Man Part 32

Joy went out obediently.

"John, I am to send you back as I go through. Tiddy can't do the drafts right," she repeated in a colorless voice that had anger underneath it, and walking on as she spoke.

"Drafts--nonsense--Gail's lonesome," Clarence answered cheerfully, from the couch where he had thrown himself.

"All right," said John, who was the soul of politeness, but an annoyingly dense person compared to Clarence, it seemed to Joy. He went out. Joy ran upstairs as fast as she could go. She arrived at the top, breathless and still angry, and remembered that she ought to go in and see Mrs. Hewitt. But the lights were low, generally a sign that the lady was asleep, so she went on to her own room.

"Blown to bits!" she said to herself bitterly, stopping opposite her confidant, the mirror. "And _she_ sitting on a chair looking like Marie Antoinette being taken to execution in a kitchen chair!"

It was a breathless and tautological remark, but it relieved her feelings. "I oughtn't to feel that way," she reminded herself.

"Because after all, Gail _was_ here first!"

This didn't seem to make much difference in the feelings. And it was unquestionable that she was blown about, and very young and owned no black dress with poppies, nor yet any college boy who would cook for her at a wave of the hand.

She pawed her wardrobe through furiously. Joy was always very dependent for encouragement on the clothes she wore. The proper gown could make her feel the way it looked, always. They almost had moods sewed into them around the bottom, she thought sometimes.

The way she had felt last time she wore the amber satin with the poem to it, that one she had hated so furiously--could she feel that way again if she put on the dress? She'd felt young--oh, yes, but as if youth were a perfectly splendid thing to have. And very alive, and superior, and rebellious. And ready to have a lover, and to treat him, if necessary, like a dog--like a whole kennel of dogs!

So she put it on. She made herself exactly the little princess of Grandfather's reception days, trailing chiffon panels, swinging jewel-filleted braids and all, and swept downstairs with her head high.

Tiddy had by this time managed to get the dinner on the table, and the other two men, out of sheer pity, were helping him. In fact, having enthroned Gail at the table, they were making a frolic of the whole thing.

"Here, catch the steak, Rutherford," John was saying cheerfully. And Clarence, with carving-knife and fork outheld, was making as neat a catch as possible.

"Here, Tiddy, don't try to stagger in along under those biscuits.

You made 'em. That kind takes two strong men--I know, I've eaten your biscuits before."

"I made these the regular way, with yeast," said Tiddy in an injured voice. "_I_ couldn't help it if they didn't rise in the oven.

Go rag the cookbook."

Joy could stand it no longer. Forgetting her real state, she rushed out on them, where they wrestled with the dinner and Tiddy. They were playing handball with the biscuits by this time.

"Oh, _Tiddy!_ You didn't put _yeast_ in those biscuits!"

she reproached him. "Why, you poor unfortunate boy, yeast has to rise over night, or an afternoon anyhow! They're no use!"

They all three stopped simultaneously at the vision which she had quite honestly forgotten she presented. Tiddy listened humbly, and Clarence made a low bow.

"The Queen came in the kitchen, speaking bread and honey," he quoted appositely, while John looked both pleased and proud.

"There, I told you so," he said with triumph. "I said you were in wrong with those biscuits. Joy always knows."

"'It was the very best b.u.t.ter,'" quoted Tiddy (who was not without a sense of humor), from "Alice."

"But what can we do?" asked John, who was concentrated on the situation. "The steak's all right--any idiot can broil steak, as Tiddy has proved--" he had to stop short to dodge a biscuit--"and the soup came out of a can, so maybe that'll do. But there isn't a bit of bread, and we simply have to have it. At least I suppose so."

"Get me an ap.r.o.n, please," Joy asked of the surroundings, and two ap.r.o.ns were offered her excitedly by three willing hands. She pinned both on, as a precaution against ruining the amber satin, though she didn't much mind if it had been ruined, and began by investigating the soup. It was the best canned tomato bisque, but its cook had not known or read that it should be watered, or milked, and it was so thick it was almost stiff. She sent Clarence for milk out of the refrigerator, and treated it properly. Then she looked at the biscuits, such as had escaped destruction. They were indeed hopeless.

"I can make biscuits in a minute, but it will take a half-hour to bake them in this range," she told them, where they stood, anxiously awaiting her verdict. "If you didn't mind having them baked on a griddle----"

"Like the ones the fellow does in the window at Childs'! Fine!"

responded Tiddy enthusiastically. "I'll get the griddle. I've learned where everything grows."

He produced it accordingly, and watched Joy, as did the others, entranced, while she mixed and cut out biscuits, and baked them in the griddle scone-fas.h.i.+on.

They made it a triumphal procession after that, with the biscuits borne high by Tiddy before Joy, who came in carrying the steak, followed by Clarence and John with a dish of canned vegetables apiece. It was far from being the dinner Joy had planned, but the biscuits were greatly admired, and every one was happy. That is, Joy was, and apparently the men were. Joy was so pleased to think that she had been able to straighten out things, and get them a good dinner, that she forgot to think about Gail at all. She sat in the tall armchair at the head of the table where John had placed her, and poured coffee in big cups, to be taken with the dinner, with flushed cheeks and a gay heart.

"But what I want to know is," demanded Clarence, "why n.o.body's ever seen that frock before."

"I have," John answered from the foot. "Joy had that on the very first time I saw her, amber beads and crown and all. I never thought then I'd see her making my biscuits in it."

"It's an allegory," said Clarence. "Man captures the beautiful princess of his dream, and sets her to drudging in his kitchen. _I_ think there is something sad but sweet, as Shaw would say, about it."

"But I wanted to make the biscuits!" cried Joy before she thought.

"If I hadn't there wouldn't have been any for dinner--and you _had_ to have dinner."

"They didn't at all," said Gail. "You spoil men. If you always say, 'But he has to have it!' and then go tearing around getting it for him, why----"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"There are excellent biscuits a half-mile away, at the baker's in the village, and a motor-car outside."

Joy laughed blithely.

"But you see, I'm not used to a motor-car. I'm not motor-people at all.... Well, I suppose when you live with a poet you get in the habit of feeling you must do what people want of you. Grandfather was so great, you see, we felt it was--well, only polite. At least Grandmother brought me up that way."

"I--I say! Was your grandfather _the_ Alton Havenith!"

exclaimed Tiddy, opening his eyes widely. "The one in all the readers and cram-books and anthologies?"

"Is." corrected Joy. "He's quite alive. Yes, that's Grandfather--and this is one of my dresses for his receptions," she added as an afterthought.

"Good _gracious!_" breathed Tiddy reverently. They were at the canned peaches and pound-cake by this time. "I--I suppose you couldn't say any of his things?" he ended diffidently. He was evidently a wors.h.i.+per.

Joy felt quite herself by now, the old self-possessed Joy of the salon and recitations.

"Well, not over the dessert," she said, laughing. "But as soon as dinner is over, if you want me to. There's one I say to a harp.

There's a harp here."

"Can you play a harp, too?" demanded Clarence, "as well as make biscuits? See here, Tiddy, you forget your position in life. You're a cook. Get thee to the kitchen, while Joy entertains us, who are the real quality folks."

"Nonsense," smiled John. "We'll leave things as they are--can't we, Joy?"

He led the way into the parlor and uncovered the harp for her. No one would have guessed by his demeanor that this was the first sign he had had of Joy's accomplishment--he was as matter-of-fact as possible about it. Only once he smiled across at her secretly, as if they had something private between them, as she asked him which thing he thought she had better say to begin with, and named one immediately.

She flung back the chiffon that trailed down one slim, round arm, and, after a little preliminary tuning, began to play. It was "To Myrtilla at Seventeen" that John had suggested, and harp-music went well with it. Then she went on to more. She had never thought that Grandfather would help her this way!

They kept her at the harp most of the evening. From Grandfather's poems she slid to some of Grandmother's old songs, plaintive old things of Civil War days. She was earnestly trying to make her guests and John's have as good a time as lay in her power, and she never thought about Gail, quiet and quite out of the center of the stage, at all.

Tiddy, rapt and wors.h.i.+pful, clung close to her till the evening was over.