The Wishing Moon Part 4

It was only a minute that she stood so. The three were close to him, hiding him. She saw his face again, above Willard's pus.h.i.+ng shoulder, and then--she could not see it.

"Judy, what's the matter? Come on!"

And Judith came. She plunged straight into the struggling group, and hammered at it indiscriminately with two small fists. She caught at a waving coat sleeve, and pulled it--Willard's, and it tore in her hands.

She spotted Eds white sweater, and beat at it fiercely, with all her strength.

"That's me, Judy. Cut it out!"

"Then let him go. Three to one is no fair. Let him go!" They did not hear her, or care which side she was on, or take the trouble to drive her away. Judith drew back and stood and looked at them, breathless and glowing and undefeated, for one long minute.

"Boy," she called then, softly, as if he could hear when the others could not, "wait! It's all right, boy. It's all right."

Then she charged up the steps at Rena. Judy, the most demure and faithful of allies, confronted Rena, amazingly but unmistakably changed to a foe; Judy, with her immaculate and enviable frock smirched and torn, and her sleek hair wildly tossed, her cheeks darkly flushed, and her eyes strange and s.h.i.+ning; a Judy to be reckoned with and admired and feared--a new Judy.

"What's the matter? Are you crazy? What do you want?"

"Make them let him go. They've got to let him go."

"He's a paddy--Neil Donovan--a paddy."

"They've got to let him go.... Give that to me."

"What for? Judy, don't hurt me. Judy!"

Judith wasted no more words. She caught Rena's wrist, twisted it, and s.n.a.t.c.hed the lantern out of her hand. She held it high above her head, and shook it recklessly.

"Don't, Judy! Don't!" The flame sputtered crazily. Judy still shook the lantern, dancing out of reach, and laughing. "Nat--everybody--stop Judy.

She's making the lantern explode. Oh, Ed!"

Natalie heard, and then the others. They looked up at her, all of them.

Rena and Natalie screamed. Willard started toward her. "Put it down, kid," he was calling.

"I'll put it down.... Now boy."

There he was, with Ed's arm gripping his shoulders. He did not give any sign that he knew she was trying to help him, or that he wanted help. He was not afraid of the lantern, like the others. His black eyes were laughing at all of them--laughing at Judith, too. He was looking straight at Judith.

"Now, boy," she called, "now run!" and she gripped the lantern tight, swung it high, and dashed it to the ground.

It fell at the foot of the steps with a crash of breaking gla.s.s. The light sputtered out. The air was full of the smell of spilled kerosene.

In the faint radiance that was not moonlight, but a glimmering reflection of it, more confusing than darkness, dim figures struggled and shrill voices were lifted.

"Get him. Hold him."

"Get the lantern."

"Get Judy."

"Hold him, Ed."

"That's me."

"Get him, Rena."

Judith laughed, and out of the dark he had come from, the dark of May-night, lit by a wis.h.i.+ng moon, that grants your secret wish for better or for worse, irrevocably, a far-away laugh answered Judith's.

The boy was gone.

CHAPTER THREE

Miss Judith Devereux Randall was getting into her first evening gown.

The Green River High School football team was giving its annual September concert and ball in Odd Fellows' Hall to-night. The occasion was as important to the school as a coming-out party. The new junior cla.s.s, just graduated from seclusion upstairs to the big a.s.sembly room where the seniors were, made its first public appearance in society there. Judith was a junior now.

Her first dance, and her first evening gown; it was a memorable scene, fit to immortalize with the first love-letter and the first proposal, in a series of pictures of great moments in a girl's life--chosen by some masculine ill.u.s.trator, touchingly confident that he knows what the great moments of a girl's life are. Judith seemed to be taking this moment too calmly for one.

The dress lay ready on the bed, fluffy and light and sheer, a white dream of a dress, with two unopened florist's boxes beside it, but there was no picturesque disarray of excited toilet-making in her big, brightly lighted room, and no dream-promoting candlelight. And there were no pennants or football trophies disfiguring the daintily flowered wall paper, and no pictures or programs in the mirror of the dainty dressing-table; there was no other young girl's room in town where they were prohibited, but there was no other room so charming as Judith's, all blue-flowered chintz and bird's-eye maple and white fur rugs, and whiter covers and curtains.

Judith was the most charming and immaculate thing in the room, as she stood before the cheval-gla.s.s, bare armed and slim and straight in beruffled, beribboned white, pinning the soft, pale braids tight around her small, high-poised head. Quite the most charming thing, and Norah, fingering the dress on the bed disapprovingly, and giving her keen, sidelong glances, was aware of it, but did not believe in compliments, even to the creature she loved best in the world.

Her mouth was set and her brown eyes were bright with the effort of repressing them. Judith, seeing her face in the gla.s.s, turned suddenly and slipped her arms round the formidable old creature's neck, and laughed at her.

"Don't you think I'm perfectly beautiful?" she demanded. "If you really love me, why not tell me so?"

"Your colour's good." Judith pressed a delicately flushed cheek to Norah's, and attempted a b.u.t.terfly kiss, which she evaded grimly. "Good enough--healthy and natural."

"Oh, no. I made it. Oh, with hot water and then cold, I mean. Nana, don't begin about rouge. Don't be silly. That red stuff in the box on mother's dresser is only nail paste, truly."

"Who sent the flowers?"

"Look and see."

"Much you care, if you'll let me look."

"Do you want me to care?"

"Much you care about the flowers or the party."

Judith had caught up the alluring dress without a second glance, and slipped it expertly over her head, and was jerking capably at the fastenings.

"With the spoiled airs of you, and Willard Nash sending to Wells for flowers, when his father clerked in a drygoods store at his age----"

"Oh, carnations are cheap--or he wouldn't get them."

"These aren't cheap, then."

The smaller box was full of white violets.