The Wishing-Ring Man Part 13

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 ma.s.ses 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 s.p.a.cious 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 const.i.tuted 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 un.o.btrusive in a corner of the room, spelling out a fairy-book. The only other occupant of the room, Joy saw, was her trial fiance.

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 embarra.s.sed 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 embarra.s.sed, 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 a.s.sured 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 wis.h.i.+ng ring could bring her to a real lover...

She raised her surprising eyes to him demurely.

"Thank you," she said with all apparent grat.i.tude. "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, c.o.c.king 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 demiG.o.d 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 n.o.ble, thank goodness!

"People who are n.o.ble, 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 n.o.bly 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.