The Wishing-Ring Man Part 17

Joy watched Miss Maddox with fascinated eyes. "I'm so _young_!"

she thought forlornly, "and all the rest of them are so dreadfully grown-up!"

She felt as if Gail Maddox, with her brilliant, careless sentences, and her half-insolent confidence, owned everybody there much more than _she_ did: and she felt little and underdressed and outcla.s.sed to a point where even Gail might pity her, and probably did.... And if there is a more abjectly awful feeling than that the Other Girl pities you, n.o.body has discovered it yet.... Gail might even know how much of a pretender she was. If John--but no. John wasn't like that.

He was--"fantastically honorable," she had heard Phyllis call it.

John hadn't told--he wouldn't tell if his own happiness depended on it.... And Joy let her thoughts stray off into a maze of wondering as to whether she would rather have her self-respect saved by not having Gail know, or whether, if it would break John's heart to be separated forever from Gail, she oughtn't to tell him to tell.

Gail, lounging in a low chair she had dragged across the waxed floor in the face of all outcries, with one electric-blue-shod foot stretched out before her, looked exactly the person you'd care least to have know anything they could scorn you about. She could scorn so well and so convincingly, Joy felt, listening to her. There wouldn't be a thing left of you when she got through.

"I feel as alone as Robinson Crusoe," thought Joy forlornly.

She rose restlessly and picked up the tray which had borne their illegal sandwiches, with the idea of carrying it and herself out of sight. She wanted a minute to brace herself in.

As she did it, Allan rose, too, unexpectedly, as he did most things.

"Here, I'll take some of those," he offered, and helped her carry the debris out.

They set down their burdens on a pantry table, whence three scandalized maids whisked them somewhere else again, gazing the while reproachfully at the invaders.

"I haven't any use for that girl," stated Allan plainly, as they went back. "Don't let her fuss you, Joy."

Joy looked gratefully up at him. The whole world, then, didn't prefer Gail Maddox to her!

"She makes me feel exactly like a small dog that has stolen a bone and got caught," Joy acknowledged directly, with a little shamefaced laugh.

"She'll do her best in that line," responded Allan, who seemed to have no great affection for the lady. "Don't let her bother you.

He's your bone--hang on to him. In short, sic 'em!"

They both laughed, and Joy came back with her bronze head high and an access of fresh courage. She sat down this time between John and the cousin, whose name she had not heard. But she began talking hard to him. Occasionally she tossed John, fenced in beside her, a cheerful word. He seemed perfectly satisfied at first, but the cousin did not. He wanted Joy all to himself, it appeared, and a fiance more or less seemed to have no bearing on the case, as far as he was concerned.

Presently John woke up to this fact and began the effort to repossess himself of his lawful property. Joy cast a mischievous glance at Allan, sitting on the arm of his wife's chair (chairs had become the order of the day), and Allan grinned happily, by some means telegraphing the situation to Phyllis. Every one was happy except John, and perhaps Gail, who presently eyed the three and used her usual weapon of lazy frankness.

"It makes me furious to see both of you making violent love to Joy Havenith," she said indolently. "Clarence, go start the victrola, my good man. This must be put a stop to."

Clarence lifted himself from the floor by Joy, but he calmly took her hand along with him, and raised her, too.

"She's going to christen the floor with me," he informed his cousin.

"Come on, Miss Joy!"

The isolation that ordinarily doth hedge an engaged girl, where men are concerned, seemed to trouble Clarence not at all. He was, by the way, in spite of the fact that he would some day be too stout, one of the best-looking men who ever lived. He had a good deal of his cousin's lazy a.s.surance--in him it sometimes verged on impudence, but never beyond the getting-away-with point--and a heavenly smile.

His other name was, unbelievably, Rutherford, which almost took the curse off the Clarence, as he said, but not quite. And if he had gone into the movies he would have made millions, beyond a doubt.

He drew Joy across the floor with him, in her green-and-silver draperies, and began to wind the victrola, which had been tucked into a nook where Mrs. Hewitt had vainly hoped it would be quite hidden. There was to be an orchestra afterwards for the authorized dancing.

Clarence put on "Poor b.u.t.terfly," and encircling Joy proceeded to dance away with her.

"But I don't know how to dance," she gasped as she felt herself being drawn smoothly across the floor.

"That doesn't matter, Sorcerette, dear," said Clarence blandly.

"Just let go--be clay in the hands of the potter. I'll do the dancing for two. Hear me?"

Joy did as she was told, and--marvel of marvels!--found herself following him easily. She was really dancing!

"But why did you call me that?" she demanded, like a child, as she got her breath. To her apprehensive mind the name sounded as if Gail had not only learned her dark secret but had pa.s.sed it on to her dear Cousin Clarence.

"Because you look it," said he promptly, in a voice that softened from word to word. "...Harrington is a good dancer, isn't he? Phyllis looks all right, but I fancy she guides hard. Those tall women often do....

Why, anybody with brows and lashes like yours, and hair that color, combined with that angelic please-guide-me-through-a-hard-world expression simply shrieks aloud for a name like that. A sorcerette is a cross between a seraph and a little witch. There's no telling what she might do to you!"

"Oh!" cooed Joy.

It sounded like a very happy "Oh," and Clarence, experienced love-pirate though he was, hadn't a way in the world of knowing that Joy's pleasure came of being still undiscovered, not of his winning ways.

She danced on with him to the very last note of the record, enraptured to find that she really could dance, and came back to the end of the room where Mrs. Hewitt still sat; her eyes starry with delight.

"Oh, I can dance when I just go where the man takes me!" she cried.

"I never knew I could!"

"You dance very well," said John's quiet voice from behind his mother's chair. "Will you dance with me now?"

Joy, regarding him, saw that he was vexed. Most people would not have noticed it, but very few of his moods escaped Joy. He was a little graver than usual, and his voice was quieter.

"If I can," she answered. "I thought you were dancing this with Miss Maddox."

"I didn't think it would show proper courtesy to my fiancee to dance first with some one else," John answered.

Clarence had set the music going again, and was swinging round the room with Gail. As it began, John, with no more words, drew Joy out on the floor with him.

She looked up in surprise at his words.

"Why--why, I didn't know I was that much of a fiancee to you. I thought probably you'd rather be with Gail. And--and I didn't know I was going to dance anyway. I didn't know I could!"

He looked down at her again, apparently to see whether she was in earnest, holding her off for a moment as they danced.

She hoped he would deny that he preferred being with Gail, but he did not.

"We are going through our month of relations.h.i.+p _right_," he told her definitely, smiling, but looking down at her with the steady, steel-colored light in his gray eyes that she knew meant "no appeal." "Gail does not enter into it at all. But I admit that Rutherford's quickness put me in the wrong."

"If only," thought Joy, acutely conscious of his firm hold, "instead of laying down the law that way, he would let go and admit that he was angry!" For he certainly was, and it wasn't at all her fault, unless going where Clarence took her was a crime. John _hadn't_ thought of dancing first. Was he the kind of person who always thought he was right even when he knew he wasn't? If so, maybe a month _was_ long enough.... But the thought of the end of the month hurt, no matter how unreasonable she tried to think John, and she threw down her arms--the only way, if she had known, to make John throw down his.

"Are you angry at me?" she half whispered. "I--please don't be angry. n.o.body ever was, and I don't want to be silly, but I don't believe I could stand it."

He swept her rhythmically on, but she could feel his arm relax and hold her more warmly, and his wonderful gray eyes softened again as they looked into hers.

"Poor little thing! I keep forgetting that you're just a child.

Sometimes you aren't, you know."

"No, sometimes I'm not," Joy echoed. Then she laughed up at him impishly. "You say this thing is going to be done right?" she mocked. "Very well, then, when Mr. Rutherford is nice to me you ought to be nicer. When he sits down close to me and tells me I'm a sorcerette--"

"A what?" demanded John swiftly. "See here, Joy, I'm practically in charge of you, and you're very young, you know, and can't be expected to know much about men. Rutherford is attractive and all that, but he's a man I wouldn't trust the other side of a biscuit.

Any man can tell you that. Allan--"