The Wishing-Ring Man Part 2

"I'm so glad you've come!" she almost said. He seemed like some one she had been waiting for a long while, some way, instead of the usual stranger you had to get used to. There was such a breath of freshness and courage and cheer in just the few words he had spoken and the little laugh they were borne on, that Joy felt irrationally what a nice world it was. Then she remembered to reply to what he had said.

"It isn't a privilege, being me," she explained from her shadows.

He looked over to where her voice came from, but there wasn't anything visible except a little dark heap on the last three stairs.

"I could tell better if I could see you," he stated pleasantly.

"Don't you want to take the hint?"

But Joy, mindful of the hanging braids that would certainly make him think she was a little girl, would not take it at all. She snuggled against the wall.

"Oh, you can see me any time," she said carelessly, "but you can scarcely ever get to talk to me. At least, I heard somebody say so last month."

She felt quite like somebody else, a gay, teasing, careless sort of real girl, talking to him here in the dark. She was sure she wouldn't if the lights were on. She could talk to him as if he were some one out of a book or a story, so long as he didn't know she looked like a book-person or a play-person herself.

"Well, anyway, do let me stay here," he begged, doing it. "For the last hour I haven't felt as if it was much of a privilege to be me, either. Do you know that feeling of terrible personal unworthiness you get at a party where everybody knows everybody else and n.o.body knows you? I feel like precisely the kind of long, wiggly worm the little boy ate."

Joy felt very sorry for him; because if she didn't know that feeling she knew one to match it; having everybody know her and n.o.body think of playing with her.... This man was playing with her for a minute, anyway.

"And I'll always have him to remember," she thought happily, "even when I'm an old, old lady, writing reminiscences of Grandfather, the way they all say I should ..." She went off into a little daydream of writing all this down in her reminiscences, and having him--old, too, then--write back to her and say that he, also, had always remembered the time happily, and wondered who she was.... Then she answered him.

"You know me, anyway--don't say you know no one," she told him.

"Anyway, I'm glad you're talking to me. I'm Joy."

He laughed again, leaning against the door-frame in the thread of light.

"Then you're something I've been looking for a long time," he said.

"I've had friends and success, and good times--but I've never found Joy till now."

She knew, of course, that he was just being pleasant about her name, as people were sometimes. But it sounded very lovely to remember.

"I'm Alton Havenith's granddaughter," she explained sedately. And, with a sudden desire that he should know the worst, she added, "I'm the one he writes poetry to."

He must have caught a note of regret in her voice--oh, he was a very wonderful person! for what he said wasn't a bit what Joy expected even him to say--the "How lovely for you!" that she was braced for.

"Why, you poor kiddie!" said he, "and you ought to be playing tag or tennis or something. I can't see much of you, except one braid that the light's on; but you're just a little thing, aren't you?"

Joy did not answer. She looked up at him, as the crack of light widened behind him, and showed him clearly for a moment. He was so very handsome, standing there with his brows contracted in a little frown over his pleasant gray eyes, that Joy felt her heart do a queer thing, as if it turned over.

He came a little nearer her, and sat down on the floor, below her, quite naturally.

"And you're awfully lonesome, and you wish something would happen?"

said his kind voice. It was a lovely voice, Joy thought. It was authoritative, yet with a little caressing note in it, as if he would look after you very carefully--and you would love it.

"How did you know?" she asked.

"Oh, I just could tell," he said, and it seemed a perfectly clear explanation. "Well, don't forget that there's lots of time yet. You just keep on believing things _will_ happen--don't lose heart--and maybe they will."

Somehow, the way he said it, Joy was sure they would.

"Like a wis.h.i.+ng ring?" she asked eagerly.

He laughed.

"You _are_ a kiddie. Why, yes, like a wis.h.i.+ng ring, if you like."

Before Joy could answer there came a brisk voice from the door.

"Oh, this is where you've hidden! You may be decorative, Jack, but as an escort I've known nephews more useful."

Joy looked up and saw a tiny elderly lady, quite a new one, in the doorway.

"Good-by, Joy," he said in too low a voice for the old lady to hear.

"I'm glad we've met--I can't say I'm glad to have seen you, because I haven't, you know. But thanks for a human five minutes--and keep hoping."

He sprang lightly to his feet, opened the door, shut the door--was gone, and Joy was alone in the dark again.

She smiled up at Aunt Lucilla unseeingly.

"Not even Lafayette could have been as kind as that," she said proudly, and leaned happily against the wall again.

"Why, Joy, dear, don't you want to come in and see the people?"

Grandmother was asking her solicitously, bending over her. "You aren't sick again, are you?"

Joy sprang up with a little laugh.

"Not a bit," she a.s.sured her. "I'm especially all right. Why, yes--I'll come in if you want me, of course. The people don't matter."

She threaded her way, behind Grandmother, up and down the parlors for the next hour, quite happy. She'd had such a wonderful five minutes in the back hall--why, what difference did it make if Mr.

James Arthur Gosport captured her and told her about his ideas on universal brotherhood? She didn't have to listen specially, because she knew just what he was going to tell: the story about how he went out from his parlor-car and hunted through the day-coach to find a brake-man, on purpose to tell him how fond he was of him. And how the brakeman's eyes filled up with tears at being loved, and how Mr.

Gosport had to hurry back to his Pullman in order not to go to pieces himself.

When Mr. Gosport told this tale--it was one he used in his lectures, and it always went splendidly--Joy usually had to keep herself from wondering why he didn't go to pieces anyhow; he was so long and loosely built you'd think he was merely pinned together. But this afternoon she smiled at him so brightly that he liked the way he told the story better than ever. She was really thinking--

"The man she called Jack is built ever so much better than Mr.

Gosport is. _He_ wouldn't just cry over a brakeman. He'd give him some money or...."

"It is very wonderful to feel that we are all brothers, and that so little a thing as bringing it home to a train-hand could move him so profoundly," finished Mr. Gosport, cheered by the success of his anecdote. "I make it a point never to neglect such little things--"

He was left with a period in mid-air, for Joy, with a flurry of skirts, was running toward her grandfather. She didn't care a bit whether men were all brothers or second cousins; she thought maybe Grandfather would know the real name of the man she had talked to, the one besides Jack.

"Grandfather, what was the name of the man with curly, fair hair and big gray eyes, the one who had a little old lady with him?" she demanded breathlessly, clinging to her grandfather's arm and interrupting him ruthlessly in the middle of something he was saying to somebody.

"I haven't the faintest recollection," said Grandfather; and Grandmother whispered:

"Come away, dear. The lady with him just asked him whether he wrote under his own name or a nom-de-plume, and you know how irritating that is."

Joy came obediently away. After all, it didn't matter about Jack's other name. She knew perfectly well that she should see him again.

Everything was bound to go happily.... And till she saw him again, she had him to remember.