The Wishing-Ring Man Part 34

"Don't worry, dear," murmured Phyllis from the other side of her.

"Other people don't, either. But n.o.body takes her seriously."

It was a light in Joy's mind on Gail. n.o.body took her seriously. She was just a reckless, erratic creature who said and did as she pleased, and paid the penalty. Joy never felt so in awe of Gail again.

"It is a very modern school," said Phyllis to the company in her sweet, carrying voice. "The teachers are quite in favor of esthetic dancing, I know, and I am sure if you had two or three of the teachers in it, too, to look after the girls, there would be no difficulty.

I will go and ask, if you like. We need a _Leila_ and _Fleta_."

"Oh, say, Mrs. Harrington, I thought you were going to be one of those, at least!" protested Tiddy, to whom it seemed a shame that Phyllis' golden loveliness should be wasted. Allan was _Lord Tolloller_, the other suitor, but Phyllis preferred, she said, to be generally useful. She was practically understudy to every one in the place, having a quick memory and a good ear, and spent her time, besides, hearing parts. Her real reason for not wanting to play was that she was afraid the De Guenthers would be left too much to themselves if she was tied up to rehearsals. Clarence worked every one mercilessly.

She shook her head good-naturedly.

"I shall probably have to take the leading man's part on the night,"

she told him. "Oh, I forgot it was you, Tiddy--I beg your pardon.

Well, Clarence's, then. And until that awful moment, let me be happy in obscurity!"

Joy, who had _Iolanthe's_ long, hard part to learn, and was delighted with the idea, fixed her eyes on the opposite wall and tried to remember what she had to say first. She was staying on by special permission, for the opera. Mrs. Hewitt herself had written Grandmother. Grandfather, very much pleased at the idea that Joy had inherited another form of his own talent, had said she could stay the full week of the performance. As they planned to give it on a Tuesday night, this was almost a week to the good.

"Then it's settled that Mrs. Harrington and Gail, with as many more as are needed, go chorus-hunting tomorrow," said Clarence with finality. "Now we'll start that 'When darkly looms the day' duet.

Tiddy, Joy! Look interested, please. Bang the piano, if you don't mind, Mrs. Harrington. Now!"

Joy and Tiddy accordingly burst into song, a.s.sisted by Allan and John. Mrs. Hewitt, who had to be very stealthy about coming in, because she had been put out several times for talking in the middle of some exciting moment, slid into a chair beside the De Guenthers, and behaved n.o.bly. She was quite able to be around now, and Joy was beginning to feel that she ought to accede to Phyllis' requests to go back and stay with them a while. The children demanded her daily.

"I do hope the gate receipts will be more than the expenses,"

Clarence said hopefully in a resting-s.p.a.ce. "The last time I got up anything like this we cleared just two dollars. We'd formally dedicated it to a Home for the Aged, in the blessed hope that the directresses would sell tickets enough to fill the hall. But they didn't. They took our two dollars away from us just the same. I always begrudged them that two-spot."

"If you have the girls' school in it that can't happen," Gail reminded him. "They're little demons at ticket-selling."

So next day Phyllis took Joy with her, and also the De Guenthers as an evidence of deep respectability, and they drove over to the school, and actually secured the co-operation of the girls and their teachers. The thing was being so hurried through, as amateur theatricals should be to go well, that the whole thing would be over in two and a half weeks more. As Phyllis was personally very much liked by the princ.i.p.al, there was very little trouble made about it.

Indeed, the teachers planned to take notes and borrow costumes, and give the thing themselves as a commencement entertainment the next June, if it proved possible.

The boys were rather harder to get, but here, too, they succeeded, finally. And "Iolanthe" went prosperously on.

In a couple more days Phyllis, who really could get almost anything she wanted from almost anybody, if she took the trouble, coaxed Joy back from Mrs. Hewitt.

"You'll have her most of the rest of your natural life," she pleaded. "And I saw her first. I think I ought to have her now."

So Mrs. Hewitt reluctantly gave her up, and she went back to the Harrington house.

She saw scarcely less of John, because he continued to come regularly to see them in the mornings on his way home, and generally got in a little visit in the afternoons, not counting the fact that he took her on his rounds with him three days out of five. And then, of course, there were the rehearsals.

"My dear," he remonstrated with her, as they were on their way home from one of these, "I don't want to seem to scold you, but you shouldn't let young Gray put his arm around you the way he does."

"Put his arm around me?" demanded Joy, quite honestly surprised.

"Why, what do you mean? Oh--the rehearsals! Why--why, John! You and Allan have to put your arms around Gail every little while, and so does everybody else. And I'm supposed to be _Strephon's_ mother.

People have to, in theatricals."

"Clarence seems to think so," said John dryly, and Joy turned her head to look at him more closely in the moonlight.

"And now Clarence! Little Philip Harrington does, too, and I suppose you'll be telling me to have him stop next!"

But at the scorn in her voice John only became firmer.

"Gail Maddox is entirely different," he explained. It seemed to Joy that if he had offered her that explanation once he had a hundred times.

"Gail is not different," said Joy firmly. "Anyway, Tiddy is just a baby."

John could not help laughing.

"He's not the only one who is just a baby," he said. "You little goose, he's three or four years older than you ... and heaven knows how much younger than I am." The thought of that, for some strange reason, worked a change in his mind. "Never mind me, little girl. I suppose I'm unreasonable."

"Well, yes, I think you are," said Joy honestly. Then she laughed.

It was very comfortable to have John jealous, even if it _was_ silly of him. "All right, John, hereafter I will wear a wire cage whenever I have any scenes with Tiddy."

"Better wear it when you have scenes with Clarence," said John rather sharply. "And let me tell you, a man that will try to steal----"

"Oh, nonsense!" said Joy calmly again. "First you say that Clarence is toying with me, then you say he's trying to steal me. Now it stands to reason he can't do both."

She was so practical about it that John stopped in spite of himself.

"I'm afraid I'm too much given to thinking people want to steal you," he said a little soberly.

Joy wondered for the thousandth time about the nature of men....

Sometimes she almost thought she had made John care a good deal for her. And then again, when he rose up and defended Gail, she quite thought she hadn't. But as for Clarence, all that was very foolish.

From the time she had seen him every one in the village who had come near her, it seemed to her, had carefully made it plain that Clarence was a male flirt, a love pirate, a gay deceiver, a trifler, a person with no intentions--anything but a man who was in love with her. He had practically said so himself, as far as she could remember. And she had been very pleased with the idea, and enjoyed his behavior--happy in the belief that everything he said had a stout string to it--very much. Even John admitted that he was amusing, and certainly he was good-looking and clever.

But she smiled up at John.

"It is very nice of you to feel that way," she said. "I appreciate it."

"You annoying little person!" he replied, half-laughing. "Joy, if I hadn't learned that you were one of the most honest, straightforward girls in the world, sometimes I would think you were a good deal of a coquette."

"We're here," said Joy irrelevantly for an answer. She still wished she knew more about men.

Phyllis' remark about being useful seemed to be in a fair way to be fulfilled. Allan threatened to put out a sign, he said, on the front gate, "No coaching done between twelve and three A.M." Finally he did discover an excellent scheme, which consisted of making the house and garden look deserted, and locking himself and Phyllis in the library most of the day.

"It's rather pleasant," he informed her. "Since I developed this plan I'm really getting more of your uninterrupted society than I have since this terrible "Iolanthe" devastated the village.... Just why did it happen, Phyllis--have you any idea?"

"Speak lower," said Phyllis. "I'm perfectly certain I heard footsteps."

"Probably a deputation from Miss Addams' school, to ask you whether the right or left foot comes first," her husband answered her quite accurately.

"But, Allan dear," protested Phyllis, "you know perfectly well that if I don't go out and stem the tide they will find Joy, and tear the child away from the first moment she's had with John alone since I don't know when."

"This is the first moment I've had alone with you since I don't know when," he answered, unmoved, coming over and putting both arms around her, to draw her resolutely away from the door. "And if you will consider carefully, my darling, you will remember that Joy is much younger than either of us, and hence has many more years to spend with John than you have with me. Now cease to be a slave to duty, or whatever it is, and come sit on the arm of my chair."

"You'll never grow up!" said Phyllis protestingly; but she ceased to be a slave to duty immediately, and sat on the arm of his chair until he pulled her down on his lap, which he did almost on the spot.

Meanwhile Joy, walking up and down in the garden paths and memorizing her part, had been found by John, who was trying to lure her off for a ride.