The Wishing-Ring Man Part 35

"n.o.body can find us on a galloping car," he said persuasively.

But Joy was more steadfast than Phyllis.

"I expect Tiddy over to rehea.r.s.e with me," she said. "He will be here in about five minutes. You know that 'Good morrow, good mother'

thing that he has to do prancing in and playing on a pipe. And none of us can make out what a pipe is. Tiddy says if there's no further light on it by next rehearsal he's going to use a meerschaum."

"You might let me rehea.r.s.e with you," grumbled John. "Every time I come near I find you dancing hand-in-hand with Tiddy or Clarence or Mrs. Beeson" (Mrs. Beeson was the gigantic Fairy Queen) "or sewing on some wild thing for some seminary child."

"Some of those seminary children are only a year younger than I am,"

she reminded him. "But if you would like to rehea.r.s.e your part with me you'll have to go find Allan. All your scenes are with him."

"Allan has a well-trained wife and a lock on his door," said John, who didn't in the least need to rehea.r.s.e. "I have neither. Mother has made our house a happy hunting-ground, and at this moment Gail and Tiddy and Clarence are putting the Chorus of Peers through its paces. They aren't properly hand-picked. One of 'em squeaks."

"They had to pick him, because he was so grand and tall," Joy explained. "He isn't supposed to sing. I suppose he got carried away."

"Suppose you get carried away," coaxed John, returning to the charge.

"Now, John, you know the thing is to be given in a week," remonstrated Joy. "And I have heaps to learn, and any amount more to sew."

"Nevertheless--" said John, and suddenly laughed and tried to pick her up. He was very strong, and she was light and little, but she resisted valiantly. They were laughing and struggling like a couple of children, when they heard footsteps, and shamefacedly composed themselves to look very civilized. The choruses were all over the village at all times of the day and night after study hours, and John specially had to look after his decorum in their presence. But it was only Philip.

"Seems to me it would be pleasanter," he remarked without preface, "if Angela and I had parts in this play. Angela thinks so, too."

"Where is Angela?" asked Joy idly.

"I put her up a tree," said Philip. "She's playing she's a little birdie. You haven't got any candy that we could play was worms, have you, Johnny?" he finished insinuatingly.

But John and Joy had heard a wail in the direction whence Philip had come, and neither of them stopped to reply. Angela alone and up a tree was a picture that had appalling possibilities, and she was certainly crying as if the worst of them had happened.

The wails seemed to come from the little pleasance where the fountain was, and Joy, as she ran, had a vision of a tree which Philip did climb with a ladder, and which he was quite capable of making Angela climb, too. The drop from his favorite limb was quite six feet.

Joy reached the pleasance first. It was Angela who was shrieking, but the worst had not quite happened. She had wriggled herself out of the safe crotch where Philip had put her, and it was Heaven's mercy that she had not fallen. But her frock was a stout blue gingham, fortunately, and a projecting branch-stump was thrust through it, holding her in a horizontal position along the bough.

She was crying and wriggling, and in another minute or so she might have fallen to the ground. There was a slight chance that she would have struck on the fountain.

Joy was up the ladder and had the child in her arms in a moment. She held her till John, reaching up from below, relieved her of the burden, and set Angela on the gra.s.s, where she continued to cry.

"Such a lot of crying about just a little hole in your frock!"

remarked Philip to Angela. "I should think you'd be ashamed!"

At which Angela stopped crying.

"_Big_ hole!" she said defensively, with a gulped-down sob, and began smoothing it down, where she sat on the gra.s.s.

"Angela, Angela! Oh, Angela, is my baby hurt?" cried Phyllis, flying in from the garden path outside. She had heard the child cry, from where she and Allan were in the living-room, and with a mother's instinct had fled out and down to where the child was. Allan was hurrying behind her, but before he could catch her she had caught her foot on the root that stood out of the ground in a loop, and fallen headlong, striking her head on the edge of the marble basin.

She lay, white and still, where she had fallen. Allan was at her side in a moment, begging her to speak to him.

"Is she dead, John?" he demanded pa.s.sionately of John, kneeling beside her. "Good G.o.d, man, can't you speak--is she dead?"

"She's stunned," John answered. "I think that's all."

"Her heart is beating," said her husband, with his hand on it. "I--I think it is. Oh, Phyllis, darling, won't you speak to me?"

Joy put her hand quietly on his shoulder.

"Allan," she said, "John can't do anything as long as you won't let him get near Phyllis. He can help quicker than you can."

Allan s.h.i.+vered a little, then raised Phyllis so that her head rested on his knee, and John could get at her.

"Do something quickly, John," he said. "I shall go crazy if she lies that way much longer. It's the first time I ever asked her for anything that she didn't give it to me--" his throat caught.

"She'll be all right in a minute, old fellow. Don't take it that way," John rea.s.sured him. "Joy, dear, run to the house and get some brandy and spirits of ammonia, and a spoon. Hurry."

Joy sped back to the house, and got the things from Lily-Anna, who unlocked and found with quick, capable hands, though she was evidently trying not to cry as she did it.

"Jus' a natural-born angel," she said. "Here, hurry back, Miss Joy.

Yas, that kind's too good to live. I might a' knowed it long ago.

There's everything, child. Now go on!"

It had seemed forever to Joy, but John a.s.sured her that she had been very swift. They forced a little of the stimulant through Phyllis'

teeth, and presently her color began to come back.

"There, she's coming round, Allan," said John. "You see there was no need to be so worried."

"It wasn't you," said Allan briefly, then straightway forgot everything else, as Phyllis' eyes opened.

"I'm dizzy," she said faintly. Then she saw Allan's face over hers, and farther away the others, grave and anxious, and she smiled.

"Why, Allan, you poor boy, I've worried you to death. I'm--sorry--dear."

Her breath came a little hard for a moment, for it had been a bad fall; but she was nearly all right again in a few minutes more, and laughing.

"Allan, if you don't stop looking as if the world had come to an end, I shall faint again, whether I want to or not," she said. "You foolish man, didn't you ever see anything like that before?"

"The world nearly did come to an end," said Allan in a low voice.

She made no answer to this in words, but Joy saw her catch Allan's hand and hold it hard for a moment before the men helped her to rise to her feet. She was perfectly able to walk, she declared, after standing a moment and recovering from the dizziness that came over her for a moment when she got up. She went back to the house with Allan's arm around her, and the children, whom n.o.body had as yet taken time to scold, following, awestruck and very meek, at a safe distance behind.

"He _did_ act as if the world had come to an end," mused Joy aloud. "I was frightened for a minute, though."

"You didn't show it. You were very brave and clear-headed," John told her comfortingly.... "I don't know that I'd have behaved very differently in his place. As he said, it wasn't I."

"Oh, was that what he meant?" said Joy. "I didn't quite know."

"Thank heaven it wasn't!" said John.