The Wishing-Ring Man Part 9

"But even nineteen," he explained, "isn't particularly aged to an elderly gentleman of thirty-four."

"As old as that?" queried Joy.

She looked at _him_ again in the light of new information, but she shelved it for the time, and went on with her defense.

"Well, that afternoon, when things were perfectly down to the very flattest bottom--'and not a ray of hope to gild the gloom'--you came. And things brightened up. You know you told me that if I hoped along, things I wanted would come?"

"I do know it!" said John with a fervor she did not understand.

"Well, they did!" she announced, looking at him radiantly, and pausing a little so he would have time to realize it.

John Hewitt's patients had always told him that just his coming in made them better, and he had simply accepted the faculty as useful in his work. But he had never thought that his personality could affect a perfectly well person. At Joy's tribute, unconsciously given, his pulse quickened a little. Had he really had this much power for happiness over the child?...

"Almost right away they brought me to this lovely place," she went on happily, "and almost right after that I met the Harringtons. It's all seemed to me because of your wis.h.i.+ng ring."

"What wis.h.i.+ng ring?" he asked, smiling indulgently at her, as one does at a child's fancies.

"Don't you remember?" she asked a little forlornly. "Well--you have such lots of things to remember! You said, 'Just keep on believing things will come right, don't lose heart, and they will.' I said, 'Like a wis.h.i.+ng ring?' and you said, 'Yes.' I've felt as if I wore one--played I did, I suppose you'd say. I--I suppose I really am not being grown-up very well, after all.... Well, after I knew Phyllis the best thing of all happened. She asked me to come stay with her, and have roses and a moon, and children all day long. But Grandfather always said I couldn't go under any circ.u.mstances but being engaged.... And I was so wild to go--it just slipped out--truly it did! And then--the G.o.ds overtook me!"

She clasped her hands in her lap, and looked up at him--she had sunk to the ground when he did, and was also sitting on a leaf-heap. She tilted her head back against the big tree, and awaited her sentence.

John felt for the moment exactly the mingled pleasure and embarra.s.sment that a man does who has been adopted by an unusually nice dog. It is a compliment, but one doesn't know exactly what to do with the animal. Joy sat and looked at him with what seemed to him to be a perfect trust that he would be good to her. As a matter of fact, Joy was merely pleased because he was there and not angry at her. She did hope a little that he would offer to do the explaining that they weren't engaged to Grandfather. But she was quite unprepared for what he said next, after a little silence.

"You're a brave little thing," he told her gently. "You shan't miss your roses and your moons on my account.... I'll tell you what we'll do, Joy. We'll stay engaged till we're out of sight of land."

She looked at him with parted lips.

"What--what do you mean?"

"You shall go to Phyllis' just the same, child. We won't even tell the Harringtons that it isn't true till we're on the train for Wallraven."

Joy stared at him, incredulous still. She could not speak for a moment.

"Oh!" she said then. "Oh--why, you're the kindest man I ever knew.

But then, I _knew_ you were! Thank you ever so much ... but--are you sure you don't mind at all?"

"Quite sure," he told her.

"Well--_thank_ you!" said Joy fervently. "And oh, if I ever get the chance, I promise I'll do something for you you want. Just think of what you're giving me--a whole month of being just as happy as I like! We can go back to the bungalows now. I don't mind being congratulated one bit after this--do you?"

"N-no," said John a little dubiously. Then he laughed. "There's one thing you've forgotten. There's always a ring when people are engaged, even for four days."

Joy said nothing to this. She watched him while he slipped a curious, chased dull gold band with a diamond sunk in it, from his little finger. "It isn't a conventional solitaire sitting up on stilts, but it will do, won't it?" he asked.

She held her little slim hand out for it, her face sparkling. His were the long, slender, square-tipped fingers of the typical "surgeon's hand," smooth and strong. But Joy's hands were little for her build, which was not large, and the ring slid down her engagement finger till she had to anchor it with a little gold band from the other hand, pushed down over it.

"I'll take very good care of it, and polish it before I give it back to you," she a.s.sured him.

He answered her on a sudden boyish impulse.

"I don't want you to give it back to me. You're to keep it.... It can be your wis.h.i.+ng ring that you said I brought you, Joy."

She smiled down at it, loose on her finger.

"Why, so it is--my wis.h.i.+ng ring!" she sighed happily. She turned it about her finger, and he saw her lips move. She was wis.h.i.+ng. He wondered what, but she did not offer to tell him.

"I wish that he may have the thing he wants the very most in all the world," she was saying fervently under her breath. When she was done she rose from the leaves, and he sprang up beside her.

"There's one more ceremony," he told her, half-amusedly. "Even for a four days' engagement, to make it _quite_ legal--" He bent toward her, smiling.

"Oh--oh, should we?" stammered Joy, her wild-rose color deepening to rose-red.

"I really think we should," said John solemnly. It was the nearest to teasing any one he had come for a long time, and he found himself rather enjoying it. Besides, in his heart lurked the feeling that the child ought to realize that she might have let herself in for a good deal, if she hadn't fallen into merciful hands. He was a little ashamed of himself at the sweet way she took it. She merely held herself quite still and serious, and lifted her face a little.

John was a young man who always went through with anything he had begun, and he bent over and kissed Joy, very lightly.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"I--I didn't mind," said Joy, trying to make him happy, for she saw he was sorry, though she didn't know why or what for.

"You dear child!" he said. "Well, I won't do it again. I was teasing you, and I shouldn't. Come, we ought to go now."

She fell into step beside him, still mystified, but very much obliged to him in general, and they went back to the bungalow and congratulations side by side.

Meanwhile two very much surprised young people confronted two still perturbed old ones in the sunset on Phyllis' veranda.

"Now _why_ do you suppose," Allan demanded of the world in general, "Johnny didn't break the news to us? I've rarely known a man who liked secrets less. He hasn't even come over and looked radiant with his mouth shut, as a normal human being would."

Phyllis picked up Angela and gazed over her head as she considered.

She had a way of using Angela as most women do knitting or embroidery: as something to have in her hands when she wanted to think.

"It was certainly a case of very silent emotion," she said contemplatively.

"What was there a case of, Mother?" demanded Philip, reappearing, very dusty, and climbing up on all of her that Angela didn't occupy, thereby damaging fatally the spotlessness of her crinkled white silk skirt. "Is it something to eat? Did Johnny bring--"

"Johnny brought the rather surprising news that he and Joy are going to be married," his mother informed him, kissing the back of his neck. She spoke to him, as she always did, in a manner entirely unedited for children. If he didn't always know the long words, as she said, so much the better--his growing intelligence was stretched a little hunting them up.

The growing intelligence was certainly excited now.

"Married?" inquired Philip indignantly, voicing the feelings of the entire party. "Well, I think it would of been politer to have let us know before they spoke to each other about it!"

It was no time to feed either of the children, and their nurse would have been horrified, but Allan produced a box of marshmallows from behind a jardiniere before anything more was said.

"Here, my dear son," he said politely. "You deserve them for saying that. 'Them's our sentiments,' too, only we hadn't quite decided how to put it. Now go off and die happily, and only give Angela two."

Philip returned thanks automatically, clutched the box and fled before any one should interfere to revoke this wonderful gift from Heaven. Angela wriggled her small, blue-overalled body down and went in pa.s.sionate pursuit.

"Now, you mustn't worry about it," Phyllis said to Mrs. Havenith, rising with one of her swift, graceful movements and putting both arms about the disconsolate old lady. "John Hewitt is one of the best men I ever knew. He's a rock of defense. Indeed, you may trust him with Joy. Allan has known him since they were in college together, and he has been our closest friend since our marriage.

He's--why, he's nearly as nice as Allan, and that's saying all I _can_ say. Isn't he, Allan?"