Margaret Widdemer

“ Joy believed in love at first sight, as she had every personal reason to, but in spite of Clarence's intensity she was not quite convinced. She looked up at him. He was white, and his mouth was tense. And he was holding her like a vise. He was in earnest.
"Maybe—maybe you think you do mean it now." she said breathlessly. "If you do—I'm sorry for you. It isn't nice to be in love unless the other person is, too."
"What do you know about it?" he burst out angrily. "You aren't in love with that virtuous citizen of yours, whether or not he is with you. Let him go back to Gail. ”

“ Joy felt quite herself by now, the old self-possessed Joy of the salon and recitations.
"Well, not over the dessert," she said, laughing. "But as soon as dinner is over, if you want me to. There's one I say to a harp. There's a harp here."
"Can you play a harp, too?" demanded Clarence, "as well as make biscuits? See here, Tiddy, you forget your position in life. You're a cook. Get thee to the kitchen, while Joy entertains us, who are the real quality folks."
"Nonsense," smiled John. "We'll leave things as they are—can't we, Joy?" ”

“ He was so old and wise and strong, compared to her, just a nineteen-year-old girl who had never had even one lover to practise on! Something Gail had said the night before came back to her—one of the girl's half-scornful, half-amused phrases.
"Barring a male flirt or so like Clarence over there," she had vouchsafed, "men are such simple-minded children of nature! All you have to do is to treat them like hounds and tell them what to do, and they'll do it."
Joy could scarcely imagine treating John like a hound. ”

“ John had been a little irritated at the sight of her, but her evident terror moved him, as it had before. He was, through and through, the best type of physician; a man whose first and ruling impulse was always to help and heal, whether it was body or soul, or only feelings. Joy, standing with her face hidden, felt him laying his hands, smooth and strong, over hers.
"Aren't you even going to look at the fiancé you've picked out?" ”

“ The colored girl, who had been doing the masses of Joy's bronze hair while her mistress, kneeling by the dressing-table, put the finishing touches to some frock-draperies, giggled.
"Well dressed? Why, Miss Joy looks like the vampire in the movie show!"
"Final praise!" sighed Phyllis. "You never told me I was as well dressed as a vampire, Viola."
"You couldn't live up to vampiring, nohow, Mrs. Harrington, nor you shouldn't want to, not with that goldy hair of yours," said Viola reprovingly.
"Virtue is thrust upon me, in other words," said Phyllis. ”

“ But you are quite a new kind of girl, or else a survival, and I adore you for it. I never thought I was going to adore any one so much. Why, I even think it is humorous when you sit on me, and that, my dear, is a very bad symptom. In short, I am very much in love with you."
Clarence had a habit of talking that way, and Joy didn't pay much attention to it. In a phrase of his own, it was like kissing over the telephone—it didn't get you anywhere, but it had a cunning sound. It has a warming feeling to think that any one is in love with you, even if you know they aren't. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Also, Viola's words comforted her; if she looked like a vampire, why, maybe, with the aid of the wishing ring and Aunt Lucilla's ghost, she could live up to it. Having her hair done as high and her dress cut as low as anybody's also gave her courage. Altogether it was, if not a perfectly self-assured, at least a very poised-looking little figure that came smiling into Mrs. Hewitt's embrace from the motor, with her lover close behind her, like a bodyguard. ”

“ As he ended Clarence sprang at him in what would have been a wild embrace if he had not ducked in time.
"Here, don't let your troubles drive you crazy, Rutherford," John protested, holding him off with a strong hand.
"They haven't!" proclaimed Clarence. "But 'them beautiful words!' See here, you dwellers in this happy vale, isn't there a girls' school somewhere adjacent? Why don't we bribe the teachers by making it a benefit for whatever they want—a stained glass window to their founder, or a new laboratory or something—and lift those girls bodily, as a chorus?" ”

“ And it's all you and the wishing ring! ... John, did you see? Your people—they really liked me!"
"Of course they did, you little goosie," he told her, smiling down at her. "You have more personal charm than almost any girl I ever knew. I don't know any one who doesn't like you."
"Gail doesn't," Joy ventured.
John shook his head.
"You don't understand Gail," he said. "She's a mighty brilliant girl. She doesn't often like other girls, I admit that—but she took to you. I could see it."
"Could you?" flashed Joy. "Men see so much! ... She's beckoning to you." ”

“ Phyllis and John, who were the most serious-minded of the roomful, saw breakers ahead, but they said nothing.
"My dear, I don't think the way Miss Maddox talks is nice," whispered Mrs. De Guenther, who had taken to Joy as all old ladies did.
"Don't worry, dear," murmured Phyllis from the other side of her. "Other people don't, either. But nobody takes her seriously."
It was a light in Joy's mind on Gail. Nobody 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. ”

“ John answered from the foot. "Joy had that on the very first time I saw her, amber beads and crown and all. I never thought then I'd see her making my biscuits in it."
"It's an allegory," said Clarence. "Man captures the beautiful princess of his dream, and sets her to drudging in his kitchen. I think there is something sad but sweet, as Shaw would say, about it."
"But I wanted to make the biscuits!" cried Joy before she thought. "If I hadn't there wouldn't have been any for dinner—and you had to have dinner."
"They didn't at all," said Gail. "You spoil men. ”

“ John's face remained quite cheerful.
"Well, you see, I have Joy's manners and morals to look after," he said, glancing across at her in a friendly way. "That's enough for one man."
Joy curled on the warm grass, laughed lazily. She was too pleasantly tired from tennis to answer. She only curled her feet under her and burrowed into the grass a little more, like a happy kitten.
It didn't seem as if anything ever need interrupt her happiness. And as Phyllis had had the happy thought of ordering luncheon brought out to where they were, there seemed no reason why they should ever move. ”

“ They got off the train, into the peace and spaciousness of open country. The station was behind them, a little, neat stone station like a toy dropped down on the old-fashioned New England countryside. Joy caught her skirts clear of the car steps and descended, John guarding her. She smiled down at him before she sprang to the platform, and he smiled up at her. To any one not in the secret they seemed like as real lovers as possible. ”

“ Clarence was that kind, according to all accounts. But—John! He was the best, kindest, noblest man she had ever known. Every one seemed to have the same feelings about him that she had. Even when Clarence had sneered at him he had only been able to call him a "reliable citizen."... And yet—he seemed to want to kiss her! He liked it.
"Of course," said Joy to herself, with a beating heart beneath the wisdom of Aunt Lucilla, "the answer is that he probably doesn't know it. Men don't ever seem to know things about themselves. ”

“ It seemed sometimes to them both as if it had all been a dream, so active and untiring he was now.
"Heaven has been good to us," she said irrelevantly, but earnestly, looking up at him.
"Heaven's been good to me, I know," Allan said tenderly. "I have the best and sweetest girl in the world to spend my life with me..."
"John would disagree with you," said Phyllis, smiling up at him nevertheless, and flushing. "Allan, did it strike you that John would have been just as well pleased if Joy hadn't broken the news to Grandfather right then?" ”

“ She laid her head back with a little tired half-moan, and felt John's strong, comforting arm drawing her over so that she could rest against his shoulder.
"You poor little girl, you're all worn out," she heard him say tenderly. "But I was proud of you, little Joy. I didn't know what a wonderful person I had found.... Little fairy princess!"
Ten minutes earlier the note of affection and pride in his voice would have made Joy so deliriously happy that she wouldn't have known what to do. But ... Gail knew ... Gail knew all about it all! ... How could men! ”

“ There would be Clarence's mocking love-making, too, for flattery and amusement. And when she had to go back home, at last, she would have so much happiness, so much good times, so much love to remember, that it would keep her warm and happy for years and years!
When John returned, his hair damp and nearly straight with brushing, and his eyes still bright with laughter, she was sitting at the head of the table, waiting for him happily.
"It's a nice world, isn't it?" she suggested like a child. "And do you like whipped cream in your tomato bisque?" ”

“ Really you could hardly blame a man for being annoyed a bit. To have a gentle, grateful little girl you had nobly helped, suddenly perk up and turn into something quite different—something dimpling and impish and provocative—would be disturbing to nearly any man.
John had no means of knowing, of course, that Phyllis had said anything about Gail Maddox, though he might have remembered, at least, that Joy had red hair and was likely to have a little of the fire that goes with it. ”

“ Hewitt was passionately interested in people. She loved traveling and house-parties and fads of all kinds—but she had no roots to speak of. John had never felt so much as if his house was his home as he did tonight, with the cold rain dashing against the windows outside, and inside the warm light, and the busy girl sitting across from him, sewing, and smiling to herself. ”

“ John seemed to consider it so. But it wasn't.
"She's so charming that nobody expects anything else of her," Joy flashed back, "and I have to be good, because all people can like me for is my goodness—is that what you mean?"
And she stood up, as the car slowed before the Hewitt house, and sprang out. She had seen Clarence Rutherford sunning himself expectantly on the steps.
"There's the man who sent her over, if you approve of it all so highly," were her departing words to John. "I promise not to be inhospitable to him!" ”