Joey

“ She laughed, shut the oven door, straightened her fine shoulders and went to the window to cool her cheeks. I looked at her as she stood there, I saw her smile and wave her hand to Joey, who was performing sundry ablutions at the spring. She was wearing a collarless pink cotton frock, spotless and fresh as water and starch and fastidious ironing could make it; her face was as ardent as a flame, her eyes glowed deep and impassioned, her lips were smooth as red rose petals. Her mop of fine, blond curls was massed like a web of silk about her colorful face. ”

“ No, I shall not visit Hidden Lake this year. Perhaps next summer—but ‘To-morrow is a day too far to trust whate’er the day be.’ I shall never forget Joey or you, or your wonderful kindness and friendship. Good-bye, Mr. Fixing Man,—or not good-bye! au revoir. Oh, all the good wishes in the world I send to you and Joey—and Wanza. ”

“ Once, in time long past, there were passages between Joey and Matilda. They were placed side by side, and as Joey looked on that demure Quakeress, her dove colour unrelieved except by two plumes of sober crimson; as he gazed on that marble eye while Matilda huskily and rapidly repeated the name of the kitchen-maid, Joey was aware of an emotion beautiful and strange. Self-control is a foreigner to that hot southern nature, and without a pause for thought he extended a claw—it was all he could do—to the lady. ”

“ I was forced to admit to him that David had perceived only the joyous in the pokering of the policeman's legs, and had called out heartily "Do it again!" every time Joey knocked the pantaloon down with one kick and helped him up with another.
"It hurts the poor chap," I was told by Joey, whom I was agreeably surprised to find by no means wanting in the more humane feelings, "and he wouldn't stand it if there wasn't the laugh to encourage him." ”

“ Joey was brought to the bar, and his appearance was so different from that which was to be expected in one charged with the crime of murder, that strong interest was immediately excited; the spectators anticipated a low-bred ruffian, and they beheld a fair, handsome young man, with an open brow and intelligent countenance, whose eye quailed not when it met their own, and whose demeanour was bold without being offensive. ”

“ Shall I tell you about Joey, whose first disgust at finding himself once more with us has given place by degrees that grow visibly wider to a rollicking enjoyment. Less and less does he come up here. More and more does he stay down there. He hurries through his lessons with a speed that leaves Papa speechless, and is off and hauling the sled up past our gate with Vicki walking demurely beside him and is whizzing down again past our gate with Vicki sitting demurely in front of him before Papa is well through the list of adjectives he applies to him once at least every day. ”

“ Rose in the sitting-room was kneeling by the hearth where she had just set a saucer of milk. With one hand she was loosening very gently from her shoulder the claws of Minny, the cat, who clung to her breast, scrambling, with the passion and desperation of his kind. Her other hand restrained with a soft caressing movement Joey's approaches to the saucer. Joey, though trembling with excitement, sat fascinated, obedient to her gesture. Joey was puny and hairless as ever, but in Rose's face as she looked at him there was a flush of maternal tenderness and gravity. ”

“ He was not the Cedar Dale elf I had known. What had changed him so?
I went forward and Joey cried out and hurled himself into my arms. Haidee stood up and drew the lad to her with a nervous motion.
“Joey,” I said, “run away and see what Jingles is barking at so furiously. A fat rabbit has just escaped him.”
Joey bounded away shrieking with excitement. I studied Haidee deliberately as her eyes followed the childish figure. Her eyes were brooding and solemn and sweet as she watched, but there was a shadow on her brow. ”

“ They are quite a simple people.
Joey called David and me "Sonny," and asked David, who addressed him as "Mr. Clown," to call him Joey. He also told us that the pantaloon's name was old Joey, and the columbine's Josy, and the harlequin's Joeykin. ”

“ While she was doing this the son, who knew no English, talked with an air of one who proposed to stand no nonsense to Joey, who knew no German, and Vicki, visibly depressed, slunk round the Christmas tree blowing her nose.
Papa Lindeberg, says Joey, came out of the corner far more gloomy than he went in; he seemed like a man urged on unwillingly from behind, a man reluctant to advance, and yet afraid or unable to go back. 'I beg to speak with you,' he said to Joey, with much military stiffness about his back and heels. ”

“ Despite the depression that obsessed me my spirits rose as we went on, and by noon when we were well into the heart of the deep lush woods beyond Roselake, I am sure Joey could have had no cause to complain of the gravity of his companion. Surely there is balm for wounded souls in the solitude of the greenwood. We found a spot where bracken waved waist high, where moss was green-gold and flowers were sprouting on rocks, where the very air was dreamful. ”

“ A clear moment came to him.
“You’ll never stop now!” he said to himself. “You’ll never do anything for any one now! ’Nother whisky!” he cried aloud, with a sob.
He saw James Vincey stumbling through the rest of his days, a cruel burden to his mother, a disgrace to Joey—ruining Joey’s life before it had well begun. He knew Joey. If it came to a choice between himself and that young prig, Joey would stand by her uncle.
And it had come to a choice. Joey would let Napier see what she thought of his turning her uncle out of the office! ”

“ I had just laid my hand on a piece of resinous wood when I heard a joyous confused babble of tongues in the kitchen I had quitted. Joey had entered by the front door and shouted Wanza’s name gleefully. And then I heard:
“Bless your old heart! Have you a birthday kiss for Wanza? Well I am late getting round this birthday—I usually come at noon, don’t I, Joey?—but better late than never! It’s getting too hot to eat in the middle of the day. We thought—Mr. Dale and me—that we would change the doings this year. ”

“ And so I set off with him, slithering down into the valley, making good progress down in the pale shadows beside the rushing waters, then climbing painfully up the arrested white valley-side, plumed with clusters of young pine-trees, into the paler white radiance of the snowy upper regions, where the wind cut fine. Joey seemed to watch all the time with wide, anxious, unseeing eyes, brilliant and inscrutable. As I drew near to Tible township, he stirred violently in the bag, though I do not know if he had recognised the place. ”

“ Mademoiselle de Lavernais took the dispatch case from Joey. There was a queer look in her tired black eyes for a moment. "Thank you, Joey, I would not have the paper smaller," she said.
She stood quite silent for a moment; then began to speak in her level voice that had hardly a hint of foreign pronunciation about it.
"To say thank you is a little thing, to feel thanks warmly through you is a bigger. I carry that warmth with me for the rest of my life—and there was a time when I was not only glad because I was going back to my own country, but because I was leaving Redlands. ”

“ Mums smiled, and then the train stopped at Pettalva Junction, and the bustle of changing began.
Mums found a lady going all the way to Edinburgh—a cheerful, capable-looking personage who breezily undertook to see Joey safely into the hands of Miss Craigie at the Waverley Station. Then Mums bought Joey buns and two apples and a magazine, and reminded her of the packet of sandwiches in her pocket and kissed her silently; and Joey said, "Don't mind, Mums; I'm going to like it." ”

“ Once upon a time—which is the way I begin my fairy tales to Joey—there was a certain foolish woman, whom we will call Haidee, who lived all alone in the heart of a forest. She was a very headstrong young woman, full of whims and insane impulses, or she never would have gone into the forest to live alone. But she loved Nature passionately and she had suffered and known heartache—and she felt that Nurse Nature could assuage pain. ”

“ Joey stood irresolute for one second—but only one. The jumpy young man was probably a German, since he and the Professor had been signalling to one another; but when you were English you couldn't leave even a Hun to die when he had called for help. Father had risked his life to bring in a wounded German who was lying in agony in a shell-swept reach of No-Man's Land. She would not even have hesitated for that second, if it had not been for the thought of Gabrielle and Noreen holding on precariously, with the deepening water washing round them, waiting for her help. ”

“ Thus he requires constant watching, and the worst of it is, you dare not draw attention to his mistake, he is so shrinkingly sensitive about it. No sooner had Joey told us this than the poor old fellow began to turn upside down and stood on his head; but we pretended not to notice, and talked about the weather until he came to.
Josy and Joeykin, all skirts and spangles, were with us by this time, for they had been invited to tea. They came in dancing, and danced off and on most of the time. Even in the middle of what they were saying they would begin to flutter ”

“ He’s the [43] man you want,” I growled, jerking my thumb over my shoulder.
By the time I reached Cedar Dale, I was overcome with chagrin and remorse at my uncouth behavior. The more so, when on dismounting I turned Buttons over to Joey’s eager hands; for in the saddle-bag Joey discovered a small flat parcel addressed: “To the boy who goes to Sunday School.” The parcel contained peppermints of a kind Joey had never encountered before, and a gaily striped Windsor tie between the leaves of a book of rhymes. ”

“ Miss Mathews looked earnestly at Joey.
“Who are you?” said she at last; “are you the boy who was on this road with a knife-grinder and his wheel yesterday afternoon?”
“Yes, madam, we came this way,” replied Joey, bowing again very politely.
“Is he your father?”
“No, madam, he is my uncle; he is not married.”
“Your uncle. Well, I have a pair of scissors to grind, and I will go for them: you may bring your wheel in here, as I wish to see how you grind.” ”

“ What makes it?”
“It’s a birth mark, Joey. If ever you should get stolen, and when I found you a bad man should say: ‘He’s not your boy,’ I could answer: ‘My boy has a round red mark on his chest.’ See how fine that would be.”
Joey laughed, and held out his arms for the shirt.
A few minutes later I was arranging the gaily striped Windsor tie beneath the turn down collar of the worn shirt, when the familiar sound of creaking harness and whirring wheels reached my ear. Wanza had not paid Cedar Dale a visit since the day she went away in tearful silence bearing the waxwing with her. ”

“ Miriam looked into the fire and thought. Joey, too, liked talking to Mr. Corrie in his room when he was not there. He must be one of those charming sort of men, rather weak, who went on liking people. Joey was evidently an old friend of the family and still liked him. She evidently liked even to mention his name. He couldn’t be really anything much ... or perhaps Joey didn’t really know him at all. Joey did not live there. ”

“ It is not to be supposed that Joey neglected his correspondence either with Mary or Spikeman, although with the latter it was not so frequent. Mary wrote to him every month; she had not many subjects to enter upon, chiefly replying to Joey’s communications, and congratulating him upon his success. Indeed, now that our hero had been nearly four years with Mr Small, he might be said to be a very rising and independent person. ”

“ Joey muttered something about being sorry. She took up her rather worn check-book and wrote. "Here you are, Joey. Four hundred—will that do?"
"Fine—fine!" cried the boy, elated. "You're an ace, Peg."
"Am I?" She smiled at him. "Joey, I wish you'd keep away from Hunt and that crowd at the hotel. They're too clever for you—you're only a kid."
"Sure I will if you say so!" He went back to the table, his hot fingers clasping the check. "You're the boss round here, Peg," he added, with a contemptuous glance at his father. ”

“ And Miss Norma, whose faith in human nature, phœnix-like, ever sprang up anew from the blighted hopes of former trust, accordingly turned her darling over to Joey and hurried off. "For she's obliged to have some one to play with and to get some fresh air somehow," the chorus-lady argued for her own re-assuring, though it remains a mystery as to how she could deceive herself into considering the garbage-scented atmosphere of the neighborhood as fresh, "and Joey's by far the best of the lot around here." ”

“ Mrs. Loveredge, breaking a long silence, remarked it as unusual that no sound of merriment reached them from the dining-room. The explanation was that the entire male portion of the party, on being left to themselves, had immediately and in a body crept on tiptoe into Joey’s study, which, fortunately, happened to be on the ground floor. Joey, unlocking the bookcase, had taken out his Debrett, but appeared incapable of understanding it. Sir Francis Baldwin had taken it from his unresisting hands; the remaining aristocracy huddled themselves into a corner and waited in silence. ”

“ Joey, who had ceased eating, had another warm at the fire, and in a few minutes, having bade adieu, and giving his thanks to the humane people, he was buried in the straw below the tilt of the waggon, with his provisions deposited beside him, and the waggon went on his slow and steady pace, to the tune of its own jingling bells. ”