The Wishing-Ring Man Part 15

Joy ripped and handed with tremulously eager hands, while Phyllis swiftly cut away the sleeves of the green dress and slashed a _decolletage_, and draped the net over it and pinned on the girdle.

"Try if you can get into that without being scratched," she invited, lifting the frock gingerly off Dora and dropping it over Joy. Then she wheeled her around to where she could see her reflection in the tall pier-gla.s.s between the windows.

"Of course, that's rough," she told her; "but what do you think of it, generally? Are there any changes you want?"

"Oh, not one!" Joy replied ecstatically, regarding the slim little green and silver figure in the gla.s.s.

"It needs to be shorter," meditated Phyllis aloud, and fell to pinning it up to the proper shortness.

Joy continued to look at it rapturously. It had been a straight, long gown, and all Phyllis had needed to do was to drape it with the net ripped from the other dress and shorten and cut it into fashionableness. It was charming--springlike and becoming, and, best of all, strictly up to date!

"Don't you think you'll feel equal to being the feature of the reception in that?" demanded Phyllis. "I certainly should in your place.... That is, if you have silver slippers."

"I have, and I think I do," said Joy gravely.

"Then I'll hand this over to Viola to put the finishing st.i.tches in.

Look out the window--do you see anything familiar coming up the path?"

Joy, in her pinned finery, looked, then s.n.a.t.c.hed her clothes from the sofa, where they lay in state, and ran upstairs. John was coming along the path, and she didn't want him to know about her frock till it was all done.

She came down a moment later, brown-clad and demure, and looking so young and harmless that any man would have been sure his tilt with her, of the night before, was a dream. She greeted him shyly, with her lashes down.

"Isn't--isn't it a little early for you to be away from your patients?" she asked.

"My morning office hours are just over, and I'm on my way to make some calls in the car. Want to come?" he asked.

"Thank you," said Joy. "That is, if you don't think I'd be in the way."

"If I thought you would be I wouldn't have asked you," said Dr.

Hewitt matter-of-factly. "So run along and pin up your hair, child.

I don't want people to think I've been robbing the cradle."

He smiled at her in a brotherly fashion, and Joy began to feel a little ashamed of herself for trying to tease him, even if he didn't seem to see it. She liked him so much, apart from any other feeling, that it was hard to be anything but nice and grateful to him--except when she thought of Gail Maddox.

"It just takes two hairpins," she informed him, coming over to him and holding up the ends of her braids. "You wind it round and pin it behind."

He took the hairpins and the braids, and quite deftly did as she asked him to.

"Hurry, my dear," he said authoritatively, yet with a certain note of affection in his voice that made Joy feel very comforted. As she flew to get her cap her heart gave a queer, pleasant sort of turn-over. His voice made her feel so belonging.

She sang as she went, and Phyllis and John smiled across at each other, as over a dear child.

"Oh, John, I'm so glad you chose such a darling!" said Phyllis warmly, putting her hands on his shoulders, as "A Perfect Day"

floated back to them from above. "You know, Johnny, even the best of men do marry so--so surprisingly. She might have been--"

"'She might have been a Roosian, or French or Dutch or Proosian,'"

he quoted frivolously. "Well, Phyllis, I'm glad you approve of my--ah--choice. How long do you think it will take it to get its hat on?"

"Oh, you can laugh," Phyllis answered him, "but I know you're proud of her, just the same."

"Well, she's creditable," said John unemotionally, but with a little smile beginning to show at the corners of his mouth.

"I'm ready!" called Joy breathlessly from the top of the stairs, and ran down tumultuously. "Oh, Phyllis, can't I have some roses to take to John's sick people--the poor ones? I want them to like me!"

"Help yourself." Phyllis granted promptly.

"Not a bit of it." John contradicted her coolly. "You must teach them to love you for yourself alone. Come on, kiddie."

He tucked her hand under his arm and hurried her, laughing, down the drive. Phyllis ran after them with a too-late-remembered motor-veil, which she managed to convey into the car by the risky method of tying a stone in it and throwing the stone. It just missed John, and Joy nearly fell out, turning to wave thanks for it.

John threw his arm around her hastily to hold her in, and so Phyllis saw them out of sight.

"You needn't do that any more," observed Joy as they sped on.

"There's n.o.body can see us now."

"That, with most people," observed John amusedly, "would be a reason for continuing to do it."

"M'm," said Joy in a.s.sent, as he removed his arm. "You see," she went on rather apologetically, "I never was engaged before, not even this much, and I probably shan't always do it right.... Do you think I shall?"

"Very well, indeed," answered her trial fiance dryly. "I have always heard that when you were engaged to a girl she took the opportunity to torment you as thoroughly as possible. But I haven't any more personal experience of the holy bonds of affiancement than you have, my dear child."

Joy's heart suddenly reproached her for having teased such a kind person as this at all. She clutched his arm with such impulsive suddenness that the car almost left the road.

"John, I do want to be good to you! And I want to be as little trouble as possible! And I want to have you _like_ me . . . and respect and admire me just the way that--"

"Just what way?" he inquired more gently.

"Never mind what way," Joy told him, coloring hotly. "Only if you'll please tell me what to do--it's hard to say, but I'll try to explain what I mean. Haven't you always thought, just a little, when you hadn't anything else to think of, that sometime there'd be--a girl?"

John Hewitt looked straight before him for a moment, as the car sped smoothly down a country lane. Then he nodded.

"Yes," he said, and no more. He was not given to talking about his feelings.

"And you planned her--a little--didn't you?" Joy persisted. "I know you did--people do. Well... John--couldn't you tell me a little bit about how _She_ was going to act--so I could act that way? It would be more comfortable for you, I think. And I--I want to."

For a moment she thought he was not going to answer at all. He looked down at her silently. Then he spoke, a little abruptly.

"I never planned her in much detail," he said. "She always seemed to be dressed in blue, or in white, and her hair was parted. She seemed to be connected with a fireplace," he ended inconsequently, and laughed a little at himself. "You see, I'm not an imaginative person."

"I only wanted you to let me play I was that girl for this month,"

Joy answered desperately, with her eyes down, speaking very low.

John, who had been staring down at her in a half-puzzled way, looked as if he was suddenly rea.s.sured that she was only a little girl, after all--not a provoking firefly, but a wistful, unconscious child who only wanted to do her best to please.

"I want to be good," she said meekly.

"So you are," said John warmly.

"Am I?" she asked softly, looking up at him with wide blue eyes.