The Wishing-Ring Man Part 18

"He talks just like a poet," said Joy innocently. How could John know that this was an insult, not a compliment, in Joy's mind? She had seen any amount of Clarences--ignoring her, to be sure, but still saying Clarence things to others in her hearing--all her days.

"That may be," said John. "I'm no judge of poets, and I suppose you are.... See here, Joy, there's an inhabitant--two of 'em--coming in the doorway. Mother'll be wanting you to stand in a silly line and pa.s.s people along to her, or away from her, or something. Come here with me and we'll finish this. You're getting a wrong impression of what I mean."

Joy found herself being steered masterfully into a little semi-dark room that opened off the long parlor. John planted her in a low chair in a corner and pulled up a stool for himself just opposite.

"They won't find us for at least ten minutes, unless we wigwag.

Now--what's a sorcerette?"

His tone, in spite of his carelessness, betrayed a certain anxiety to learn. Joy answered him with fullness and simplicity.

"A sorcerette is somebody with coloring like mine, and a cross between a seraph and a little witch," she replied innocently.

"That's what Clarence said. But I _think_ he made up the name himself," she added conscientiously, as if that would be some help.

John grinned a little in spite of himself.

"I don't like the idea particularly of his making the name up himself,"

he remarked; "but there is something in what Rutherford said!"

"I'm very glad you think so," said Joy with a transparent meekness.

"And now that you've found out, isn't it time you went back to your duties?"

He looked at her doubtfully, where she sat in the half-light with her head held high and her hands crossed on her green-and-silver lap. He could not quite make out her expression.

But he had not much more chance for cross-questioning, because guests were beginning to come thickly, and his mother was sending out agonized scouting parties for the feature of the evening.

Phyllis, knowing the rooms of old, discovered her. She swooped down on the pair, where they were sitting in the little dim room.

"You wretched people, this is no time for that sort of thing!" she exclaimed, shoving them before her. "Please try to remember that you will, in all likelihood, spend a lifetime together. Joy, three severe New England spinsters have already taken Gail Maddox for you.

Hurry!"

The suggestion was quite enough, as Phyllis may have known it would be. Joy whisked into her place, which was opposite the double doors, between Mrs. Hewitt and Phyllis, and taking her burden of white chrysanthemums on one arm, proceeded to be as charming to her future patients-in-law as she knew how.

Mrs. Hewitt and Phyllis cast glances of astonished admiration at each other over her head. They neither of them had thought of Joy as anything but a sweet child, or an affectionate child--a darling, but shy and unused to the world. But she was managing her share of the evening's pageant as if she had run a salon for twenty years. It did not occur to them that the explanation was that she practically had been brought up in one. She had been a part of the bi-weekly receptions given to the small and great of the earth by Havenith the poet ever since she was old enough to come into the parlors and could be trusted not to cry or s.n.a.t.c.h cake.

"Good gracious, Joy, _where_ did you learn to drive people four-in-hand this way?" breathed Phyllis admiringly, in a lull. "I _know_, if I'd had to talk to two Miss Peabodys and three Miss Brearleys and a stray Jones _all_ at once, at least five of them would have hated me forever after. And you kept them going like a juggler's b.a.l.l.s!"

"They're not half as hard as the people at Grandfather's afternoons," answered Joy. "He had almost every kind of person--everybody wanted to see him, you know, and he felt it his duty to gratify as many as he could, he said. Oh, Phyllis, _ten_ Brearleys and Peabodys are nothing to trying to make three Celtic poets and a vers-librist talk pleasantly to each other!"

"You're a darling," said Phyllis irrelevantly.

"I see you've been working virtuously hard," put in Gail pleasantly, sauntering up. "Now, _I_ gave up being n.o.ble-hearted to the uninteresting some time ago. There's very little in it. I collected a suitor or so early in the evening, and we've been telling each other what we really thought of all the worst guests, in the little room off. You ought to hear John's description of--"

"She shan't--it's not for your young ears," said Clarence possessively from where he stood, a little behind Gail. Gail had three men with her--Clarence, John, and a slim youth who looked younger than he proved to be, and who answered to the name of Tiddy.

All Joy's feelings of triumph and innocent satisfaction in having won the liking of Mrs. Hewitt's guests faded. She felt as Gail had made her feel before--foolishly good and ridiculously young and altogether unsuccessful in life. For a moment the mood held her in a very crushed state of mind: then she caught Clarence's eyes fixed upon her with a look of amused admiration. It spurred her.

"I've been doing my duty by my future lord and master," she said lightly. "But now you put it that way, he doesn't sound like a worthy cause a bit."

The men laughed, though Joy's words hadn't sounded particularly witty to herself. "I'm going to abjure duty now," she went on hurriedly.

"The orchestra's playing that thing people can dance me to----"

She held her hand and arm gracefully high, in the old minuet pose, and laughed up at Clarence. _He_ wasn't supposed to be her lover, and yet he saw through Gail when John didn't----

"By Jove, I can do the minuet!" he said eagerly. "Can you, Miss Joy?"

She smiled and nodded.

_"Grandma told me all about it, Taught me so I could not doubt it,"_

she sang softly.

"We'll do it--we'll do it for the happy villagers!" proclaimed Clarence.

"Here, Tiddy, go cut a girl out of the herd, and find Harrington, too. We're the bell-cows. All you others have to do is to obediently follow us--the men follow me and the women tag around after Miss Joy--which last seems wrong, but can't be helped."

"Not at all," said John amiably. "Far be it from me to seem to steal your thunder, Rutherford, but I, too, was in the village pageant last year, and I minuet excellently. All my grateful patients said so. You know, if you led off, they might take you for the man who's going to marry Miss Havenith."

Clarence couldn't very well do or say anything to his host, but he looked far from pleased as John took Joy's hand and quietly led her into line. Tiddy came up just then with a pretty, dark little girl whom he had selected with great judgment from the guests as being just of a height between Joy and Gail. He had also enlisted the orchestra, for it began to play "La Cinquantaine" as they all took their places facing each other. They were all laughing, even Clarence. The guests, catching the spirit of the thing, began to laugh and applaud, and--it seemed like magic that it could be done so swiftly--formed two more sets in the rest of the room, while the elders, against the wall, watched approvingly.

"I thought n.o.body but me danced minuets any more," Joy whispered to John as, her eyes alight with happiness, she crossed him in the changes of the lovely old dance.

"There happened to be a historical pageant here last summer," he explained to her, "and there were eight minuet sets in the Revolutionary episode, so we had to learn. Mother hounded me into it. I'm glad now she did."

"Why?" inquired Joy innocently the next time she met him.

"I like to maintain my rights," he answered with a little gleam of fun in his eyes.

But Joy felt fairly certain that the gleam of fun had behind it a gleam of decision. Certainly John's motto was, "What's mine's mine!"--even when it was rented.

They finished to applause, and as the orchestra ended its minuet it slid on into a modern dance, and so did each of the couples, dancing on out on the floor.

Joy sank down at the end of the waltz on a seat by the wall, with John beside her.

He bent over her.

"Having a good time, kiddie?" he asked her gently. She nodded, her eyes like stars.

"Oh, I'm _people_, at last!" she said with a soft exultance.

"I've always looked on and looked on, like a doll or a mechanical figure--and I'm real--I'm in the midst of things! 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."