The Wishing-Ring Man Part 21

But Clarence, naturally enough, wasn't given to casting himself as a dragon. He was perfectly certain he was a prince, and said so with charming frankness.

Joy continued to sing to herself.

"I don't see why I shouldn't kiss your hand, if I'm a prince," he observed next. "In fact, as nice a little hand as you have really calls for such."

He reached for it--the nearest, with the wishing ring on it.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed it indignantly away and clasped her hand indignantly over the ring. That would be profanation!

"I wish somebody would come!" she thought. "I'll have to leave not only Clarence, but my nice fountain, in a minute." The next thing she thought was, "What a well-trained wishing ring!" for Viola appeared between the tall rose trees at the entrance to the little pleasance.

"Miss Joy, have you seen Philip anywhere?" she asked. "It's his dinner-time, and I've hunted the house upsidedown for him."

"Nowhere at all," said Joy truthfully, "Oh, is it as late as all that? I'd better go, Mr. Rutherford."

She followed Viola swiftly out, waving her hand provokingly to Clarence.

"There's a way out on the other side of the garden," she called back casually.

"I've found a note from Philip, Viola," Phyllis called as they neared the house. "He's lunching out, it seems."

She handed Viola the note.

"I hav gon out too Lunchun," it stated briefly. "Yours Sincerely, Philip Harrington."

"He'll come back," his mother went on, with a perceptible relief in her voice. "He has a corps of old and middle-aged ladies about the village who adore him. He's probably at Miss Addison's--she's his Sunday-school teacher. He really should have come and asked, I suppose. Well, come in, Joy, and let us eat. Allan won't be back--he's gone off to some village-improvement thing that seems to think it would die without him."

They ate in solitary state, except for Angela, and after that nothing happened, except that they separated with one accord to take long, generous naps.

Joy was awakened from hers by Phyllis' voice, raised in surprise.

"But, Miss _Addison!_" she was saying, on the porch below Joy's window, in a tone that was part amus.e.m.e.nt, part horror.

Joy slipped on her frock and shoes and ran down to share the excitement. When she got down, Phyllis was just leading the visitor into the old Colonial living-room, and they were having tea brought in. Philip was nowhere to be seen.

"A _wheel_barrow!" Phyllis was saying tragically, as she took her cup from the waitress, who was listening interestedly, if furtively.

"A wheelbarrow," a.s.sented Miss Addison, a pretty, white-haired spinster. She, too, took a cup.

Phyllis cast up her eyes in horror and, incidentally, saw Joy.

"Come in," she said resignedly. "I'm just hearing how Philip disported himself at his 'lunchun.'"

"I didn't mean to distress you, but I really thought you should know, Mrs. Harrington," pursued the visitor plaintively.

"I'm eternally grateful," murmured Phyllis, beginning, as usual, to be overcome with the funny side of the situation. "But--oh, Joy, what _do_ you think of my sinful offspring? Miss Addison says Philip spent the luncheon hour relating to her how his father went to the saloon in the village, had two gla.s.ses of beer, was entirely overcome, and had to be brought home in--in--" by this time Phyllis was laughing uncontrollably--"in a _wheel_barrow!"

Joy, too, was aghast for a moment, then the situation became too much for her, and she also began to laugh.

"Good gracious!" she said.

"And that isn't all!" Phyllis went on hysterically. "After Allan's friends, or the policeman, or whoever it was, tipped him off the wheelbarrow onto the front porch (imagine Allan in a wheelbarrow! It would take two for the length of him!), he staggered in, and would have beaten me, but that my n.o.ble son flung himself between! Then he was overcome with remorse--wasn't he, Miss Addison?--and signed the pledge."

"Good gracious!" said Joy, inadequately, again.

"Now, where on earth," demanded Miss Addison, "did he get all that?"

"Only the special angel that watches over bad little boys knows,"

said his mother with conviction. "And it won't tell. I know by experience that I'll never get it out of Philip. He'll say, sweetly, 'Oh, I just _fought_ it, Muvver!' in as infantile a voice as possible."

They all three sat and pondered.

"It sounds just like a tract," said Joy at last.

"Exactly like a tract," a.s.sented Phyllis. "Do you suppose--in Sunday-school----"

"I'm his Sunday-school teacher," Miss Addison reminded her indignantly. "That settles _that!_"

"Well, have some more tea, anyway, now the worst is over," said her hostess hospitably.... "A _wheel_barrow!"

They continued to sit over their teacups and meditate. Suddenly Phyllis rose swiftly and made a spring for the bookcase, scattering sponge-cake as she went.

"I have it, I believe!" she exclaimed. "Well, who'd think--Viola read this to Philip when he was getting over the scarlatina last winter. There wasn't another child's book in the house that he didn't know by heart, and we couldn't borrow on account of the infection. I took it away from them, but the mischief was done. But he's never spoken of it or seemed to remember it from that day to this, and I'd forgotten it, too."

She held up a small, dingy book and opened it to the t.i.tle-page.

"The Drunkard's Child; or, Little Robert and His Father," it said in lettering of the eighteen-forties.

It was unmistakably the groundwork of Philip's romance. It had a woodcut frontispiece of Little Robert in a roundabout and baggy trousers, inadequately embracing his cowering mother's hoopskirt, while his father, the Drunkard in question, staggered remorsefully back. It was all there, even to the wheelbarrow--also inadequate.

"It didn't hurt Philip's great-grandfather," said his mother. "I don't see why it should have affected Philip as it did. Different times, different manners, I suppose.... The Drunkard's Child!"

"Where _is_ he?" Joy thought to ask.

"Innocently playing with his little sister in the nursery," said Phyllis. "Doubtless teaching her that she is a Drunkard's Daughter.

I have him still to deal with.... A wheelbarrow! I wonder what Allan _will_ say?"

CHAPTER NINE

THE TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE

"It wasn't so much my behavior after I was wheeled home," said Philip's father mournfully, "as it was my getting so outrageously drunk on two gla.s.ses of beer. That was the final straw. Why couldn't he have made it several quarts of brandy, or even knockout drops?"