The Wishing-Ring Man Part 4

She wore her brown woolen frock all day long the first day, changing to the gray silk in the evening--the dear gray silk, all little glints of embroidery and little falls of chiffon!--and the gray hat with it. She was waiting for her grandparents to ask her where she got it, but they were so occupied with getting themselves settled, and seeing that their place and hers at table were sufficiently far from the noisier crowds of people not to be a strain on Grandfather's nerves and Joy's, that nothing was said. As a matter of fact, Grandfather thought Grandmother had bought it for her, and Grandmother thought Grandfather had; so each said pretty things about it to the other, without coming straight out, as their courteous custom with each other was; and the secret was still Joy's.

By the second day Joy saw that people were beginning to find out who Grandfather was. So she deliberately ran away. Not badly, nor far; she only had a waiter who seemed to want to be nice to her make her up a little packet of sandwiches, and then she took to the nearest woods. She quite intended to be back for dinner; she wouldn't have missed the pageant of sunburned, laughing people streaming in, for anything; not even at the risk of being asked if she, too, wrote poetry.

The woods gained, she leaned back against a big oak tree with a rested sigh. There might be all the poetry in the world a half mile off, but here you couldn't see anything but trees and more trees, all autumn reds and browns and yellows, and the two little brown paths that crossed near where she sat. Her blue, black-lashed eyes rested happily on a great bough of scarlet and yellow maple leaves.

"I haven't got to say one _word_ about them," she breathed.

"_Nice_ leaves!"

Then she felt vaguely penitent; and in spite of the scenery, began to think about Grandfather, and therefore poetry, again--so firm a clutch has habit. There in the wonderful tingling air, with the late sunset glimmering a little through the trees, an old poem began to sing itself through her head. For, though she didn't think so, Joy _did_ like poetry.

It was out of Bryant's "Library of Poetry and Song" that she had been brought up on. The book always opened of itself under Joy's hand to "Poems of Fancy."

"..._And I galloped and I galloped on my steed as white as milk, My gown was of the gra.s.s-green and my shoes were of the silk, My hair was golden-yellow, and it floated to my shoe, My eyes were like two harebells dipped in little drops of dew_..."

Joy leaned herself back more luxuriously.

"It _is_ like the enchanted forest," she breathed. "I can almost see the Lady in the poem galloping along, and the Green Gnome leaping up to stop her. The path out there is wide enough--people from the inn go riding on it. I remember their saying so, that old lady with the daughter that wriggles too much."

At this stage in her meditations Joy laughed and ceased wishing. It was all very well to desire Green Gnomes and golden-haired fairy-ladies to gallop down the bridle-path, but the chances were that if any one did come it would be the old lady and her daughter, on livery horses, and that they would wish to alight and talk to her. City-bred Joy didn't want to talk. She only wanted to be left here alone with the trees and the sunset. It was more than time to dress for dinner, she knew it well, for the sunset was a little less bright. But she deliberately stayed where she was, the ballad singing itself dreamily still through her head.

And then she did hear the click of a horse's hoofs, quite plainly.

CHAPTER THREE

PHYLLIS RIDES THROUGH

When Joy could see the rider she was relieved to find that he had no intention of stopping. Then--a little too late--she sprang up and ran after him; for the horse was a pony, and the rider a little boy, laughing too gleefully not to be in mischief, and lashing the pony on. He was having a perfectly wonderful time, apparently, and seemed to have a safe seat; but he was certainly much too young to be galloping through the woods at sunset alone.

Joy fell back panting from her vain chase.

"Why, he wasn't more than four or five," she said half-aloud. "What _will_ his mother say?"

But the clatter of the light hoofs, and the delighted shouts of the child, pa.s.sed like an apparition, leaving Joy half wondering if she had imagined it all. Though she was still a little concerned, because somebody was very fond of that mop of flying dusky hair, and the triumphant little voice that had echoed past her.

"I can wait here, anyway," she decided at once. "Some one may come looking for him, and I can tell which way he went."

She sat still where she was for a little while longer. She had nearly made up her mind to follow the child, when, to her great relief, she heard another horse coming.

"I can send whoever it is after him," she thought, springing up and running out to the path. "Oh, wait! Please wait!" she called to the as yet unseen rider.

The horse was pulled to a walk, and its rider slipped to the ground, coming into Joy's sight with the bridle over her arm, and the animal following her.

"Did you see--" began the strange lady, just as Joy said:

"Would you please--"

Then each stopped and waited for the other to go on, though the lady with the big white horse seemed in haste to ask and be gone. She was the first to continue, rather hurriedly.

"Did you see a little boy on a pony, riding this way?" she asked.

"I'm hunting for him."

While Joy replied she looked admiringly at the speaker. She was much taller than Joy, and very pretty, with long blue eyes, a creamy skin, and hair that was the very "golden-yellow" of the ballad. She might have been anywhere in the later twenties, but Joy learned afterwards that she was thirty-two. To Joy's eyes she was the fairy lady of the ballad come true; for she had evidently flung herself on her horse just as she was, in a green evening gown with a light cloak over it. Even in her anxiety for the child she had about her an atmosphere of bright serenity that made Joy in love with her.

"I was just going to ask you to go after him," Joy replied as she looked. "He went past here a few minutes ago. I'm sure he is too little to be riding alone."

"He is indeed," said the golden lady, smiling. "Little villain! But it seems he doesn't think so! Which way did he go, please?"

"Straight along this path," Joy answered, pointing.

The lady sprang to her horse again.

"Thank you," she called back, then more and more faintly, "I haven't much time--now, to be--grateful as I should be. We'll--come--back--"

The last words were hardly distinguishable from the echo of the flying hoofs. The ballad-lady was gone.

The whole thing seemed to Joy like something out of a pageant. She wondered if the lovely lady in green was the little boy's mother, or his sister or aunt.

"It was a little like the Green Gnome poem, except that she was hunting for him, and that the little boy was pretty," she thought.

In the poem the Gnome had turned to a "tall and comely man" when the lady kissed him. She liked the lady; there had been something so gay and friendly about her, just in those few words, that Joy's heart felt warmed. Very few people near her own age came close enough to stately little Joy to be as friendly as the lady had been--or as the wishing-ring man had been.

"Somewhere," Joy decided happily, "there must be lots of people like them, if I could only find the place. I'm sure I shall some day."

She sat on in the gathering twilight, waiting for them to return. As she sat the thought of the wishing-ring man came back again.

Wherever he was, he was wishing her well, and remembering her--he had said--what was it--he'd had a "human five minutes" with her. Her heart beat unreasonably, as if he might be coming down the brown path in the twilight, this instant,--as if the golden lady might bring him back with her.

It was nearly dark, and the wind was getting colder, when the hoofs sounded down the path again. There were three of them now--and Joy's heart gave a little spring, till she saw that the man riding the other horse was no one she knew. The pony was riderless, and he was leading it, while the naughty little boy who had caused all the trouble was perched in front of the lady's saddle, most impenitently conversational. She had one arm tight around him, as if she did not want to lose him again, and she was smiling down at him and answering him gaily as he talked. Punishment was evidently waived, or so far in the future as not to worry anybody. The child's clear little a.s.sured voiced came to her, sitting in the shadows.

"But if G.o.d takes care of me, Faver, I don't see why I need a nurse bovvering," he was expostulating.

Joy didn't hear just how his family met this objection. She saw that the lady looked about for her, and could not see her in the gathering darkness.

Then she went back to the hotel, where she was very late for dinner.

She looked around for the riders, but she did not see them. Evidently they were having dinner taken over.

Phyllis Harrington, rather regretfully, hooked a dog-chain to the porch railing of the cottage she and her husband had just hired. It was an entirely unnecessary part of the family bull-terrier's wardrobe, and she intended to use it as an instrument of justice. So she called her small son. She believed in making the punishment fit the crime, and Philip had flagrantly run away, quite against orders, the evening before.

He appeared at her summons, smiling angelically. Philip Harrington had not the smallest visible excuse for being the son of his parents, for his father was not particularly dark, and his mother distinctly gold-blond. Philip threw back, it was supposed, to the family Pirate, a semi-mythical person whom Phyllis said she'd had some thirteen generations ago. Phyllis was a New Englander. The Pirate must have been dark; at least Philip had tragic, enormous brown eyes with dense lashes, a mop of straight black hair, and a dusky skin, deeply rose-red at cheeks and lips. He also possessed the gentle, solemn courtesy of a Spanish grandee, which the Pirate may or may not have been. He was full of charm of manner, and combined a spirit of fearless loving-kindness to all the world with an inability to see why he shouldn't always have his own way; which made him difficult to manage.

"You goin' to chain me up, Mother?" he inquired affectionately, nestling up to her.

"Yes," explained his mother, hardening her heart, "little boys who run away from home like little dogs have to be treated like little dogs."