"Come away, dear. The lady with him just asked him whether he wrote
under his own name or a nom-de-plume, and you know how irritating
that is."
Joy came obediently away. After all, it didn't matter about Jack's
other name. She knew perfectly well that she should see him again.
Everything was bound to go happily.... And till she saw him again,
she had him to remember.
"I have something pleasant to tell you, dear," said Grandmother,
patting the arm she still held.
"Yes, Grandmother?" she asked, smiling. An hour or so before she
would have been wild to know what it was, but now she was only
serenely glad that it did exist. She knew perfectly well that things
had begun to happen. And now they would go on and on and on till the
fairy-tale ending came. She knew that, too. Somehow, the shut-out
feeling was all gone, ever since the gray-eyed man had sat at her
feet in the hall and given her the wishing ring. The curtain was
up--or, rather, the door was open into things, just as he'd pushed
open the door from her little dark dream-place, the door that had
always been there, but nobody'd thought to use. Of course, things
were going to happen--lovely ones!
"I know I'll like it," she ended, with a happy little laugh.
"You seem better already, dear," said her grandmother happily, and
began: "We have been talking about your health, and we have decided
that you need a change, and some young life. So we are going up to
an inn in the Maine woods for a month or more. There's boating
there, and--and games, I understand, and there's a literary colony
near, so there'll be people for your grandfather. He thinks he may
go on holding small Afternoons. It's a cottage inn."
Joy did not know then what a cottage inn was, but neither did she
care. She clasped her hands happily over the invisible wishing ring.
As Joy helped Grandmother pack, the next week, she wondered a little
about clothes. She did not worry now, because she had a conviction
that if she only knew what she wanted, and hoped as Jack had told
her, she could hope things straight to her. There was a gray taffeta
in a window uptown, together with a big gray chiffon hat, a little
pair of glossy gray strapped slippers, and filmy gray silk
stockings. And the hat, instead of having pink roses on it, as you'd
think a normal hat would, by the mercy of Providence had deep yellow
roses, exactly the color Joy knew she could wear if she got the
chance. The chance, to be sure, was remote. She did not have an
allowance, just money when she asked for it; and her fall wardrobe
had been bought only a few weeks before. Besides the amber satin
that the poetry was about, there were three other frocks, lovely,
artistic, but, Joy was certain, no mortal use for tennis. She didn't
know how to play tennis, but she intended to, just the same.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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