"We were like Old Man Kangaroo--we had to!" smiled Phyllis. "There's
chickenpox at our usual summer home, so we basely fled, leaving
Johnny to struggle against its fearful ravages single-handed."
Joy sat Angela down, because she was beginning to wriggle.
"Is Johnny your brother?" she asked shyly.
Phyllis shook her head.
"I haven't a relative on earth, except these babies--of course
Allan's more of a relative by marriage. No, Johnny Hewitt's the
family doctor, a classmate of Allan's, and a family possession. He
might as well live with us, he's so much about the house and garden.
I suppose this place is very good for the angel-children, but I'm
afraid that in a few days I'm going to wish I was back among the
roses, with Allan and Johnny and a banjo and a moon!"
Joy's eyes lighted.
"Roses?" she said. "Oh, have you a rose-bush!"
Phyllis laughed.
"'Do we keep a bee?' We have a garden full of roses. The gardener
hints mournfully that we ought to take prizes with them, but I know
perfectly well that would mean I couldn't pick them unless he let
me. So I've given him a bush to play with, and he does take prizes
with that. He's colored, so Allan says we have to encourage him to
have ambitions. He's married to the cook. Our having colored
servants shocked the neighbors terribly at first, but they're
hardened to it now. I gave an intelligence office _carte
blanche_ when I was married, and got the ones I have now; and
we're so fond of each other that I simply can't part with them and
get haughty white persons."
Phyllis' one idea in those early days, as Joy learned later, had
been to have a summer staff who were cheerful. The intelligence
office woman had, naturally, chosen happy-minded darkies. And happy
they still remained; also adoring.
The neighbors, though Phyllis did not state this, from being shocked
had become passionately envious. Servants who had stayed eight years
without a change, merely one addition, were things to be watched
hungrily.
"I beg your pardon, but it's luncheon-time, Mrs. Harrington," said
the children's nurse at this point, appearing in the doorway. "May I
have the children?"
Phyllis bent over the sleeping boy and dog and unfastened her son.
The nurse gathered him up affectionately, and went in search of
Angela, who had strayed around the corner of the house a little
while before.
"Oh, I must go," cried Joy, starting to her feet. "They'll be
wondering where I am. And I haven't been to half the cottages."
She turned to go, then looked back at Phyllis wistfully.
"Think of it," she breathed. "A garden full of roses, and two men,
and a banjo, and a moon!"
Her hands locked together over the invisible wishing ring. She
wondered if there was a garden like that anywhere that _he_ lived.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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