Phyllis Harrington looked thoughtfully after her. There was
something about Joy Havenith that always made people eager to do
pleasant things for her, and watch her enjoying them. She did get so
much pleasure out of life whenever it let her.
"It won't be my fault," said Phyllis, coming to a determination, "if
that child doesn't get a chance at the garden and the moon, and the
men, too!"
When Phyllis made up her mind it generally stayed made. Accordingly,
she went to the reading that night, and afterwards made herself as
lovely to the Haveniths as she knew how, which was a good deal. She
asked them to have tea with her the next day, and continued to be
lovely. She also managed to give them a very fair idea of everything
they might be supposed to need to know about the Harrington family.
When she had finished they had discovered several mutual friends, a
meeting with Mr. Harrington's late mother abroad, the genealogies of
both Allan and Phyllis, and even a common ancestor somewhere in the
seventeen-nineties on Allan's side. The Haveniths thought it had all
just transpired, but Phyllis had really been tactfully offering
references. After about a week of pleasant friendship Phyllis
produced her invitation.
She wanted to take Joy home with her for the last part of September
and the first part of October. Joy was wild with delight at the
idea; but her grandparents would not let her go. They never had
before, and it didn't occur to them that they could now.
"Just for a little while?" she pleaded.
But her grandparents were firm.
"Under no circumstances could we let you go away from us, dear,"
said her grandfather firmly. "I am an old man, and the time will
come soon enough when I shall be with you no longer. If you loved
me, you would not ask it. When your lover comes it will be time
enough."
It sounded true enough. Joy did not exactly know how to meet it.
Then she brightened up.
"If you let me go for a little while, I'm sure I'd miss you
dreadfully, and love you more than ever. I'm sure I would!"
But Grandfather didn't intend to part with his little girl on any
such premise as that, and Grandmother was sure something dreadful
would happen if she was allowed to go.
"There is no excuse for it, unless you were engaged to be married,
dear, and going on a visit to your prospective people-in-law," she
said. "I couldn't let you go off without me otherwise."
It was too tempting. Before she thought, Joy had spoken.
"If I were, would it be all right?" she asked.
Grandfather answered her, somewhat at length.
"My dear child, you know my feelings about love. I myself married
your grandmother after a two days' courtship, when she was seventeen
and I was twenty-one; and I may say that I have never regretted
it--nor, I hope, has she. If you were affianced, nothing should
cause me to interfere with the course of true love. Your grandmother
and I would let you go to visit his people willingly. Your assurance
that you loved him----"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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