Here the worm turned. He also got up off the floor, and stood over
her, toweringly, as he answered.
"I haven't a kind heart one bit," he said--and was there a certain
sharpness in his voice?--"kissing you isn't at all hard--"
"Compared to lots of messy things you have to do in the exercise of
your profession?" finished Joy contemplatively, cocking her bronze
head on one side, and looking up at him sweetly, her arms around her
knees. "_I_ know. I've read about them--I've read a lot. You
have to give people blood out of your strong, bared right arm, and
cure them of diphtheria, and scrub floors--oh, no, it's the nurses
do that. 'A physician's life is _not_ a happy one!'"
She laughed, as he stood severely there above her. She had not
realized before that she knew how to tease anybody, least of all the
demigod who had rescued her from the shadows of the reception-halls
at home. But his kissing her had done something to her--it always
seemed to, she reflected--and his matter-of-fact explanation of it
had exasperated her to the point of wanting to pay him back.
"He might at least have _said_ he liked it," she told herself
petulantly. And then after she had laughed, she remembered that if
he did anything too much--if she went too far--he could speak the
word and send her flying out of fairyland... But he wouldn't do
that. He was ever so much too noble, thank goodness!
"People who are noble, really are a comfort," she said cheerfully,
aloud. "Dr. Hewitt, if you don't mind, my spray of roses got caught
in your coat. Of course, if you really want it----"
He detached the spray with something like a jerk and dropped it down
into her lap.
Really you could hardly blame a man for being annoyed a bit. To have
a gentle, grateful little girl you had nobly helped, suddenly perk
up and turn into something quite different--something dimpling and
impish and provocative--would be disturbing to nearly any man.
John had no means of knowing, of course, that Phyllis had said
anything about Gail Maddox, though he might have remembered, at
least, that Joy had red hair and was likely to have a little of the
fire that goes with it. He looked at her all over again, as if there
was somebody else sitting on the floor where little Joy Havenith had
been--somebody rather surprising. He began to wonder about this
young person, with a distinct interest.
"We've found her!" announced Mrs. Hewitt, much to the surprise of
the three in the dining-room, who had not lost anything.
She and Phyllis came in with a triumphant air, and Angela. Angela
was in Phyllis' arms, and adorably asleep, with her goldy-brown
lashes on her pink cheeks and a look of angelhood in every round,
relaxed curve.
"Found her?" inquired John, turning from his position looking down
at Joy. "Who was lost?"
"Do you mean to say," Phyllis demanded, "that you didn't know we'd
lost Angela for the last half-hour?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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