The look Clarence bent on her this time held genuine admiration. "I think it is exceedingly fair," was all he said. "Really?" she asked. She certainly did not want to go back to the house, and, noble as Clarence might think her, she didn't feel a bit like taking orders from Gail. "She has made her bed--or it may even be, her beds," said Clarence. "Now why don't you let her lie in it, or them?" "Well, I don't want to go home," said Joy a little sadly. "Let us be optimists, as I suggested some yards back," said Clarence cheerfully. "Let us think of the wonderful effect it will all have on Gail's moral nature. By the time she has produced the eight-course dinner which I gather the worthy Dr. Hewitt requires to keep him the good citizen he is, she will be ennobled to a terrible degree. You have heard of the ennobling influence of toil, dear child?" "I have, but I never believed in it," said Joy. "It makes you cross, especially peeling potatoes, and it's bad for your hands. And judging by the number of maids who steal, it doesn't work at all." "I suppose," Clarence resigned himself, "that if Melisande were still spared to us in the flesh, she really would have talked this way, except that she would have used a few more dots. But one is an idealist. One is jarred. If you could recite, in your soft, clear-cut voice that is so admirably adapted for poetry, a few stanzas of something heartbreaking----" voluntarily. Joy, not unnaturally, lost patience. "I have spent my whole life, or a lot more of it than I want to, reciting heartbreaking poetry," she told him. "If you want it, go buy a phonograph record. And if you want me out here in the woods with you, stop talking about it!" She really shouldn't have been so cross. Clarence was supposed to be very clever when he talked. But just then she was only half listening to him, and there came a sudden vision of the night before--the cozy room, and the wood fire, and John across from her, smiling gravely at her, and talking in a way that didn't make her feel, as Clarence's way did, that he was laughing at her underneath, when he thought she couldn't see. John had told her once that his ideal girl wore something white or blue, and had her hair parted, and was connected in his mind some way with a wood fire. And he had talked and acted as if she was that girl. She'd had on the little blue dress that she'd bought, and made look modern with a fichu of Mrs. Hewitt's.... Clarence's voice interrupted her thoughts, rather plaintively. "Dear Joy! I _will_ buy a phonograph record! I will buy a whole album of them. I will purchase a copy of the Last Ravings of John McCullough, and have it rave to me the last thing every night, as a penance, if you will only stop looking off into space, and give at least a fair imitation of knowing that I exist." Joy's heart misgave her. She really wasn't being very polite.