Part 3 (1/2)

”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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 n.o.body'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 wis.h.i.+ng 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.

Now, how, with just seven dollars left from your last birthday's ten, could you buy a silk frock, with a hat and shoes and stockings to match? The answer seemed to be that you couldn't, but Joy did not want to look at it that way yet. And as she gazed around her bedroom in search of inspiration, her eyes fell on an illuminated sentiment over her bureau. It had been sent Grandfather by a Western admirer who had done it by hand herself in three colors, not counting the gilt. Grandfather had one already, so Joy had helped herself to this, because it matched the color of her room. She had never read it before, but, reading it today, it impressed her as excellent advice to the seeker after fine raiment.

”Let the farmer,” Mr. Emerson had said, ”give his corn, the miner a gem, the painter his picture, the poet his poem.” Joy did not stop to wonder (for the Western lady had left it out) on just what principle these contributions were being made. She didn't care.

”Now, that's the way people earn money,” said she practically, and tried to think what she could do.

Cook--she could make very good things to eat, but Grandmother would have to know about that, and, besides, it wouldn't be a thing they would approve of. Sewing--no, you couldn't get much out of that. She could recite poetry and be decorative, but she gave a little s.h.i.+ver at the thought. She played and sang as Grandmother had taught her--harp and piano--and spoke Grandmother's French. She couldn't do much with _them_.... Oh, she was just decorative! And as she prepared to be vexed at the idea, suddenly the motto caught her eye again.

”It's a perfectly impossible idea from _their_ standpoint,”

said Joy, with the light of battle in her eye for almost the first time in her life, ”but I simply have to have that gray dress.”

She rose and fished the amber satin out of her trunk. She put it on, put her long coat over it, packed her next most picturesque frock in a bag, fastened on a hat, and walked out the front door.

Just three blocks away lived a dear, elderly mural decorator who was always telling her how he wished he had her for a model. She knew he was making studies now for about a half-mile of walls in a new, rich statehouse somewhere far away.

She should have been frightened at this, her first adventure, but she wasn't. She found her heart getting gayer and lighter as she ran down the steps with her little bag. It was the kind of a day when all the policemen and street-sweepers and old women selling shoe-laces look at you pleasantly, and make cheerful remarks to you.

Even the conductor whose street-car she didn't take smiled pleasantly at her after stopping his car by mistake. It was as kind-hearted and pleasant-minded a worldful of people as Joy had ever met, and she was singing under her breath with happiness as she ran up the steps leading to Mr. Morrow's studio. There wasn't any particular excuse for her being so light-hearted, excepting that the street-people had been so friendly minded, and there was such a dear little breeze with a country smoke-scent on it, and that somewhere in the world was a tall man with fair hair and a kind, authoritative voice, who had said wonderful things to her--a man she would meet again some day, when she was charming and worldly and dressed in a tailor-made suit.

Mr. and Mrs. Morrow were artists both; and she found them, blouse-swathed and disheveled, doing charcoal studies in a corner of the room apiece. Mrs. Morrow kissed Joy, arching over her so that the smudges on her pinafore wouldn't be transferred. Mr. Morrow came out of his corner and shook hands with her with less care, so that his smudges did come off on her. Then they both listened to her story with the same kindness and interest every one else had shown her that morning.

”I can sit still or stand still as long as ever you want me to,” Joy explained. ”And you said yourself I was decorative, Mr. Morrow; you know you did!”

”I did, indeed,” Mr. Morrow answered promptly, while Mrs. Morrow asked some more questions.

Joy answered them.

”And I would be able to earn enough money for all those things in the window by Friday?” she ended.

The Morrows smiled and glanced at each other. Joy did not know, till some months later, why they smiled. Then they spoke, nearly together.

”Yes, indeed, dear child--quite enough!”

Joy was rea.s.sured, because, though she didn't know model-prices, she had been afraid that it wouldn't be.

Then they gave her some purple draperies--the satins wouldn't do, after all, it appeared--and arranged her in them. And, to antic.i.p.ate, when Joy went out to that statehouse, the next year, she was able to pick out her own bronze-gold braids and purple royalties all up and down the frieze.

”By Jove, she _is_ a good model!” said Mr. Morrow after a couple of hours, pulling at his pointed gray beard and speaking enthusiastically in his soft artist-voice.

”Splendid!” said untidy, handsome Mrs. Morrow, sitting down on the model-throne to view her own work the better. ”But she must be ready to drop, aren't you, Joy, dear? You aren't used to it.”