Part 3 (2/2)

But Joy shook her head.

”I'm not tired a bit,” she said truthfully. ”I just let go all over and stay that way. It isn't sitting any stiller than I do lots of days, when Grandfather has me stay close by him, and keep very still so he can write. Why, it seems downright sinful,” she went on earnestly, ”to earn beautiful gray clothes by just sitting still!

But you would have to have somebody, anyway, wouldn't you?”

”Of course we would!” said Mrs. Morrow, picking up her crayon again.

”Indeed, we have to have two most of the time.”

They all kept very quiet for a while after that, Joy sitting still in her robes of state, a slim young Justice presiding over an as yet undrawn Senate, and the Morrows working hard at her. She had been posing for another half hour, when there came a whirlwind of steps up the stairs, and the door banged open.

”Mrs. Morrow, can you let me have some fixative?” called a voice; and Joy moved her eyes cautiously, and saw a pretty, panting girl in the doorway. She looked like an artist, too, for she had a smudge of paint on one vivid cheek, and her black hair was untidily down over her gipsy eyes.

”Nice model you've got--good skin tints--oh, don't bother about the fixative if you're working. I see it.”

She darted in, past Joy, s.n.a.t.c.hed a bottle half full of something yellow, and was out again before any one could speak.

”I'm hurrying,” she called superfluously back as she fled to the floor below. ”Giving a dance tonight.”

Joy, most mousy-quiet in her chair, mentally registered another requirement toward being the kind of girl she ought to be. There were such lots of wonderful things to learn!

She went to the Morrows regularly every day after that, six days in all. She told Grandmother where she was, not what she was doing. It didn't occur to her that Grandmother would mind, but she thought it would be pleasanter to surprise her, and say, ”See the lovely dress I earned all myself, posing for the Morrows!”

Meanwhile, Grandmother, pleased at her little girl's brightened face and general happiness of demeanor, asked no questions.

”You've been one of the best models we ever had, my dear,” said Mrs.

Morrow in her deep, unceremonious voice, when the last day came.

”And it occurred to me that you might be too hurried when the last day came to do your shopping yourself. So I just ran uptown and got your pretties for you.”

It was not for a long time that Joy discovered the regular pay of a model to be fifty cents an hour, and the sum total of her gray costume to have been--it was late for summer styles, so they were marked down--fifty-three dollars and ninety cents. But Mrs. Morrow had said to Mr. Morrow, who usually saw things as she did, even before she explained them:

”Alton Havenith would never let that dear little thing have anything as modish as those clothes. He'd keep her for a living ill.u.s.tration to his poem-books till he died. And we're making a lot on that Sagawinna Courthouse thing.... And we haven't any daughter.”

And Mr. Morrow, remembering a seven-year-old with blue eyes and yellow hair, who had never grown old enough to ask for French-heeled shoes and picture hats, said only, ”That's what I thought, too.”

Joy, blissfully ignorant that she had been given a good deal of a present, kissed them both ecstatically on receiving a long, large pasteboard box, and almost ran home. She was so eager, indeed, to get upstairs and try on her finery that she quite upset a Neo-Celtic poet who had come to see if Grandfather would write an article about him, and was standing on the doorstep on one foot in a dreamy manner. He was rather small, and so not difficult to fall over. She did not stop to see if he was injured; she merely recovered herself, grasped her precious boxes more closely and sped on upstairs, thinking how pleasant it was that she was no relation to _him_.

To have even fine poetry written about you was bad enough; it must be much worse if the poetry was bad, too.

When she opened her box she found that Mrs. Morrow had seen and bought something else for her; a golden-brown wool jersey sweater suit, with a little brown cap to match.

”Oh, how lovely! I can wear them all day, and the gray things all night--all evening, I mean,” Joy exulted. ”And maybe I'll never have to put on the picture dresses at all!”

She went to sleep that night with the brown suit laid out in its box across the foot of her bed, below her feet, and the gray chiffon hat, with its golden yellow roses, on a chair by her, where she could touch it if she woke in the night and thought she had dreamed it. She said her prayers almost into it; she was so obliged to the Lord for the hat and the frocks, and the man who had talked to her in the dark, that she felt as if she ought to take the hat, at least, and show it to G.o.d while she was praying.

They had been in Maine long enough for Joy to discover what a cottage inn really was. It appeared that the inn itself lived in the middle, as a sort of parent; and all around it sprang up small cottages, where you and yours could dwell, and never a.s.sociate with anybody you didn't want to, except at mealtime, or lingering about a little afterwards, or at dances. And if you were unusually exclusive (also unusually rich), they took you over your meals, and you never saw anybody at all. Joy was exceedingly glad that Grandfather was only comfortably off, because she liked, best of all the day's round, the little times before and after dinner when she could sit on the porch and watch people, and decide whom she was going to like most, and whom she was going to be most like.

<script>