Part 14 (2/2)

He made no further references to paws or was.h.i.+ngs. He merely whistled again to Angela and the dogs, who were reluctant, but struggled obediently down from the counterpane, leaving, alas, distinct traces in all directions.

”If you frow the covers back n.o.body'll see anything,” he hinted from the doorway, and was gone.

Joy did not take his hint. Instead, she pulled the counterpane off bodily and put it in the window to sun, and then went on dressing.

Things were so cheerful and sunny and funny in this house.

”Oh, John was right,” she thought buoyantly, as she braided her ropes of hair. ”Things do come right if you hope and wish and _know_ they will!”

The glitter of the ring caught her eyes, in the mirror, between the bronze ripples of hair, and it reminded her of one thing that was _not_ settled: her frock for the evening, this wonderful evening when a party was going to be given for just her!

She asked Phyllis about it as soon as breakfast--a somewhat riotous meal--was over. She was a little diffident, because she was sure that any sane grown-up person who was told that there were five good frocks you hated would tell you you should wear them. But Phyllis only suggested bringing them down and looking them over. So they did.

”They all have queer things all over them that n.o.body else wears except ill.u.s.trations in historical novels, and they're all of very good materials,” said Joy sadly, laying them out one by one. ”And there isn't one I don't hate to wear. But I never could explain that to Grandmother, of course.”

She looked at Phyllis with a wistful hope in her eyes. Phyllis thoughtfully lifted the yellow satin skirts of Joy's pet detestation.

”This is a lovely material,” she said thoughtfully. ”Is it the color you don't like?”

”N-no,” Joy answered doubtfully. ”It's the make.” Then she burst out pa.s.sionately. ”I want to look frisky!” she declared. ”I want to be dressed the way John's used to seeing girls. I--I want to look just as pretty and like folks as Gail Maddox!”

She checked herself, flus.h.i.+ng and biting her lip. She hadn't meant to say that!

But Phyllis took it beautifully.

”No reason why you shouldn't look just exactly like folks,” she soothed. ”This is lovely, too, this silver tissue. Goodness, what a lot of material there is in these angel sleeves!”... She held it up consideringly... ”Wait a minute, Joy, I think I read my t.i.tle clear.” She ran out of the room, coming back in a moment with a life-size dress-form in her arms, which she set down.

”Here's Dora, the dress-model,” she said cheerfully. ”She adjusts.”

In proof she began to screw Dora down and in to required proportions, measuring her by Joy, who watched operations with fascinated eyes.

”I never knew you could sew,” she said.

”My father was a country minister,” Mrs. Harrington explained, flinging the green frock, inside out, over the steely shoulders of Dora, the dress-frame. ”I cook very nicely, if I do say it myself, and till I was seventeen I did every bit of my own sewing.”

”And were you married at seventeen?”

”No,” Phyllis answered, stopping a moment from her pinnings and speaking more gravely. ”My father died then, and I went to work. I hadn't time to sew after that--I bought ready-made things. So when I _was_ married--that was a long seven years afterwards--I did have such lovely times buying organdies and laces and things and cutting them out and making them! That was the summer Allan was getting well.”

She stared off at the wall for a moment, as she knelt up against the green satin. ”That was the loveliest summer I ever had--excepting every one since.”

She laughed a little, then prevented herself from further speech by putting a frieze of pins in her mouth and beginning to do something with the dress with them, one by one.

”Do you mind cutting into this?” she asked when that row was gone.

”The more the better!” said Joy with enthusiasm.

”It will make a stunning frock, with the silver net draped over the pale-green satin... M'm. That silver iridescent girdle on the other dress--the violet--can I have that, too?”

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