Joyces Investments | Page 4

lightly up the steps of the square porch, as if overjoyed to be there. Before she could ring, the door was flung open with the outburst,
"I knowed it was you! I saw you froo de window." She caught up the laughing child with a loving word. "Of course you knew me, sweetheart! Where's mama, and Auntie, and 'Wobin', and all?"
The brown curls bobbed against her shoulder and the red lips met her own in frank affection.
"Dey's heah, but Wobin's wunned away."
"Wunned away? The naughty dog! Ah, Dorette, there you are! How's the blessed mother?"
"Better, Joyce; no pain in several days. Come in, dear--she'll be so glad! Oh, Joyce I did think when all restrictions were removed----"
"Ah! no, dear. You knew I would observe every form of respect. I have been nowhere yet."
She glanced down meaningly at her black gown, and Dorette's olive skin flushed in a delicate fashion.
"I beg your pardon. You are right, as usual. Come in to ma m��re."
Joyce followed the sweet-faced young woman, still carrying the little child who was so like her, and thus entered the large and pleasant living-room of the old house. In the embrasure of one broad window, seeming to focus all the light which streamed in freely through the thin, parted curtains, sat a woman in a gown of soft white wool, made with artistic simplicity. Her face had the same soft cream tint as her gown, and the hair, turned back in loose waves from her broad forehead, was of a purplish black, occasionally streaked with gray. All the features were clean-cut and delicate, but the expression in the large black eyes was that vague, appealing one which too surely indicates the utter loss of sight.
Evidently the woman, still exceptionally beautiful in her maturity, was hopelessly blind.
Joyce quickly set down the little one, and advanced on winged feet.
"Ma m��re," she said in a voice almost of adoration, as she dropped to her knees beside the woman's chair, "Ma m��re, I have come back."
"Dear one! Ma petite!" exclaimed the other in liquid southern accents, reaching out a delicate, trembling hand, which the girl caught and kissed devotedly. "We have longed for you. But we knew you would come! Let me see your face, child."
Joyce turned it upward and remained very still while the other lightly touched brow, eyes, lips, and chin, in a swift, assured fashion.
"Ah, you are truly the same little Joyce. There is the breadth between the eyes like an innocent child's, the straight, firm little nose like a Greek outline, the full curved lips--do you still pout when angry, ch��rie?--and that square, decided turn to the chin, more apparent than ever. You have grown, Joyce; you are a woman now."
"Yes, mother, but still a baby to you, and I want always to keep the old name for you, no matter how I grow. Ma m��re, you have grown younger, and are more beautiful than ever."
"No flattery, mignonne! It is not good for me. Sit down here and tell us all there is to tell. You are very lonely, now?"
"I am alone--yes."
Joyce drew a chair close beside the other and sat down, while the older women smiled slightly.
"Yes, there is a difference. They tell me you are very rich."
"Too rich, dear mother; it frightens me!"
"Money is a great power, my child."
"And a terrible responsibility, as you have always taught me, ma m��re."
"True. We have both known happy days without it. Still----" "If it had only come in the right way, Mother Bonnivel!" cried the girl in an irrepressible outburst, "But oh! there's a stain on every dollar. I must spend my whole life trying to remove the stain, trying to make it honest money. Do you remember our little French fable? How the cursed coin of the oppressor left its mark in boils and burns, until it had been sanctified by relieving the starving child? I must sanctify what my father--snatched--ma m��re."
"And you will, Joyce--I know that."
"Yes, I mean to, God helping me. I have just come from a stormy interview with dear old Mr. Barrington, but I have won him over at last. Yet, it is you, mother, who will do it all, for I shall simply carry out your plans and----"
"My plans? what, Joyce! I have never----"
"Oh no, because you had not the means, so what was the use? But all the same it is you. Didn't you supply all the ideas, all the longings and the foresight? Every bit of it is what you have instilled into me from babyhood."
"They are your own dreams--yours and Leon's. Now let us make them reality. But where did Dorette go, and where is Camille? I want you all to hear--and good Larry, too."
"Then stay the day with us, dear. Larrimer will not be home till evening, and there is so