Joyces Investments | Page 5

much to talk about."
"Shall I? Oh, how blissful to think I can! I will go out and send Gilbert home, then. He has waited for me so patiently all the morning. Dear Mother Bonnivel, is it wicked that I can't be sad and regretful, but that the freedom is so sweet--so sweet?"
"It is natural at least, my love. Go and dismiss Gilbert until to-morrow morning. It will be too late for your long ride home after our seven o'clock dinner. Then hurry back. I begrudge every minute you are gone."
Joyce sped gaily away, and returned minus her hat and furs.
"I left them in the hall," she explained, as Dorette looked up questioningly, having just re-entered. "Are you glad I'm to stay, Dodo? Do give me some sewing now, Dorey, just in the old way. Is there nothing to do for baby?"
"Nothing! Indeed you'd think there was something, to see the way she goes through her clothing. She's a perfect terror, Joyce! Well, take this bit of a yoke--can you hemstitch as neatly as ever?"
"Try me; I don't know. Ellen does everything now."
"You have a maid?"
"Oh yes, I could not live alone. But Ellen is scarcely that. She is too staid, too old and respectable. She is my companion, rather."
"And you are still in that great hotel?"
"Yes, our rooms were taken for a year, and the time is not up for some months yet, so it seemed best. And we are quite independent there. We live as quietly in our suite of rooms as if we were in a separate flat. And our places at table are reserved in a far corner of the great salon, so that by timing ourselves we avoid the crowd, and we do not become conspicuous."
"Yes, I understand. One can live much as one elects to anywhere," said Madame Bonnivel, caressing little Dodo as the child leaned against her.
"I don't know," laughed Joyce. "There have been times when we didn't think so--did we, Dorette? Oh, it is so good--so good to be here!"
Over their needle-work the talk ran on, largely reminiscent in character, and mostly in a joyous strain. The young matron, Mrs. Larrimer Driscoll, was evidently no ready talker, but her interest was so vivid that she was a constant incitement to Joyce, who seemed to have broken bounds, and was by turns grave and gay, imperious and pleading in a succession of moods as natural as a child's and almost as little controlled. Presently she who has been referred to as Dodo's auntie, Miss Camille Bonnivel, entered and, after one swift look at the guest, who stood smilingly awaiting the outbreak of her astonishment, threw up both hands and flew across the room.
"Joyce!" she cried, "Joyce Lavillotte! So the proud heiress of a hundred acres--mostly marsh-land, but no matter!--has condescended to our low estate. Shall I go down on one knee, or two?"
"On four, if you have them, you gypsy! Come, kiss me and stop this nonsense. Dear! How you have grown, you tiny thing. You must be nearly to my elbows by this."
"Elbows! I'm well on towards five feet, I'll let you know. But you are superb, Joyce--'divinely tall and most divinely fair'; isn't that it? Come, stoop to me."
They kissed heartily, the dark little creature standing on tiptoe, while Joyce bent her head low, then Dodo claimed attention from "Cammy," and amid bursts of laughter and sometimes a rush of sudden tears, the talk flowed on, as it can only flow when dearest friends meet after long separation, with no estrangement and no doubts to dim the charms of renewed intercourse.
CHAPTER III.
JOYCE'S INTERESTS.
Joyce had not exaggerated when she spoke of the settlement about the Works as a desolate, unpicturesque, uninviting spot, and Camille had skirted the truth, at least, when she referred to the inherited acres as "marsh lands." Had she named them a desert instead, though, she would have been nearer correct, for is not a desert a "great sandy plain?" So was the site of the great factories known as the Early Glass Works. They seemed to have been set down with no thought but to construct--a shelter for costly machinery; as to those who worked it, let them manage anyhow. The buildings were massive and expensive where used to protect senseless iron and steel; low, squalid, and flung together in the cheapest way where used to house sentient human beings.
In a certain spasm of reformation they had been purchased by James J. Early after a venture in his gambling schemes so surpassingly "lucky"--to quote himself--that he was almost shamed into decency by its magnitude. He even felt a thrill of compunction--a very brief thrill--for the manner in which two-score people, who had trusted him, were left in the trough of ruin while he rode high on the wave of