The Wishing-Ring Man | Page 7

the two weeks that led to
Grandfather's next Afternoon. Joy was delighted to find that her Muse
wasn't asked for, and her grandparents may have been rather pleased at
her continuing to behave as she always had, instead of saying curious
things about wanting to be like other people. She continued to wear her
picture-frocks and do as she was told. Her own feelings were that she
had been naughty, but that she was rather glad of it.
And so it was that when the reception day came around again, Joy
helped with the sandwiches and sliced the lemons and piled up the little
cakes and dressed herself prettily--and then went and hid at the foot of
the back stairs, with Aunt Lucilla for a companion.
"I hope I shall behave if somebody finds me, and tells me what a
privilege it is to be me," said Joy; "but I doubt it. Because it isn't. It isn't
one bit."
"What isn't?" demanded a man's voice interestedly.
CHAPTER TWO
BY GRACE OF THE WISHING RING
Joy turned her head to look. She was quite sure that the speaker
couldn't see her very well, but she could see him, or the top of him,
perfectly, because he was standing in the crack of a door that gave on to
the back hall; a door few people remembered existed, as a picture hung
on it, and it gave no impression of ever being used. He was young and
broad-shouldered and sure-looking, little as she could see of him. She
could see his face as far down as the eyes, and that was all. They were

pleasant, steel-colored eyes, very amused and direct, and his hair, in the
light of the old-fashioned chandelier behind him, glittered, fair and a
little curlier than he evidently approved of.
He slipped entirely through the door; at the same moment Joy blew out
the candle she had been holding up to Aunt Lucilla. Then she laughed,
a little shy, pretty laugh. She wished she could light it again, to look at
him, but she remembered that if she did that he might think she did
want to look at him.
"I'm so glad you've come!" she almost said. He seemed like some one
she had been waiting for a long while, some way, instead of the usual
stranger you had to get used to. There was such a breath of freshness
and courage and cheer in just the few words he had spoken and the
little laugh they were borne on, that Joy felt irrationally what a nice
world it was. Then she remembered to reply to what he had said.
"It isn't a privilege, being me," she explained from her shadows.
He looked over to where her voice came from, but there wasn't
anything visible except a little dark heap on the last three stairs.
"I could tell better if I could see you," he stated pleasantly. "Don't you
want to take the hint?"
But Joy, mindful of the hanging braids that would certainly make him
think she was a little girl, would not take it at all. She snuggled against
the wall.
"Oh, you can see me any time," she said carelessly, "but you can
scarcely ever get to talk to me. At least, I heard somebody say so last
month."
She felt quite like somebody else, a gay, teasing, careless sort of real
girl, talking to him here in the dark. She was sure she wouldn't if the
lights were on. She could talk to him as if he were some one out of a
book or a story, so long as he didn't know she looked like a
book-person or a play-person herself.

"Well, anyway, do let me stay here," he begged, doing it. "For the last
hour I haven't felt as if it was much of a privilege to be me, either. Do
you know that feeling of terrible personal unworthiness you get at a
party where everybody knows everybody else and nobody knows you?
I feel like precisely the kind of long, wiggly worm the little boy ate."
Joy felt very sorry for him; because if she didn't know that feeling she
knew one to match it; having everybody know her and nobody think of
playing with her.... This man was playing with her for a minute,
anyway.
"And I'll always have him to remember," she thought happily, "even
when I'm an old, old lady, writing reminiscences of Grandfather, the
way they all say I should ..." She went off into a little daydream of
writing all this down in her reminiscences, and having him--old, too,
then--write back to her and say that he, also, had always remembered
the time happily, and wondered who she was.... Then she answered
him.
"You know me, anyway--don't