Joy spent most of the next morning talking to her grandparents—at least, they talked and she listened. Grandmother, now that the first shock was over, took the news with the same sweet and patient acceptance of people's behavior that forty-five years' sojourn among poets had taught her. The fact that Edith and Grace Carpenter were John Hewitt's aunt and mother appeared to comfort her a great deal. It made her feel less that Joy was marrying into a strange tribe.

Joy was pleased that this gave her grandmother relief. It was not till the day of departure that she discovered what awful thing more had been the result of the friendship. Indeed, it could have occurred to nobody, although, as John and she agreed afterwards, anybody should have seen what was going to happen!

For the remaining days at the mountain inn there was little excitement. Joy kept close to Phyllis or her grandmother, and John enjoyed himself in what struck the Harringtons as being rather too much his usual way. It seemed to them that a little scheming to see Joy alone would have been more appropriate. But neither Phyllis nor Allan were given to being relentlessly tactful, or planning situations for people. They reasoned that if the others really wanted tÊte-À-tÊtes they could manage them without help; and doubtless would, once they were in the country. So peace and unruffledness reigned in a way that was most surprising, considering the real facts of the case. They continued, even in Joy's mind, till almost the last minute, when she stood on the platform of the resort station with Phyllis, Allan, John, the children, Viola, and the bulldog, awaiting their train.

Philip was having to be cheered and distracted: his tender heart was nearly broken over the fact that his beloved Foxy had to travel in the baggage-car, when he would have been so much happier in the bosom of his family. Philip could not be restrained from pleading the dog's cause at length with a fatherly baggageman whose heart he had quite won in four minutes.

"He has a green-plush chair at home that he always sits in, and nobody takes it away from him, not even company," he explained earnestly. "He isn't used to baggage-cars—truly he isn't. He's a wonderful-mannered dog. And father says that if he lived up to his pedigree he wouldn't 'sociate wiv any of us. You can see he doesn't belong in a baggage-car!"

The baggageman, melted by Philip's ardent pleadings, was yielding to the extent of letting Foxy's family sit with him in relays and cheer him as much as they liked, when Grandmother dropped her bombshell. At least, that was what John called it when they talked it over afterwards. Joy always spoke of it as "the time Grandmother said the awful thing."

"Good-by, my little girl," she said. "I know Grace Carpenter's boy can't but be good to you. And, darling—she asked me to keep it for a surprise—I only heard this morning—but I know surprises aren't always pleasant—and you're so young, you need to be prepared. Grace wrote me she was greatly surprised by the news, though I'm sure she needn't have expected to be told if we weren't—but she was very sweet about it, and is giving a dance to all the nice people in Wallraven for you. It's set for the evening after you get there. She tells me she has arranged the invitations already, in a way that makes the short notice seem all right. Grace was always so ingenious.... Oh, there's the train—good-by, darling! Be a good girl!"

Joy was aghast.

"Grandmother!" she began. "Oh, Grandmother. I have to tell you! ... I—oh, John, tell her! I can't go! I—"

She turned to Hewitt despairingly. But he had not been listening: he had been watching the argument between Philip and the baggageman.

"Hurry, Joy, train's coming," was all he said, and caught her arm, whisking her aboard.

She pulled back, but that made no difference. He had her established in a seat, with what Phyllis called his "genial medical relentlessness," in spite of her appeals.

"But I can't go!" she protested weakly from her seat, as the train pulled out of the station.

"But, you see, you have," was John's placidly unanswerable reply, as he stowed his light overcoat on the rack above them and laid her coat over that with maddening precision. He smiled at her protectingly.

"Why, my dear child, what made you lose your nerve that way at the last minute?"

Then Joy understood that he had not heard the blow fall.

If it had been anybody but John she would have been much more embarrassed than she was, but by now she had come unconsciously to feel that when things went wrong John was the natural person to come to. He could always help her through them.

"Grandmother told me—" she began, then stopped. It was pretty hard to tell, after all.

"Go on," he told her encouragingly. "Grandmother told you what?"

"She told me that she wrote your mother, and your mother said—she said she wished we'd told her; but, anyway, she's sent out invitations for a big party—to meet me!"

It all came with a rush. She didn't dare to meet John's eyes after she had said it.

She heard his long, low whistle of astonishment, scarcely suppressed in time, and a lower, but quite as fervent, "Great Scott!" and then silence. It was not for a full minute that she dared look in the direction of his chair, which he had swung away when she had told him. She gave one quick glance, then another longer one. She could not see his face, but his shoulders were shaking.... Had it moved him so?

Joy was used, at Grandfather's, to hear of people being "moved."

"I didn't think John was the kind of a man to have emotions outside of him that way," she thought a little disappointedly, "but I suppose an awful thing like this—"

About then he turned himself toward her. He was laughing!

"Do you think it's funny?" she demanded.

"Funny?" replied John Hewitt, still laughing desperately, and trying quite as desperately to do it quietly enough to prevent the descent of the others, wanting to know what he was laughing at. "I think it's one of the funniest things that ever happened. Talk about Nemesis—if ever a punishment fitted the crime, this does!"

Joy sighed relievedly. At least, he wasn't being angry about it, and he might very well have been. She glanced out the window, which, like the windows of most New England cars in summer, had evidently been closed ever since John Hancock died, and glued in place. Then suddenly the thing struck her as funny, too. They were in for it, and by their own act. She began to laugh with him, quite forgetting that she had more explanations before her, and as a really honorable girl had no alternative but going back to Grandmother with her sins on her head.

"Oh, it is ridiculous," she gasped. "I feel as if I'd kidnapped you and couldn't dispose of you.... We really must stop laughing, or the others will come down on us to know what we're laughing at."

"You won't be able to dispose of me till the visit's over, at any rate," John answered her, sobering a little. "My mother and your grandmother have settled that for us effectually."

Joy sat bolt upright and faced him.

"You mean you're going to let it go on?"

"Why, of course I'm going to let it go on," said he matter-of-factly. "What else can we do about it?"

Joy's heart gave a spring of happiness. She wouldn't miss her visit, after all!

"We can find out that we don't like each other, and break off the day you go home. I'll come back from the train very sad," he told her.

"Thank you very much," she said happily. "I thought I was going to have to confess to every one and go back to Grandmother. I'm very glad I needn't."

"You poor kiddie!" he said, as he had said the first time he met her. "Well, on this particular point all you have to do is remember what Beatrice Fairfax says, 'Never explain and never confess, and you'll be respected and admired by all.'"

"It sounds like getting admiration and respect under false pretenses," Joy answered doubtfully. But she dimpled as she said it and looked up sideways at John under her black eyelashes.

The effect was so unexpected and pretty that it set John wondering why she didn't do it oftener. Suddenly a probable reason dawned on him. When John Hewitt discovered anything wrong it was his prompt habit to right it, and he did so now.

"See here, child, I can't have you being afraid of me," he said peremptorily. "When I told you I was a trial fiancÉ, I didn't mean that I was to be less of a fiancÉ than a trial. If we're going to be theoretically engaged for a month, we'll have to be friends, at least, and friends trust each other, and know they can ask each other to do anything they want. They know, too, that they never need be afraid of either being angry at the other."

"Then I'm to take it for granted that you feel as friendly toward me as I do toward you?" she asked.

"Why, naturally," he answered. "That's friendship."

"It sounds much nicer than anything I ever heard about in my life," said Joy enthusiastically. "But—are you sure I'm not the one that's going to be more of a trial than a fiancÉ? I—I don't want to be a bother, you know."

"If you are, I'll tell you," he promised.

"All right," said Joy contentedly, "and I promise not to have my feelings hurt a bit."

She felt quite unafraid of him by now, as he had intended, for they had been talking together as if they were exactly the same age—or, rather, Joy thought, as if nobody had any age at all.

"Do you know," she told him confidentially, "I did want a lover, back there at home. A real one, I mean. I saw a girl with one, and you could tell there wasn't anything on earth so nice as being lovers. But this is lots better—all the nice part of it and none of the stupid part—for I suppose they were going to be married."

John looked at her curiously.

"Joy, did you never have a friend of your own age, or any companions but those old people of yours?"

She shook her head, smiling.

"Never any."

"That accounts for you, I suppose," said he with a sigh, which puzzled Joy very much. She had accepted as gospel John's order not to be afraid of him; and she was talking to him as if he were confidant, father and sister, all in one. That it might be treatment a very attractive man wasn't used to never dawned on her, because she had nothing to check up by.

"Do I need accounting for?" she inquired, with another of the sidelong smiling glances he approved of.

She really wanted to know, but she was so contented with life as it was then that she did not feel particularly distressed over it. Her trial lover took another look at her and decided that perhaps she didn't need to be accounted for, after all. She was wearing the little golden-brown suit she clung to, with its little cap to match, and her cheeks were flushed with the heat of that September day. It was as interesting to watch her develop one and another little way, he decided, as it would have been to observe an intelligent child.

That there was some slight difference in his mind between her and a bona fide intelligent child was proved by that fact that he would just as lief that Philip had not interrupted them just then: though the interruption was done with all Philip's natural grace.

He was mussed and rather dusty, and the front of his blue Oliver Twist suit bore an unmistakable paw-mark on its bosom.

"John," he said earnestly, "if you don't hurry, Foxy will have been alone quite a while. Mother says I mustn't stay wiv him any longer, and he doesn't seem to think brakemen is people a bit."

Joy gave a little gurgle of laughter. It reminded her of Mr. James Arthur Gosport and how he loved brakemen. How shocked he would have been at the pedigreed Foxy! She began to tell John about it, then stopped herself.

"But you want to go and sit with the dog," she said, as they laughed over it; for Philip was standing, silent and reproachful, till John should do his duty by the beloved animal.

"I don't want to a bit," said John frankly, "but I suppose my reputation with Foxy demands it."

He rose reluctantly, quoting from the "Bab Ballads":

"My own convenience counts as nil:
It is my duty, and I will!"

"Come out on the rear platform," said Phyllis, joining Joy as she stared after the tall figure and the little one passing out of the car. "It's the only cool spot. I suppose in the smoking car, where Allan is, the windows are open, but this place is too hot to live in. I wonder if there's any blue-law that forbids opening chair-car windows. I always forget to tell Allan to get day-coach tickets on this line, and it never occurs to him to do anything but perish in the parlor-cars, having been brought up in the lap of luxury. So we suffer on."

Phyllis laughed as she led the way out to the little platform, and held to the rail with one hand, letting the wind sweep past her. She looked like anything but suffering.

"Oh, isn't it one of the loveliest days that ever was!" she breathed, turning to Joy.

"It's one of the loveliest times that ever was," Joy responded impulsively. "Oh, Phyllis, I'm so glad I met you!"

"Glad you met John, dear child," Phyllis corrected. "So am I. Glad I met you, I mean, and particularly glad John did. We were all so afraid he was going to marry Gail Maddox. I think he was getting a little worried over it himself!"

Joy looked up, startled.

"You mean—he wasn't really thinking of marrying some one else?"

Phyllis anchored her hat more securely, and smiled down out of the white cloud her veil made around the rose and blue and gold of her.

"He seems principally to have been thinking, in his monumental silence, of marrying you. But Gail was certainly 'spoken of for the position.'"

"Gail!" Joy murmured worriedly.

She had never thought of this complication.

Phyllis nodded.

"She's as nice as possible, but everybody could see how fearfully they wouldn't fit—everybody, that is, but the parties concerned. Gail's one of those people who are always dashing about aimlessly, doing something because she didn't do it yesterday. And John's the kind of a man—well, you know the kind he is: dependable, authoritative, angel-kind, and deadly clever. He's not a bit like Allan," said Allan's wife, as if Allan were the standard pattern for men. "If I didn't adore Allan too much to be so mean, I could fool him a dozen times a day, and so could any woman. If it meant John's life I don't believe I could hoodwink him, any more than I could another girl. I suppose it comes from diagnosing cases."

"We're almost at Wallraven, Phyllis," Allan spoke from behind them before Joy could answer. "Better come in and get your caravan in order."

"Coming," said Phyllis simply; and went in to assort her babies.

But Joy had seen the look that passed between the husband and wife, and it made her a little lonely for the moment. You could see that they belonged to each other, and how glad they were of it. And Joy—well, she was only somebody's pretend-sweetheart. Maybe nobody would ever look at her that way...

She clasped her hands together as she always did when she thought hard, and felt the touch of her wishing ring. Her heart lightened, for she remembered how kind John had been to her. Surely he couldn't pretend to be so pleased about it if he weren't. And if there was another girl, why, she was only having John borrowed from her.

"It won't hurt her a bit," Joy decided. "And if she really is flyaway, and all that, maybe a little anxiety will be good for her."

In Joy's heart, too far down for her to find it herself, was a tiny bit of defiance, and the old, old feeling, "If she wants him, let her come and get him!" But she wasn't in the least aware of it, and went back to her seat feeling like an angel.

She found there John, looking perfectly content with life, gathering up her belongings and his, and obviously expecting to make her his complete care. When John Hewitt took charge of anybody they were taken charge of all over; not fussily or so it was a nuisance, but just comfortably, so that every care vanished.

They got off the train, into the peace and spaciousness of open country. The station was behind them, a little, neat stone station like a toy dropped down on the old-fashioned New England countryside. Joy caught her skirts clear of the car steps and descended, John guarding her. She smiled down at him before she sprang to the platform, and he smiled up at her. To any one not in the secret they seemed like as real lovers as possible.

As Joy stood there, waiting a moment, she felt arms coming round her from behind, and, turning, startled, she found herself in the embrace of a tall, white-haired woman with John's kind steel-gray eyes and an impulsiveness not at all like John's.

"This is the first chance I have ever had to kiss my daughter," said a swift, soft-noted voice—not at all like an old lady's—"and I've been wanting one for thirty-odd years. I'm John's mother, my dear, and I forgive you both on the spot for keeping me in the dark. I know just why John did it. He didn't want parties given over him, as he's always saying. But I've foiled him completely... My dear, he's picked me out exactly the sort of thing I wanted!"

Joy kissed Mrs. Hewitt back willingly. This was just the kind of mother she had always wanted, too. She spoke out what she thought, before she thought.

"Are you Grandmother's Grace Carpenter?" she asked. "Why, you're not a bit old!"

Her mother-in-law laughed as she turned to greet her son, still holding fast to one of Joy's hands.

"I know you don't like being kissed in public, Johnny, but you know I always do it, anyhow. You good boy, to actually tell her I liked having my first name used! He never would do it, you know, Joy, dear. Phyllis and Allan—where are those two? I have their motor, commandeered it to come down in. Mine had the fender bitten off by the village trolley last night. Oh—they're putting in the children."

Joy had scarcely time to answer, but she let her mother-in-law sweep her along, and install her in the motor between herself and John, who was holding Angela because Angela insisted.

As they sped down the country lanes Joy sat very still, trying to forget that this happy time would ever stop. Giving up John was bad enough—maybe he would be friends with her afterwards if she was lucky—but giving up John's mother seemed almost too much to ask of any girl.

"I'm sure I'll never happen on a mother-in-law like this again!" thought Joy.

"How's Gail, Mother?" she heard John ask quite calmly as they turned down another leafy lane.

She flushed up, deep rose-red, as she listened for the answer.

"Just back from the city, and more rambunctious than ever," said Mrs. Hewitt briskly.

Joy clasped her hands over the wishing ring and looked off—anywhere—not to look at John or his mother. And in her anxiety she heard a husky whisper from the seat behind her, where Viola was restraining Philip and Foxy from jumping out into the landscape.

"Don't you fear, honey. Mighty hard work getting a man away from a red-haired girl!"

Where her courage came from Joy did not know. But as she heard Viola she sat up straight. And a light came into her eyes—the light of battle.