For one awful moment nobody spoke. John Hewitt, having no key to the situation, was quite unembarrassed. So was Angela, who wriggled herself to earth with a rapturous shriek of "Johnny! Johnny! Cakies!"

Hewitt gathered up Angela, and, followed by his host, came up the steps, to where Phyllis stood, tall and gracious, with Joy clinging to her.

"Why, it's little Joy!" he said surprisedly, smiling at her as he took Phyllis' hand. "Where did you find her, Phyllis?"

Joy clung closer to Phyllis, waiting for the storm to break, for Mr. Havenith was stepping forward now, holding a courteous, if dazed, hand to the man his granddaughter had elected as her fiancÉ. He spoke before Phyllis could answer.

"And so you are my little girl's betrothed!" he said with rather stiff courtesy. "Ah—yes. I remember you, sir."

John Hewitt's gray eyes moved from Phyllis, standing there obviously quite taken by surprise, to Joy, clinging to her burning-cheeked, in what was quite as obviously an agony of terror. He caught his breath for a moment, moved forward and opened his lips to speak, then shut them again firmly and stood still where he was, with the afternoon sunlight glinting over his fair head, and little Angela's more golden one, pressed close beside it. As he remained still, his eyes rested gravely on Joy: the very little princess of the fairytale, with the dragon imminent at any moment. She looked very piteous and terrified and small; not more than fifteen, and unbearably afraid of him, with her black-framed blue eyes fixed on his in an appeal as agonized as it was unconscious. He caught his breath again, then turned to answer her grandfather, his decision made.

"I am glad you remember me, sir," he said gravely, "and exceedingly glad that you are willing Joy should—"

Joy gave a long shudder of relief, and relaxed all over. He was not going to put her to shame there before all of them. She would have time to explain. She would not have her visit, but that, even, seemed a small thing beside the dreadful danger she had just escaped. She could tell him when they were alone.

Grandmother was coming forward now, to speak to him, where he stood, straight and dignified and handsome, with the little girl still on one arm.

"You are my old friend Grace Carpenter's son, as I was just telling Mr. Havenith. Edith Carpenter's nephew.... I—I am glad you are a friend's son," Grandmother finished tremulously.

John set Angela down and took Grandmother's hand, saying something to her gently—Joy never knew what. She had stood enough.

Phyllis felt Joy's hand pull out of hers. The inn-cottages were all built alike, so Joy knew perfectly well how to bolt through the front door, through the living-room to the back door and away. Viola, mending a little sock, caught a glimpse of flying skirts and flying braids.

"Them red-haired folks certainly is tempestuous, but they's gitters," she remarked to herself philosophically, and went on with her mending.

Outside, Phyllis looked at Allan and Allan looked at Phyllis. There didn't seem much to say about it. At last Allan spoke, in a way that he and Phyllis agreed afterwards was painfully inadequate, but was all he could think of to say.

"Ah—would you like to put away your suitcase, old man?" he inquired. "You must be tired of—of seeing it there."

Phyllis gurgled under her breath, but every one else was deadly serious. Nobody seemed to see anything funny about the offer.

"Thank you very much," John responded solemnly. "Yes, thank you, Harrington, I believe I would."

He bent over and picked it up, and followed his host inside.

Neither of them said anything as they went upstairs.

"Here's your room," Allan offered, showing it politely.

"So it is," murmured John in a quite expressionless voice, looking at it without seeming to know how to enter.

"It's to live in, you know," Allan suggested.

At this broad hint John went in and put his suitcase on the bed. He still appeared to be in more or less of a trance-state.

"If we'd known, we'd have tied a little white ribbon here and there, and arranged a rice-cascade—a shower, isn't it? or something," continued his host, amiably. "Awfully sorry, old chap, but you shouldn't have been so darn secretive. But we'll do our best—"

John awoke at this, and caught up a small pink pincushion which sat in the mathematical middle of his dresser, and threw it. It didn't hit Allan, because he dodged.

"That's one of Phyllis' favorite pincushions," he warned John from outside the door. "I say, Johnny, this isn't any way to repay hospitality."

He went on down the stair, and John could see his shoulders shaking.

"They've both got too confounded much sense of humor," said John bitterly.

But he went out and picked up the pincushion just the same, and addressed himself to the methodical unpacking of his suitcase.

"Oh, I forgot! Congratulations!" Allan called cheerily up from the stair-foot.

John, casting collars automatically from suitcase to dresser-top, growled.

"Congratulations! I need prayers more!" he said under his breath. "But—poor little thing! I might as well have stepped on a kitten! ... I certainly did tell her to hope for better things and they'd come.... I didn't know I was going to be one of 'em!"

Then, as he continued to unpack he grinned in spite of himself, for into his mind came a poem of Guiterman's he'd read lately, about an agnostic Brahmin who didn't believe in prayer, and came inadvertently on a tiger praying for a meal in the jungle:

"The trustful Tiger closed his prayer—
Behold—a Brahmin trembling there!
The Brahmin never scoffed a whit.
The Prayer had answer.—He was It."

"I wonder," mused John, "whether she's a kitten, or a tiger? Anyway, I was It! ... I can't stand any more of anything just now. I'll get out till dinner-time!"

He tiptoed downstairs, and in his turn slid out the back door. The Haveniths were still talking to the Harringtons on the front veranda, he noted with a certain pleasure in their durance, and Phyllis' back looked polite but tired. He headed for the adjacent woods, diving into the leafy coolness with a feeling of escape. The wood blew cool and a little moist, and fragrant with far-off wood-smoke, and there was a feeling of solitude that he liked. He sighed with relief as he rounded the turn in the wood-path.

And there before him, at the foot of her great oak, stood Joy, not expecting him in the least. She uttered a little cry at sight of him, and turned to run away. Then she thought better of it, and stood her ground. Just what John might be going to do or say to her she did not know, but she thought he was entitled to do almost anything, and stood prepared for it, her face buried in her hands.

John had been a little irritated at the sight of her, but her evident terror moved him, as it had before. He was, through and through, the best type of physician; a man whose first and ruling impulse was always to help and heal, whether it was body or soul, or only feelings. Joy, standing with her face hidden, felt him laying his hands, smooth and strong, over hers.

"Aren't you even going to look at the fiancÉ you've picked out?" she heard him say half-amusedly. "Why, I'm not going to hurt you, child."

He took her hands down. She let him, and raised her eyes to his kindly, wise steel-gray ones. He seemed to be regarding her in a friendly fashion, and she dared to look at him friendlily, too—even to smile a little. He brought to her the same sense of brightness and well-being that she had experienced before, and her heart felt lighter, though by every law of reason she should have been more ashamed than ever, confronted with him, there alone.

"Of course you won't hurt me," she said. "But—well, when you steal anybody's name and get engaged to it, they have a right to be cross. You can be, if you want to, and I won't say a word. I know very well I deserve it!"

John Hewitt had intended to be cross—very cross indeed; but with Joy's kitten-blue eyes fixed trustfully on his he found it difficult even to be stern. He made an attempt, nevertheless.

"Don't you know that a little girl like you isn't old enough to be engaged to be married?" he told her severely. He sat down on a heap of brown and scarlet leaves, the better to show Joy the error of her ways. "What made you think of it at all?"

Joy smiled. She was quite at ease now, with the curious feeling of ease and happiness he always gave her, and she answered him calmly, drawing a heavy copper plait forward over each shoulder.

"It's these that have made you think so all along. I'm nineteen."

John sat back a little, with both hands clasped over one gray-clad knee, and looked at her again in the light of that.

"It's hard to realize, I know," she said apologetically. She lifted the wonderful braids and bound them crownwise around her head, tying the ends together behind as if they were pieces of ribbon, and tucking them under with a comb, from behind one ear. She anchored them in front with the other comb, and smiled flashingly at him again. "Now it seems real, doesn't it? And now I'll tell you all about it—that is, if you have the time."

He looked again at the lovely, earnest little face under the crown of hair, and nodded gravely. She was not like any girl he had ever known.... She was like the girls you imagined might exist, sometimes, and wondered if you'd like them, after all, if they did. He wanted her to go on, at least, and felt stealing over him a conviction that she couldn't have done so particularly wrong.

Joy felt the lessened severity of his attitude, and took courage from it as she began.

"You remember that day you came to Grandfather's? You remembered my name, so I'm sure you do remember the rest. Well, that day I was especially unhappy because—well, it's hard to explain the because. Things were just as good as they always had been, really; only that day I couldn't stand them any more. You know things can be that way."

She looked at him expectantly, and he nodded again.

"It was a forlorn little life for a child like you—oh, I keep forgetting!"

He laughed.

"But even nineteen," he explained, "isn't particularly aged to an elderly gentleman of thirty-four."

"As old as that?" queried Joy.

She looked at him again in the light of new information, but she shelved it for the time, and went on with her defense.

"Well, that afternoon, when things were perfectly down to the very flattest bottom—'and not a ray of hope to gild the gloom'—you came. And things brightened up. You know you told me that if I hoped along, things I wanted would come?"

"I do know it!" said John with a fervor she did not understand.

"Well, they did!" she announced, looking at him radiantly, and pausing a little so he would have time to realize it.

John Hewitt's patients had always told him that just his coming in made them better, and he had simply accepted the faculty as useful in his work. But he had never thought that his personality could affect a perfectly well person. At Joy's tribute, unconsciously given, his pulse quickened a little. Had he really had this much power for happiness over the child?...

"Almost right away they brought me to this lovely place," she went on happily, "and almost right after that I met the Harringtons. It's all seemed to me because of your wishing ring."

"What wishing ring?" he asked, smiling indulgently at her, as one does at a child's fancies.

"Don't you remember?" she asked a little forlornly. "Well—you have such lots of things to remember! You said, 'Just keep on believing things will come right, don't lose heart, and they will.' I said, 'Like a wishing ring?' and you said, 'Yes.' I've felt as if I wore one—played I did, I suppose you'd say. I—I suppose I really am not being grown-up very well, after all.... Well, after I knew Phyllis the best thing of all happened. She asked me to come stay with her, and have roses and a moon, and children all day long. But Grandfather always said I couldn't go under any circumstances but being engaged.... And I was so wild to go—it just slipped out—truly it did! And then—the gods overtook me!"

She clasped her hands in her lap, and looked up at him—she had sunk to the ground when he did, and was also sitting on a leaf-heap. She tilted her head back against the big tree, and awaited her sentence.

John felt for the moment exactly the mingled pleasure and embarrassment that a man does who has been adopted by an unusually nice dog. It is a compliment, but one doesn't know exactly what to do with the animal. Joy sat and looked at him with what seemed to him to be a perfect trust that he would be good to her. As a matter of fact, Joy was merely pleased because he was there and not angry at her. She did hope a little that he would offer to do the explaining that they weren't engaged to Grandfather. But she was quite unprepared for what he said next, after a little silence.

"You're a brave little thing," he told her gently. "You shan't miss your roses and your moons on my account.... I'll tell you what we'll do, Joy. We'll stay engaged till we're out of sight of land."

She looked at him with parted lips.

"What—what do you mean?"

"You shall go to Phyllis' just the same, child. We won't even tell the Harringtons that it isn't true till we're on the train for Wallraven."

Joy stared at him, incredulous still. She could not speak for a moment.

"Oh!" she said then. "Oh—why, you're the kindest man I ever knew. But then, I knew you were! Thank you ever so much ... but—are you sure you don't mind at all?"

"Quite sure," he told her.

"Well—thank you!" said Joy fervently. "And oh, if I ever get the chance, I promise I'll do something for you you want. Just think of what you're giving me—a whole month of being just as happy as I like! We can go back to the bungalows now. I don't mind being congratulated one bit after this—do you?"

"N-no," said John a little dubiously. Then he laughed. "There's one thing you've forgotten. There's always a ring when people are engaged, even for four days."

Joy said nothing to this. She watched him while he slipped a curious, chased dull gold band with a diamond sunk in it, from his little finger. "It isn't a conventional solitaire sitting up on stilts, but it will do, won't it?" he asked.

She held her little slim hand out for it, her face sparkling. His were the long, slender, square-tipped fingers of the typical "surgeon's hand," smooth and strong. But Joy's hands were little for her build, which was not large, and the ring slid down her engagement finger till she had to anchor it with a little gold band from the other hand, pushed down over it.

"I'll take very good care of it, and polish it before I give it back to you," she assured him.

He answered her on a sudden boyish impulse.

"I don't want you to give it back to me. You're to keep it.... It can be your wishing ring that you said I brought you, Joy."

She smiled down at it, loose on her finger.

"Why, so it is—my wishing ring!" she sighed happily. She turned it about her finger, and he saw her lips move. She was wishing. He wondered what, but she did not offer to tell him.

"I wish that he may have the thing he wants the very most in all the world," she was saying fervently under her breath. When she was done she rose from the leaves, and he sprang up beside her.

"There's one more ceremony," he told her, half-amusedly. "Even for a four days' engagement, to make it quite legal—" He bent toward her, smiling.

"Oh—oh, should we?" stammered Joy, her wild-rose color deepening to rose-red.

"I really think we should," said John solemnly. It was the nearest to teasing any one he had come for a long time, and he found himself rather enjoying it. Besides, in his heart lurked the feeling that the child ought to realize that she might have let herself in for a good deal, if she hadn't fallen into merciful hands. He was a little ashamed of himself at the sweet way she took it. She merely held herself quite still and serious, and lifted her face a little.

John was a young man who always went through with anything he had begun, and he bent over and kissed Joy, very lightly.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"I—I didn't mind," said Joy, trying to make him happy, for she saw he was sorry, though she didn't know why or what for.

"You dear child!" he said. "Well, I won't do it again. I was teasing you, and I shouldn't. Come, we ought to go now."

She fell into step beside him, still mystified, but very much obliged to him in general, and they went back to the bungalow and congratulations side by side.

Meanwhile two very much surprised young people confronted two still perturbed old ones in the sunset on Phyllis' veranda.

"Now why do you suppose," Allan demanded of the world in general, "Johnny didn't break the news to us? I've rarely known a man who liked secrets less. He hasn't even come over and looked radiant with his mouth shut, as a normal human being would."

Phyllis picked up Angela and gazed over her head as she considered. She had a way of using Angela as most women do knitting or embroidery: as something to have in her hands when she wanted to think.

"It was certainly a case of very silent emotion," she said contemplatively.

"What was there a case of, Mother?" demanded Philip, reappearing, very dusty, and climbing up on all of her that Angela didn't occupy, thereby damaging fatally the spotlessness of her crinkled white silk skirt. "Is it something to eat? Did Johnny bring—"

"Johnny brought the rather surprising news that he and Joy are going to be married," his mother informed him, kissing the back of his neck. She spoke to him, as she always did, in a manner entirely unedited for children. If he didn't always know the long words, as she said, so much the better—his growing intelligence was stretched a little hunting them up.

The growing intelligence was certainly excited now.

"Married?" inquired Philip indignantly, voicing the feelings of the entire party. "Well, I think it would of been politer to have let us know before they spoke to each other about it!"

It was no time to feed either of the children, and their nurse would have been horrified, but Allan produced a box of marshmallows from behind a jardiniÈre before anything more was said.

"Here, my dear son," he said politely. "You deserve them for saying that. 'Them's our sentiments,' too, only we hadn't quite decided how to put it. Now go off and die happily, and only give Angela two."

Philip returned thanks automatically, clutched the box and fled before any one should interfere to revoke this wonderful gift from Heaven. Angela wriggled her small, blue-overalled body down and went in passionate pursuit.

"Now, you mustn't worry about it," Phyllis said to Mrs. Havenith, rising with one of her swift, graceful movements and putting both arms about the disconsolate old lady. "John Hewitt is one of the best men I ever knew. He's a rock of defense. Indeed, you may trust him with Joy. Allan has known him since they were in college together, and he has been our closest friend since our marriage. He's—why, he's nearly as nice as Allan, and that's saying all I can say. Isn't he, Allan?"

"As nice as I am?" said Allan, laughing and coming nearer to them. "That would be difficult, you know, Phyllis! But, seriously, Mrs. Havenith," he went on more gravely, "you can trust Hewitt to make Joy very happy. He's one of the best fellows I ever knew. And he is amply able to take care of Joy, if that is worrying you."

"He's perfectly adorable to his mother, too," Phyllis interposed; "and she's that marvelous thing, a mother who wishes her son would marry. You don't know what a lot there is in that!"

"True," said Allan teasingly, in a tone too low for any one but his wife to hear; "it can't be carried too far, as I have reason to know."

Phyllis had been rather unusually her mother-in-law's choice—indeed, the late Mrs. Harrington had done a good deal more in the business than she had any right to, and only Phyllis' own sweetness and common sense and the fact that Allan and Phyllis fell in love after their marriage had justified what old Mrs. Harrington did in the case. And when it did turn out properly she was not there to see, having died as soon as she had gotten her son (who was then, as every one thought, hopelessly paralyzed) safely married.

Phyllis broke off to say swiftly, under her breath, "I'll be even with you for that, Allan Harrington!" and went on trying to console the Haveniths; for poor Mr. Havenith sat, dignified and forlorn, trying to look perfectly omniscient and satisfied and not succeeding a bit.

After repeated assurances the Haveniths seemed a little happier, and went back to their bungalow to dress for dinner. The Harringtons sank back in their chairs with a sigh of relief apiece.

"I don't care if Philip eats every marshmallow on earth, I'm not going to stir till I've talked it over with you, Allan," said his wife determinedly.

She looked so pretty as she said it that Allan rose from his chair, tipped her chin back and kissed her.

"So she should gossip if she wanted to," he told her teasingly, dropping back into his own chair before she could object, if she had wanted to. "Go on, my dearest; say all the things you wouldn't say before the Haveniths. I'm perfectly safe."

"Yes, thank goodness, you are," acknowledged his wife. "Telling you things is like dropping them down a deep black well, which is a great comfort to a confiding person like myself. Well, then, if you insist on knowing what my lower nature thinks of this performance, it's my opinion that Joy and Johnny both ought to have their ears boxed. I don't believe in corporal punishment as a rule, but if there ever was a time for it—"

"In Philip's words," suggested her husband, "it would have been politer to have told us before they made up their minds!"

Phyllis laughed.

"I confess I rather agree with him," she said. "It was a little shock. Just the same, I never came across any one sweeter or prettier or more attractive than Joy, and it certainly is a comfort to know that John's wife will be some one I can be friends with without a struggle. You never can tell what a man's going to marry."

Allan arose and walked up and down meditatively, his golden-brown eyes fixed on the dulling sunset. He had spent several of his years lying on his back, as the result of an automobile accident in his early youth, and since he had been given back the use of his limbs he never kept still unnecessarily. He had arrears to make up, he said.

Phyllis watched him striding back and forth, tall and graceful, and forgot all about Joy's love-affairs. For the moment, watching his grace of movement lovingly, she was back in the days that had seemed so happy then, but were so much less happy than these, when they had had their first glad certainty that he would entirely recover. It had taken less than six months from the time he first stood, before he could walk easily, and another six before he could go back to horseback—tennis and swimming had been later still. It seemed sometimes to them both as if it had all been a dream, so active and untiring he was now.

"Heaven has been good to us," she said irrelevantly, but earnestly, looking up at him.

"Heaven's been good to me, I know," Allan said tenderly. "I have the best and sweetest girl in the world to spend my life with me..."

"John would disagree with you," said Phyllis, smiling up at him nevertheless, and flushing. "Allan, did it strike you that John would have been just as well pleased if Joy hadn't broken the news to Grandfather right then?"

"Johnny's like Talleyrand; you'd never know it from his expression if some one kicked him from behind.... Not that I'd like to be the kicker."

"So if he looked surprised, which he certainly did," pursued Phyllis decisively, "he was quite surprised, not to say upset."

"Oh, not as bad as all that," said Allan, who was not given to analysis. "I say, Phyllis, we really ought to go off and see if the children aren't dying under a tree somewhere."

"They are not," said the children's mother firmly. "You know Angela is much more under Philip's thumb than she is yours or mine or Viola's, and he's a martinet where she's concerned. She'll never get more than her legal two marshmallows, and a boxful won't hurt him."

"You're such a blessing, Phyllis," he answered irrelevantly. "Before the children came I used to wonder a little whether they wouldn't get in the way of my enjoyment of your society; but you didn't die and turn into a mother one bit. You've just added it on, like a sensible girl."

"Well, of course I'm attached to the babies," said Phyllis, who would have died cheerfully for either of them, "but you'd naturally come first. And they're much happier than if I were one of those professional mothers who can't discuss anything but croup.... Allan, it's time we began putting up triumphal arches. Here they are."

Allan began to whistle "Here Comes the Bride" softly and profanely under his breath, as Joy and John Hewitt neared them, but Phyllis managed to stop him before he was audible.

"She is a darling, isn't she?" Phyllis whispered, as she stood on the steps with one hand on Allan's arm. "Look at her, Allan—she looks like a strong little Rossetti angel! Oh, I'm so glad it's happened!"

She ran impulsively down the steps to greet them, her hands outstretched.

"I am so glad!" she said sincerely. "I don't believe anything nicer could have happened, even if we weren't notified!" She put one arm around Joy, giving the unoccupied other hand to John Hewitt. "And I think it's specially nice of you to stay with me instead of with Mrs. Hewitt, my dear."

Joy looked up at Hewitt appealingly. She was already beginning to feel that he was to be depended on to see her through things.

"I think Mother will want her innings sooner or later," he said. "But we haven't really told either of you all about it. You shall have the whole thrilling tale in the train. Suspend judgment on us both till then, please."

"Oh, there isn't any judgment," Phyllis answered gaily. "You needn't try to get out of your engagement on our account, either of you. The Harrington family registers entire satisfaction, doesn't it, Allan?"

"We're both awfully glad, old man," said Allan for his part.

Joy wondered, her heart beating with excitement, if they would mind very much when they heard the truth.... But such kind people as the Harringtons couldn't be very angry!

She was beginning to feel irrevocably engaged.... Never mind—John Hewitt would see her through. She looked up at him, and he smiled down on her.

"Let's all have dinner sent over here," suggested Phyllis brilliantly, "to celebrate. We'll have Viola go over to the hotel for your grandparents."

But Grandfather, it appeared, had gone to bed to rest from his excitement, and Grandmother, of course, was staying with him. So the four of them ate together in the little green living-room of the bungalow, talking and laughing happily. Joy, between Allan and John, spoke very little. But she felt so contented and so in the midst of things that she did not need to talk. She gleamed and shone like a jewel or a flower, smiling and answering happily when she was addressed: and John, looking at her, felt that his four days' protectorate was going to be perfectly simple and easy to endure.