It was quite as pleasant to breakfast with John as it had been to dine with him, which had been something Joy had secretly wondered about. When breakfast was over, he told her matter-of-coursely that he was going to take her with him on his morning rounds.

"You'd better take a book," he advised her practically. "If you don't, you'll be bored, because I'll be leaving you outside a good deal while I'm inside seeing patients."

"I'll take my sewing," she told him, trying to be as matter-of-fact as he was. "That is, if you don't mind."

She was smiling as happily as a child over being allowed to go, and he smiled down at her, pleased, too.

"Not unless it's too big," he told her with an attempt at firmness which failed utterly.

She went off, singing under her breath, as usual, to get a very small sewing-bag, with a little piece of to-be-hemstitched pink silk in it, and John looked over at his mother.

"She certainly has the prettiest ways!" he said involuntarily.

"You're a good lover, Johnny," his mother rejoined appreciatively.

"Nonsense!" said John before he thought, and then pulled himself up. "That is—I don't think a man would have to be in love with her to see that," he ended lamely. "I thought they were attractive before I——"

"Exactly," retorted his mother with distinct skepticism. "That's why you—" She paused in mimicry of his breaking off, and, then, as Joy came back, gave him an affectionate little push toward the door. She followed them out to the gate and leaned over it, watching them. "Good-by, children!" she called after them. "Don't be late for luncheon!"

"Don't stand out there in the wind with no wraps, Mother," advised John.

"Nonsense!" she replied with spirit. "You have Isabel De Guenther's rheumatism on your mind, that's what's the matter with you. The idea of a woman of her intelligence giving up to inflammatory rheumatism is simply ridiculous. You don't get things unless you give up to them."

It was a beautiful doctrine, and doubtless had much to do with making Mrs. Hewitt the healthy and dauntless person she was, but it had its limitations, and John reminded her of them inexorably.

"You have neuritis when you catch cold in the wind, and you know it," he told her. "Do go in, Mother, to please me."

"You know I'll be back again as soon as you're out of sight," she observed. But she did go in.

Alas for the power of elderly ladies to keep off neuritis by defiance! When they came back at twelve-thirty Mrs. Hewitt was nowhere to be seen.

"Mrs. Hewitt says she has a slight headache, and will you please not wait luncheon for her: she's having it upstairs," was the message they received.

"Very well," said John gravely, and he and Joy proceeded to have luncheon alone together.

He glanced smilingly across the table at Joy as she poured his tea with steady little hands.

"It looks very much as if you were going to have to take charge, more or less," he said. "That's our friend the neuritis. Mother never admits it's anything but a headache the first day. Do you think you can look after things?"

"Why not, if she wants me to?" asked Joy.

"Well, I can imagine you standing on a drawbridge or a portcullis, or whatever it was they trimmed medieval castles with, and waving your hands to the knights going by," began John teasingly; "but it's a stretch of imagination to fancy a medieval princess pouring my tea and seeing that my papers are in order ..."

"You know I can't help having red hair," protested Joy, coming straight to the point. "And if your grandfather had always dressed you in costumes, you couldn't get to be modern all at once, either. I think I'm doing very well."

John threw back his fair head and laughed.

The idea of his grandfather, who had been a wholesale hardware merchant, with a New England temperament to match, "dressing him in costumes," was an amusing one, and he said as much.

Joy laughed, too.

"Well, there, you see!" she said triumphantly. "There's a great deal in not having handicaps. Why, there was a poet used to write things as if he were me, all about that, and I couldn't stop him. One began:

'I was a princess in an ivory tower:
Why did you sit below and sing to me?'"

"Well," said John, as she paused indignantly, "I'll be the goat. Why did he sit below and sing to you?"

"Because he wanted the pull Grandfather could give him, as far as I could make out," replied Joy with vigor. "And I don't call it a bit nice way to act!"

She did not quite know why John laughed this time. But she was very glad that he was not bored at being with her.

"Oh, Joy, Joy!" he said. "I take it back. You are not medieval—entirely. Or, if you are, princesses in ivory towers are more delightful figures than I've always thought them."

"We aim to please," said Joy demurely. "But I have to explain that a lot, it seems to me. I had it out with Clarence Rutherford only a day or so ago."

"Oh, you did?" considered John. "Well—don't try to please too hard. Remember that you are supposed to please me; but you don't have to extend your efforts beyond my family circle."

He was only half in earnest, but he was in earnest at least half. She wondered just what he meant for a moment, then it occurred to her that he meant Clarence, no less. She was on the verge of saying comfortingly:

"Clarence is just trying to make me fall in love with him. He doesn't count a bit."

But she stopped herself, remembering that Aunt Lucilla would never have said such an unwise thing, let alone Gail.

"I must go now and see how your mother is, as soon as we are through," she told him instead.

She found Mrs. Hewitt surrounded by more hot-water bottles than she had ever thought existed, and reduced to the point where she was nearly willing to confess to neuritis.

"I have pains all over me, child," she announced, "and as long as you are here I shall continue to describe them, so you'd better run. And if you tell John it's neuritis I shall probably take you over to Phyllis' fountain and drown you the first day I'm up. It will be an annoyingly chilly death if the weather keeps on as it is now——"

She stopped in order to give a little wriggle and a little moan, and saw John standing in the doorway.

"How's the neuritis, Mother?" he inquired sympathetically.

"You know perfectly well," said his mother without surprise, "that I can't spare one of these hot-water bottles to throw at you, John, and I think you're taking a despicable advantage."

"I'll get you some more hot water," said he placidly, collecting two red bags and a gray one, and crossing to her stationary washstand.

"There's a lower stratum you might get, Joy," suggested Mrs. Hewitt, and Joy reached down at the hint and secured the two remaining bottles, which she filled when John was through.

"That's much better," Mrs. Hewitt thanked them, with what was very like a purr.

"Incidentally," said John with concern in his voice, "it's about all anybody can do for you till the weather changes; that and being careful of your diet."

"Yes, and I got it this morning standing out in the damp and chill, watching you out of sight. Watching people out of sight is unlucky, anyway," said his mother. "I might as well say it, if you won't. And I don't expect to be able to get up tomorrow, which is Thursday."

"Thursday?" asked John, sitting down on the couch at the foot of the bed. "Is Thursday some special feast?"

"Thursday's the cook's day out, usually," explained Joy practically. "But she doesn't need to worry. Dear, if you'll tell me what to do——"

"Usually Nora attends to things that day," explained Mrs. Hewitt sadly, but with a trace of hope in her voice, "but tomorrow she has a funeral she must attend. Quite a close funeral, she explained to me; the remains was a dear friend!"

Joy smiled down on Mrs. Hewitt like a Rossetti angel.

"You don't need to worry a bit," she consoled. "How many meals will she be gone?"

"Only one," Mrs. Hewitt told her, with what was obviously a lightened heart. "Dinner."

"Just dinner for us three? Why, I can manage that easily," said Joy confidently. "At least—I hope I'll suit. I really can cook."

"You blessed angel! Of course you'll suit!" said Mrs. Hewitt. "I'm so glad. John does like good meals."

She moaned a little, rather as if it was a luxury, and turned cautiously over.

"You don't have to stay with me any longer, children," she said. "The last responsibility is off my conscience. And I may state, in passing, John, that I never imagined you had sense enough to pick out anybody as satisfactory as Joy."

They both laughed a little, and then John said, abruptly, that he had to go soon, and swept Joy off with him. Outside the door he stopped short.

"See here, Joy, you mustn't do things like that," he said abruptly. "You're a guest, not a maid."

She set her back against the closed door they had just emerged from and looked up at him.

"Please let me go on playing," she begged him with a little break in her voice. "You know I never had any mother to speak of, any more than she had any daughter, and—and—please!"

He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face to look at it keenly.

"Do you really like her so, child?" he said.

Joy hoped he would not feel her cheek burn under his touch.

"Yes," she answered simply. "And—and now I must go and plan a dazzling menu, please, and look in the icebox without hurting the cook's feelings. It's a case of, 'Look down into the icebox, Melisande!' as Clarence Rutherford would put it."

But she did not say the last sentence aloud. She only laughed as the phrase presented itself to her.

"Now, what are you laughing at?" demanded John.

"If I told you," said Joy like an impertinent child, "you'd know. And now, dear sir, you have to go out on your rounds. Be sure to be back in time for dinner—my dinner. I'm going to plan it tonight, even if I don't cook it."

He didn't seem angry at her—only amused.

"You plan a dinner—fairy princess!" he teased her, looking down at her picturesque little figure from his capable, broad-shouldered height.

"See if I can't!" said Joy defiantly.

And he saw.

When he got back that evening, cold and tired and a little unhappy over a child in his care who did not seem to be gaining, Joy met him at the door, drawing him into the warmth and light with two little warm hands. She had dressed herself in the little blue muslin frock she had bought herself the morning before. It had a white fichu crossing and tying behind, which gave her the look, somehow, of belonging in the house. Her hair was parted demurely and pinned into a great coil at the back of her head, held by a comb that he recognized as his mother's. What he did not recognize or remember was that he had told her once that his dream-girl "had her hair parted—and wore blue—and was connected somehow with an open fire." But he knew that she looked very sweet and lovely and very much as if she belonged where she was.

"Oh, come in, dear!" she cried. "You're tired. Come to the fire a minute before you go upstairs."

She spoke almost as if she were his wife, and he looked less tired as he came to her.

"I like being welcomed home this way," he told her, putting his arm around her, instead of releasing her, and going with her into the living-room. "Why, Joy, I take it all back about your not being able to keep house. One look at you would make anybody sure of it.... Are you doing it all for Mother, dear?" he broke off unexpectedly to ask her. "Aren't you doing it a little bit for me?"

She looked up at him, flushing.

"Yes—a little bit—" she said breathlessly. Then she made herself speak more lightly. "I did make the dressing and the pudding sauce myself," she admitted as gaily as she could for a fast-beating heart. "But I hoped there weren't traces. Is there flour on my face?"

She smiled flashingly at him and tipped her face up provokingly, slipping from his hold where they stood by the fire together. He made one step close to her again.

"You know perfectly well what to expect for a question like that," he said with an unaccustomed excitement in his voice, and kissed her.

Usually when he did that Joy made some struggle to escape. But tonight, in the firelight, a little tired and very glad to see him, she kissed him back, as if she were veritably his.

He dropped on one knee beside the blaze, drawing her down on the hearth-rug by him.

"I feel like the man in the fairy-stories," he said in a voice Joy did not quite know, "who catches an elf-girl in some unfair way, and finds her turn to a dear human woman in his house. Joy ... will she stay human?"

Joy's heart beat furiously as she knelt there, held close to his side. The little head with its great coil of glittering hair drooped.

"She—she always was human," she half whispered, her throat tightening with excitement. She could feel the blood stealing up over her face.

"That is no answer, Joy, my dear," he said softly.

But it was at this moment that a voice behind the curtains said, "Dinner is served."

Joy sprang up, but John stayed where he was, his broad shoulders and fair head bent a little forward as he looked into the blaze.

She touched his arm timidly.

"John—please—you must go up and see your mother before dinner."

He roused himself from whatever he had been thinking of and turned to her.

"I must, certainly," he replied, springing up. "I think I am answered.... Am I not, dear?"

"Why, yes," said Joy with a little surprise, but as gently and confidently as ever. "I answered you. I always do what you tell me, don't I?"

He touched her hair lightly and smiled for an answer as he passed her on his way up. She heard him whistling light-heartedly above, as she, too, stood staring into the fire.

She hadn't thought that any one could be so very kind and lovely as John was being to her tonight. She could feel yet the pressure of his arm as he held her beside him. And it was going to last a great deal longer—weeks longer! She could be as happy and as much with him and as much to him as she wanted to. There would be Clarence's mocking love-making, too, for flattery and amusement. And when she had to go back home, at last, she would have so much happiness, so much good times, so much love to remember, that it would keep her warm and happy for years and years!

When John returned, his hair damp and nearly straight with brushing, and his eyes still bright with laughter, she was sitting at the head of the table, waiting for him happily.

"It's a nice world, isn't it?" she suggested like a child. "And do you like whipped cream in your tomato bisque?"

"It is, and I do, very much. Am I to have it?"

Joy nodded proudly, her eyes shining.

"I don't know about the world, but you are going to have the whipped cream," she said, as she felt for the electric push-button in the floor with one small, circling foot.

"I might as well tell you now," said John gaily, "that the bell you are trying to step on is disconnected. Mother unhooked it eight months ago, because when she was excited she always forgot and stamped on it. I think we use a glass and a knife."

"Oh!" said Joy. "Well, I haven't the technique—would you?"

But Nora came in with the soup just then without having been rung for, having evidently been hovering sympathetically near.

"Pardon me, Doctor, but the bell is connected up," she breathed. "I hooked it up myself as soon as Mrs. Hewitt gave Miss Havenith the housekeeping."

It had evidently been a sore point with Nora—and, if the truth were told, with John, who had an orderly mind. Although he adored his flyaway, irresponsible mother, it was in spite of her ways and not because of them.

"Do you think you are apt to get excited and step on the bell?" he asked Joy.

She shook her head.

"I like things the way they're planned," she confessed. "They go along more easily."

"I suppose," he meditated aloud, "you might even put a man's collars in the same place twice running."

"Where else?" demanded Joy, who was so thoughtful of such things that she was even intrusted with certain duties of the sort for Grandfather.

"Well, Mother hasn't repeated herself for twenty-eight years," said John a little wistfully. "She says she doesn't intend to get in a rut, nor let me."

Joy laughed aloud.

"It must take lots of spare time, hunting new spots!" she said. "I'm afraid I'd think life was too short to take all that trouble."

"I'm coming to the conclusion that there's nothing you can't do," he said irrelevantly. "But I suppose you had a very able godmother—princesses do, don't they?"

"I have a wishing ring," Joy explained, entering into the play. "It's very well trained. All I have to do is to tell it things, and it sees to them immediately."

John went on eating his soup.

"You look as if you wanted to ask it to do something," she pursued.

He looked thoughtful.

"As a matter of fact, I do; but it seems an unfair advantage to take not only of a docile wishing ring, but of you," he stated.

"Try us and see," invited Joy, ringing, with a visible satisfaction in things, for the next course.

So John took courage.

"It's socks," he confessed with a boyish shame-facedness. "I—I'd like to see how you'd look doing them. I can't quite make myself see you, even now.... I suppose I'm silly—I'd like to see you sitting under the light in there, sewing for me, just once."

"You mean mending, not sewing," Joy told him cheerfully. However the wishing ring may have felt about the request, the princess was frankly delighted, "Have you got many? I do them very fast!"

John still looked doubtful. He still seemed to feel that it was a mean advantage to take of the most domesticated ring and princess.

"You see," he explained, "Mother's idea is—and it's likely a very good one—that when socks have holes you throw 'em away and get more. She doesn't make allowance, though, for one's getting attached to a pair. And I bought six pairs lately that I liked awfully well, and I hated to see them die.... They're just little holes."

"I'll get them and do them as soon as we're through dinner," she promised. "Won't your mother mind?"

"She'll be delighted," John promised sincerely. "But she hasn't them. I have."

Accordingly, after dinner Joy demanded them, and John produced them, while she got out her mending-basket, something he had never suspected her of possessing, he told her.

She sat down under the lamp with her work, tying on the little sewing-apron Mrs. Hewitt had given her the day before.

"Why, they scarcely have holes at all," she marveled. "I can do lots more than these."

"There are lots more," said John rather mournfully. But he did not feel particularly mournful. He was absorbed in the picture she made sitting there by the lamp, near the fire, her red mouth smiling to itself a little, and her black lashes shadowing her cheeks as her hands moved deftly at her work. John himself, on the other side of the fire, had a paper across his knees, but he forgot to read it, watching her. She seemed to turn the place into a home, sitting there quietly happy, swiftly setting her tiny, accurately woven stitches.

John's mother was an adorable playmate, but responsibilities were, to her, something to laugh about. She had always declared that John should have been her father, not her son; and he had always tried to fill the role as best he could. But there had always been things, though he had never admitted it to himself, that he had missed. It would have been pleasant to him if there had been some one who shared his interest in the looks of the place and in the gardens and orchards that were his special pride. He would have liked to have his mother care about his patients, to play for him in the evenings, perhaps, and to think about his tastes in little things. But though a tall harp stood in a corner of the living-room, and a piano was somewhere else, they were not often touched. Mrs. Hewitt was passionately interested in people. She loved traveling and house-parties and fads of all kinds—but she had no roots to speak of. John had never felt so much as if his house was his home as he did tonight, with the cold rain dashing against the windows outside, and inside the warm light, and the busy girl sitting across from him, sewing, and smiling to herself.

She looked up, as he glanced across at her contentedly, and spoke.

"I thought you seemed a little down tonight when you came in, John. How is the little La Guardia girl? You were having something of a struggle over her treatment the last time I went with you."

"By Jove, you have a memory!" said John, seeming a little startled. "The child is worse today, and it was on my mind. How on earth did you guess it, Joy?"

She only laughed softly.

"Don't you suppose I'm interested in your affairs? I don't like you to be worried. And I knew Giulia La Guardia was the only patient who wasn't doing well at last accounts. Just what is the trouble?"

John leaned forward and began to tell her about the child. Her blue eyes glanced up and down, back and forth, from him to her sewing, as she listened, and occasionally asked a question. They had both forgotten everything but the room and themselves, when they heard a genial male voice in the hall.

"No, indeed, my dear girl," it said, "I don't need to be announced in the very least. I'll go straight in."

And in just as brief a time as it might take an active young man to shed his overshoes and his raincoat, in walked Clarence Rutherford, as gay as always, and unusually secure of his welcome.