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 pa.s.sed 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 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, Ms 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-b.u.t.ton 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 gla.s.s 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 G.o.dmother--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!"