"
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 say you know no one," she told him.
"Anyway, I'm glad you're talking to me. I'm Joy."
He laughed again, leaning against the door-frame in the thread of light.
"Then you're something I've been looking for a long time," he said.
"I've had friends and success, and good times--but I've never found
Joy till now."
She knew, of course, that he was just being pleasant about her name,
as people were sometimes. But it sounded very lovely to remember.
"I'm Alton Havenith's granddaughter," she explained sedately. And,
with a sudden desire that he should know the worst, she added, "I'm
the one he writes poetry to."
He must have caught a note of regret in her voice--oh, he was a very
wonderful person! for what he said wasn't a bit what Joy expected
even him to say--the "How lovely for you!" that she was braced for.
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