... 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.
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