Grace
wrote me she was greatly surprised by the news, though I'm sure she
needn't have expected to be told if we weren't--but she was very
sweet about it, and is giving a dance to all the nice people in
Wallraven for you. It's set for the evening after you get there. She
tells me she has arranged the invitations already, in a way that
makes the short notice seem all right. Grace was always so
ingenious.... Oh, there's the train--good-by, darling! Be a good girl!"
Joy was aghast.
"_Grandmother!_" she began. "Oh, Grandmother. I have to tell
you! ... I--oh, John, tell her! I can't go! I--"
She turned to Hewitt despairingly. But he had not been listening: he
had been watching the argument between Philip and the baggageman.
"Hurry, Joy, train's coming," was all he said, and caught her arm,
whisking her aboard.
She pulled back, but that made no difference. He had her established
in a seat, with what Phyllis called his "genial medical relentlessness,"
in spite of her appeals.
"But I _can't_ go!" she protested weakly from her seat, as the
train pulled out of the station.
"But, you see, you have," was John's placidly unanswerable reply, as
he stowed his light overcoat on the rack above them and laid her
coat over that with maddening precision. He smiled at her
protectingly.
"Why, my dear child, what made you lose your nerve that way at the
last minute?"
Then Joy understood that he had not heard the blow fall.
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