"How on earth was I to know that mothers-in-law were like this?" she
demanded of herself indignantly. "All the ones I ever heard about
made your life a misery."
It is rather calming to remember that you really couldn't have
foreseen what is happening to you. So Joy presently rose happily,
smoothed her hair and tidied herself generally, and came sedately
down the stairs, prepared to go on playing her part. Only it was
getting to feel more like a reality than a pretense. The other life,
the one she would go back to, seemed the dream now.
"John will be here soon," Mrs. Hewitt greeted her. "It will be a
surprise to him: you know, he hasn't an idea you are here. I wouldn't
tell him what Phyllis said."
Joy dimpled.
"Do you suppose he'll mind?" she ventured.
"Oh, I think he'll bear up," said Mrs. Hewitt amiably. "Come here,
Joy; I've cut out a half-dozen of the silk ones already. Do you know
how to do them? They're just a straight piece--see----"
Joy knelt down by her, absorbed in the pretty thing and in seeing
how to make it. The day was chillier than any had yet been, and a
fire had been built in the deep fireplace of the living-room. Mrs.
Hewitt was sitting near it, with the pretty scraps of silk and lace
all over her lap, and an ever-widening circle of cut-out garments
around her.
"We can do the most of these by hand," she mused. "Indeed, we
shouldn't do them any other way."
Joy rooted sewing things out of a basket near by and sat down just
where she was, between Mrs.
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