"Do you really like her so, child?" he said.
Joy hoped he would not feel her cheek burn under his touch.
"Yes," she answered simply. "And--and now I must go and plan a
dazzling menu, please, and look in the icebox without hurting the
cook's feelings. It's a case of, 'Look down into the icebox,
Melisande!' as Clarence Rutherford would put it."
But she did not say the last sentence aloud. She only laughed as the
phrase presented itself to her.
"Now, what are you laughing at?" demanded John.
"If I told you," said Joy like an impertinent child, "you'd know.
And now, dear sir, you have to go out on your rounds. Be sure to be
back in time for dinner--my dinner. I'm going to plan it tonight,
even if I don't cook it."
He didn't seem angry at her--only amused.
"You plan a dinner--fairy princess!" he teased her, looking down at her
picturesque little figure from his capable, broad-shouldered height.
"See if I can't!" said Joy defiantly.
And he saw.
When he got back that evening, cold and tired and a little unhappy
over a child in his care who did not seem to be gaining, Joy met him
at the door, drawing him into the warmth and light with two little
warm hands. She had dressed herself in the little blue muslin frock
she had bought herself the morning before. It had a white fichu
crossing and tying behind, which gave her the look, somehow, of
belonging in the house. Her hair was parted demurely and pinned into
a great coil at the back of her head, held by a comb that he
recognized as his mother's.
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