And now she seemed just a pleasant person
like oneself. Joy had caught up to her. It was like an omen.
"What is it?" she called dutifully as she ran.
She found no opportunity to see more of Miss Ward. She wanted to,
for she was sure she was going to like her. She had always wanted to.
"It's a good audience," breathed Clarence over her shoulder, as they
looked through peep-holes in the curtain. "All the sisters and
cousins and aunts have turned up. I say, Joy, the Fairy Queen was
good for ten tickets at least. There's a row of her dear ones right
across from aisle to aisle."
The moment of the play had come all too swiftly, and in ten
nerve-shattering minutes the curtain would go up. Ten minutes after
that Joy would be rising out of a trap-door, in the character of a
fairy who had spent the last twenty years at the bottom of a stream;
incidentally she would be acting for the first time in her life.
There was enough to be excited over; and yet it was none of these
things that excited her--it was the curious note in Clarence
Rutherford's voice as he spoke his trivial words in her ear.
She moved away from him automatically. She was a little tired,
tonight, of his persistent flirtation. It was all very well for a
while, but surely--surely, she thought, it was time he'd had enough
of it; and she went back off the stage, looking, though she scarcely
acknowledged it to herself, for John. She felt as if she wanted to
see as much of him as she could.
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