"Put a line from 'Call me thine own' on this one," he said, "and have a couple of turtle-doves perched up on the clef, cooing at each other, and make little hearts for the notes."
"How brilliant!" cried Joyce. "Phil, you're a genius. Do think up some more, for I'm nearly at my wits' end, trying to get thirty different designs."
"Don't make them all so fine," he suggested. "Some of those people will get it into their heads that matrimony is all roses." He lifted his voice a little, so that Lloyd could not fail to hear. She was standing before the moulding-board now, her sleeves tucked up, and a look of intense seriousness on her face as she sifted flour, as if pie-making were the most important business in the universe.
"Make the Queen of Hearts with a rolling-pin in her hand and a scowl on her face, as she will look after the ceremony, when she takes it into her head to make some tarts. Put a bar of 'Come, ye disconsolate,' with a row of tiny pies for the notes, and the old king doubled up at the end of it, with the knave running for a doctor."
"You horrid thing!" called Lloyd, wrathfully, from the kitchen. "You sha'n't have a bite of these pies now."
"Nothing personal, I assure you," called Phil, laughing. "I'm only helping the artist." But Joyce said, in a low tone, "It is a little personal, because she used to be called the Queen of Hearts so much. Did you ever see her picture taken in that character, when she was dressed in that costume for a Valentine party? It was years ago. Miss Marks made some coloured photographs of her. You'll find one in that portfolio somewhere, if you'll take the trouble to look through it. She's had so many different nicknames," continued Joyce. Norman was hammering on something in the kitchen now, so there was no need for her to lower her voice.
"She is 'The Little Colonel' to half the Valley, and I suppose always will be to her grandfather's friends. Then when she started to school, about the time that picture was taken, she was such a popular little thing that one of her teachers began calling her Queen of Hearts. Both boys and girls used to fuss for the right to stand beside her in recitations, and march next her at calisthenics, and she was sure to be called first when they chose sides for their games at recess.
"Then, after she was in that play with her dog Hero, that Mary told you about, the girls at boarding-school began calling her the Princess Winsome, and then just Princess. Malcolm McIntyre, who took the part of the knight who rescued her, never calls her anything but that now. There she is, as she looked in the play when she sang the dove song."
Joyce pointed with her brush-handle to another photograph in the pile. It was the same picture that Mary had showed him, the beautiful little medallion of the Princess Winsome, holding the dove to her breast as she sang, "Flutter and fly." The same picture which had swayed on the pendulum in Roney's lonely cabin, repeating, with every tick of the clock, "For love—will find—a way!"
Phil put it beside the other photograph, and studied them both intently as Joyce went on.