“You’re only talking now!” cried Joy; but the door was swinging, and a vanishing flutter of purple silk was her only response.
VII
Joy’s decision for steadfast endeavour, having once been made, did not waver. In the days that followed she began to feel a calm content; content that she had never known before. All the restlessness, the fits of uneasiness and depression that had been hers, had vanished in the light of a concrete objective; Pa’s talk had miraculously swept away the cobwebs in her brain. There was always the dull ache of Grant’s continued silence; but as the days wore on, it became more and more negative.
Pa sent her home for two weeks’ rest before she started in on the program he had mapped out for her, and fourteen days spent in the little town made her the more eager to begin work. Her father, after his first welcome and expression of delight at her progress, was as preoccupied as ever, the surprise incident upon Joy’s exposition of why she must return to Boston and start a more extensive (and expensive) course of study, jolting him only temporarily. After all, he knew that other girls went away to school, and he knew that his wife would have desired this for Joy.
Joy no longer felt guilty over his misunderstanding her place of residence. She had paid the penalty of deceit in hardening experience; more than the penalty in losing Grant. From now on, she was proceeding with her eyes opened. That she was to continue living with Jerry did not mean what her advent to the apartment had meant; it meant that the apartment was now the best background for her labours, with a piano hers to practice upon at all hours, and a ménage that was run to suit three girls instead of thirty, as was the case at the Annex.
The little town was preoccupied. The girls, after their first effusion of greeting, were as preoccupied as ever in trying to bring the rotation of the three or four boys in town their way. Joy was different, anyway, now that she was doing that singing stuff. She wouldn’t sing popular songs, and that highbrow stuff was awfully boring. She wouldn’t go to the movies, or bring her sewing over and gossip, so what could one do with her?
Tom was working for the summer at the Foxhollow Corners bank, of which his father was president and he in turn expected to be some day, as he informed Joy in the first three minutes of his first call. He had another year at college, and in his conversation strayed collegewards.
“Remember Jack Barnett, Joy? Well, he’s married. Pulled it off the other day, I guess—just got the cards. They used to say he was engaged to some home-town specimen that he never dared to take to any of the house parties, and this looks as if there was some truth in it.”
Joy made no comment. Tom babbled on of college affairs. He was the type of youth who took it for granted that the girl whom he was favouring with his company would be enthralled with every detail of happenings that touched upon him. With this genus, the girl’s only requisite is silence that bespeaks the listening ear. Joy made no remarks until the end of his call, then she said casually: “Did you ever know Jim Dalton well in college?”
“Oh, not very. He ran with a different crowd.” It was a familiar college tone; not insulting; merely relegating Jim to the oblivion where he belonged.