The girl with the skin of peachdown and the wide, untroubled eyes was the logical mate for Grant Grey. Each could give the other as nearly all that the other desired as was possible in an earthly union. It would be one of those unions that seemed eminently right—and it would even seem so to Mrs. Grey! Joy laughed aloud at that last thought. The heart-caught-on-the-rebound sneer, on which so many girls inwardly feed while apparently they are smilingly urbane to their former suitors’ flames, never even occurred to her. It was a perfect union, while the union of her nature and Grant’s would always have been imperfect at best.
Inexplicably it made her feel the more lonely.
It was soon after that that a bulky letter arrived from her father, the contents of which threw her into the laughter of misgiving. It seemed that the Lamkins had returned from an extensive trip South and West, and had spread throughout the length and breadth of Foxhollow Corners the glorified account of Joy Nelson’s gallivanting around Noo York with perfectly impossible people, to one of which she seemed to be engaged “in a light way.” The rumour had swollen until it was reported that Joy had been secretly married over in New York and had taken up her abode there permanently. Of course her father had heard the last rumour first, and with businesslike precision had sifted it through to the Lamkins and heard their representations of the “facts.”
“I am disturbed,” he wrote, “and ask you for verification before I take any steps in this matter. The town seems to be rolling tales of your New York escapades as a sweet morsel under its tongue. You told me nothing of any side of your New York visit that could be interpreted this way. It is not possible for the child of your mother to have done anything really wrong, but in New York you may have forgotten the obligations that the name of Nelson puts upon you. After all, home people are the ones that will mean your life, when you finish your studying and come back to normal existence once more; and it does not do to antagonize them as you so evidently have the Lamkins. It is a difficult thing for a father to be sole guardian of a daughter; there are so many questions a father alone cannot decide. I wish you would come home, and take up your music here, perhaps in the church choir.”
He ended the letter with the thought that he might come to Boston soon, as he had never yet seen her environment there.
Joy read the letter with mixed emotions which had culminated in the rather shaky laughter. How could she explain to her father that what the Lamkins had heard had been a mere prank played for the benefit of the waiters and surrounding interested ones even as the Lamkins? It was the sort of thing that he could never understand. And he spoke as though all her fiercely eager study were to end in nothing—“a normal life once more.” The church choir! She jumped up and poured forth a long cadenza, which enveloped the room in an exultation of sound. At the close she balanced two notes evenly, one against the other, tracing them up and down—when all at once her throat began to flutter, effort ceased, and she stood in rapt wonder, listening. Her first real trill was born.
The church choir!
It was that afternoon, while she was hesitating over a reply to her father, that Jim called her on the phone.
“Do you realize how long it’s been since I’ve seen you, Joy?” he asked.
She did. “I’ve been so busy——” she faltered. “And now that Jerry is gone, I can’t very well entertain in the apartment alone——”