Joy’s blood was pounding. The New Englander in her rejoiced that she was not to be torn from her own shores to Pacific sea lines; and the gay little French strain sang that here was her chance that might never be heaped so invitingly before her again! She opened her mouth to speak, but the prunestones in front of her balked the phrase trembling upon her lips. They looked so solid—so unchanging. How could she taste the savour of opportunity, surrounded by prunestones?
And while she hesitated—a little whistle of ragtime in the street outside caught her ear and tickled it. It was only a few bars of syncopated lure—but it dislodged the speech trembling in her throat.
“Father—I don’t see why I—why I couldn’t go to Boston and study music for a little while. You know I have had no one since Miss Bessie—and I do think it would be nice to polish off my singing with some real Boston teachers—don’t you? I could just go down when you went away—and then decide what to do, when you came back.”
It was out; and now her fever was mingled with chills. Why had she even proposed such a thing? Her father with bent brows was looking through his egg—beyond.
“Your mother studied singing in Boston,” he said at last, in a voice so calm that Joy’s mouth hung open, emotion suspended; “she lived at a Students’ Club. I suppose that is what you would do.”
“I suppose—I suppose it is!” Joy echoed, while the New Englander within her whispered: “Of course it is!” and the venturesome French blood sang: “See how far you’ve come with him—go a little farther and tell him about Jerry!”
But, lost in the marvel of his consideration of her project, she dared not venture further.
As far as Mr. Nelson was concerned, the subject was settled. Joy was to go down to Boston for a month or two, and he wrote to the Students’ Club where her mother had stayed, for a room for her. Her mother’s old teacher could not be located, and nothing daunted by this nor the fact that it was late in the season to find any teacher, he procured a name and address from “Miss Bessie,” Joy’s old teacher at the school.
And so suddenly, mechanically, things had been decided, from a fragment of ragtime whistled on the street. Joy was to leave Foxhollow Corners, New England—arrangements went forward without her aid or volition. Her father received notice from the Students’ Club that it was crowded, but that she would be well taken care of at one of their annexes. It was a letter that left him calm in the assurance that Joy would be well chaperoned; a letter that plunged Joy into gloom. The days leaped ahead with preparation to the day of her scheduled departure. It was early in June; she did not want to leave Foxhollow Corners, when she came right down to it. A little while longer, and the boys would be home from college, the gay season of Foxhollow Corners would be ushered in—but her ticket had been bought, her father superintending every detail; and he even rode with her as far as Boston.
She arrived at the Students’ Club Annex late in the afternoon. She thought it was rather a dingy looking place, as she established her things in the faded green room which the lady-who-ran-things informed her she was very lucky to get—and the girls she passed in the none-too-fragrant hallway, certainly lacked tang.