"We'll keep away the goblins," he said; and—it's a little thing to write down—he walked beside me instead of Milly. We would pass through the shadows of the trees, and then under the glare of an electric lamp, and then again into blackness; and I felt in his quickened breath an instant response to my mood; as if newspapers had never existed, and we were playing at goblins.
I hope he didn't think me childish.
Of course John had come before we reached home, and of course he had been all day fuming over the papers, as if that would do any good; but I had drunk too deep of the intoxicating air to be disturbed by his surprised look when Mr. Hynes and I entered the library; can't I go without his guarding even to Aunt Marcia's?
I like the library—bookshelves, not too high, all about it, and the glow of the open fire and the smiling faces. Sometimes I grow impatient of Aunt's fussy kindness, and of the slavish worship of limp and characterless Milly and Ethel; but last night I was glad to be walled about with cousins, barricaded from the big, curious world. I could have hugged Boy, who lay curled on the hearth, deep in the adventures of Mowgli and the Wolf Brethren. I did hug little Joy, who climbed into my lap, lisping, as she does every night: "Thing, Cothin Nelly."
I looked shyly at Mr. Hynes, who had stooped to pat the cat that purred against his leg, muttering something about a "fine animal." I knew—I begin to understand him so well—just how he felt the charm of everything.
"Thing," Joy insisted, putting up a baby hand until it touched my cheek and twined itself in my hair, "Thing, Cothin Nelly." And I crooned while breathlessly all in the room listened:—
"Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the Western sea—
"He'll be a bad man, won't he, Joy," I broke off, as John came to my corner, "if he scolds a poor girl who has had to stand on the floor all day for the scholars to look at, and get no good mark on her deportment card?"
"I am no longer a schoolmaster, Nelly," said John so icily that Aunt looked up at him, surprised. "Come, Joy," she said, "Cousin Nelly can't be troubled with a great big girl. Why, Mr. Burke, she's cried herself ill, fairly, over those dreadful newspapers. I do so hope they'll leave her in peace now. But of course we tell her it's all meant as a tribute."
"Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon and blow— Blow him again to me, While my little Joy, while my pretty Joy sleeps."