"There'll be a delightful part for you, old man," he assured his friend tenderly. "Don't worry about that. You'll have your chance."
The idea of a dominant, large-ideaed, hardworking John Hewitt hungering for "his chance" in an amateur comic opera struck Joy as so funny that she couldn't repress a small giggle and a glance across at him. John caught her look and gave her an answering gleam of amusement.
"You have the kindest heart in the world, Rutherford," said he sedately, "and I'll never forget it of you. ... Joy, my dear, would you mind running upstairs and seeing if Mother needs anything? And you may put away those socks you've been doing in my top drawer at the same time."
Joy stiffened a little at the tone of easy authority, and then caught John's eye again. The amused look was still there—that, and a look of certainty that she would help him play his hand. He was getting neatly back at Clarence!
She rose meekly.
"Yes, John," she said in the very tone she would have used if the alternative had been a beating, and excusing herself to Clarence in the same meek voice, took herself and her completed work upstairs.
A glance at her room through the crack of the door told Joy that Mrs. Hewitt was sleeping sweetly. She opened the door of John's room with a more fearful heart. It seemed a little frightening to go into his own private room where he lived. She pushed open the door and tiptoed in.
It was a large room, very orderly, with a faint, fresh smell of cigars and toilet water about it—the smell that no amount of airing can ever quite drive out of a man's room. Joy liked it. The dresser, flanked by a tie-rack, faced her as she came in. She ran to it, jerked out a drawer and stuffed in the socks hurriedly, and turned to go down again. In the middle of the room she paused for a moment. It was all so intimately, dearly John, and she did love John so!... And what was she, after all, with all her independences and certainties, but an ignorant, unwise child whom two wise grown men were using for a pet or a plaything—how could she tell which?
She felt suddenly little and frightened and helpless. The current of mischief and merriment dropped away from her for a minute, here where everything, from the class picture on the wall to the pipe on the bureau, spoke so of John—of what everything about him meant to her—about what going away from him would mean. She flung herself on her knees beside the narrow iron cot in the corner, her arms out over the pillow where his head rested.
"Oh, God, please make it all come straight and right!" she begged. "I don't suppose I did what I ought to, and maybe I'm not now, but please do let things come out the way they should! And if you can't make us both happy, make John—but—oh, God, please try to tuck me in too—I do want to be happy so!"