"Poor little Cinderella!" Gail greeted her. "I hear that Mrs. Hewitt has dropped all the housekeeping on your shoulders, John makes you do all the sewing—including his clothes, I suppose—and treats you like a ten-year-old child. Even allowing for Clarence's passionate transports you seem to be quite painfully noble in your acquiescence.... I have come to see to this!"
Joy stiffened.
"Thank you, I am perfectly happy," she stated untruthfully. "Won't you sit down?"
Gail flung her hat and cloak on a distant settee, and dropped her grip at her feet.
"Not till I go up and see poor dear Mamma Hewitt," she answered. "Poor darling, she must be lonely!"
She sauntered out of the room, leaving Joy at the desk. She was down again in a few minutes. Gail never seemed to hurry. She merely got where she wanted to be with no visible effort. She nodded to Joy as she entered the room again, and dropped into a morris chair.
"Mrs. Hewitt says I am to go as far as I like," she informed Joy, half-amusedly. "Mother never seems to want any help at home, thank goodness, and all I have to do over there is to amuse little friends who drop in. You get tired of that after awhile. I told Clarence to send away any suitors who might trail over!"
She flung her arms up over her head and laughed a little to herself, stretching her whole indolent, graceful body.
"I like new things to amuse myself with," she informed Joy. "Now you'll send the maids in."
Joy did not like any of this. And she found herself more and more certain that she did not like Gail Maddox.