John sighed a little. "I see. Yes, he's that sort. Well, try to make me understand, dear, won't you? ... I want to."
She slipped her hand impulsively in his as she did sometimes.
"Then that's all right," he said contentedly.
But the most all right thing, to Joy's unregenerate heart, was next morning, when she went up to pay her usual morning visit to Mrs. Hewitt.
"Joy, will you tell me," demanded the lady, "what you meant by telling Gail you wanted her to do the housekeeping?"
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE SERIOUS BUSINESS OF "IOLANTHE"
There was no use having it out with Gail. Joy was not one of those nerve-shaking people who insist on having things out, anyhow. She was perfectly content with things as they were.
The weather settled down to be legitimate October weather, a little early: crisply lovely outdoors, and of the temperature to be an excuse for fires indoors at night. Tiddy transferred his allegiance, still a little shyly, to Joy. The change was good for him, because they were, after all, very much of an age. They got to be excellent friends. Also Joy kept him at his studies in a fashion that was, for her, quite severe: he had asked her if she wouldn't, and she did. She went off for tramps with him when John was otherwise employed, which seemed to please John, and prevented her from having Clarence too much underfoot.
Gail referred to Tiddy's desertion with her usual note of indolent amusement—it did not occur to Joy till years later that Gail might occasionally pretend a superiority to such things as annoy other girls—and summoned another man from the city for week-ends. Tiddy was indigenous to the soil. This, as Clarence, with his amiable superiority, said, was so much to the good, for when you come to amateur theatricals every man is a man. Clarence was working with an industry nobody would ever have suspected in him, over "Iolanthe."