She bent down, where she sat above him. Her voice was very happy and very tender.
"But I always was, John. Always, from the first minute you opened the door there, and looked at me, and spoke. I—I expect I always shall be."
Neither of them spoke for a while after that. Presently John held her off and looked at her, and laughed a little.
"Well, what?" demanded Joy peacefully. She didn't much care what, but she wanted to know. "And Elizabeth sometimes brushes under these stairs when receptions are over. She may find us."
"I shall be delighted to meet Elizabeth," said John with his usual calm. "But it merely occurred to me that it wasn't so much that you belonged to me as that I belonged to you. I'm not sure that you're entirely a human being yet. And I don't think I shall trust you any longer with that wishing ring."
She slipped it off very seriously and gave it to him.
"I would only wish that you should have everything you wanted," she said. "I did, you know."
He slid it back on the finger it was so much too large for. "I'll get you an honest-to-goodness one, too," he said. "But you'd better keep it. I have everything I wanted."
He drew her head down and kissed her in demonstration of the fact.
"But I do think it was the ring that did it," said little Joy.