Phyllis laughed.
"'Do we keep a bee?' We have a garden full of roses. The gardener hints mournfully that we ought to take prizes with them, but I know perfectly well that would mean I couldn't pick them unless he let me. So I've given him a bush to play with, and he does take prizes with that. He's colored, so Allan says we have to encourage him to have ambitions. He's married to the cook. Our having colored servants shocked the neighbors terribly at first, but they're hardened to it now. I gave an intelligence office carte blanche when I was married, and got the ones I have now; and we're so fond of each other that I simply can't part with them and get haughty white persons."
Phyllis' one idea in those early days, as Joy learned later, had been to have a summer staff who were cheerful. The intelligence office woman had, naturally, chosen happy-minded darkies. And happy they still remained; also adoring.
The neighbors, though Phyllis did not state this, from being shocked had become passionately envious. Servants who had stayed eight years without a change, merely one addition, were things to be watched hungrily.
"I beg your pardon, but it's luncheon-time, Mrs. Harrington," said the children's nurse at this point, appearing in the doorway. "May I have the children?"
Phyllis bent over the sleeping boy and dog and unfastened her son. The nurse gathered him up affectionately, and went in search of Angela, who had strayed around the corner of the house a little while before.
"Oh, I must go," cried Joy, starting to her feet. "They'll be wondering where I am. And I haven't been to half the cottages."
She turned to go, then looked back at Phyllis wistfully.
"Think of it," she breathed. "A garden full of roses, and two men, and a banjo, and a moon!"
Her hands locked together over the invisible wishing ring. She wondered if there was a garden like that anywhere that he lived.