"I'll take very good care of it, and polish it before I give it back to you," she assured him.
He answered her on a sudden boyish impulse.
"I don't want you to give it back to me. You're to keep it.... It can be your wishing ring that you said I brought you, Joy."
She smiled down at it, loose on her finger.
"Why, so it is—my wishing ring!" she sighed happily. She turned it about her finger, and he saw her lips move. She was wishing. He wondered what, but she did not offer to tell him.
"I wish that he may have the thing he wants the very most in all the world," she was saying fervently under her breath. When she was done she rose from the leaves, and he sprang up beside her.
"There's one more ceremony," he told her, half-amusedly. "Even for a four days' engagement, to make it quite legal—" He bent toward her, smiling.
"Oh—oh, should we?" stammered Joy, her wild-rose color deepening to rose-red.
"I really think we should," said John solemnly. It was the nearest to teasing any one he had come for a long time, and he found himself rather enjoying it. Besides, in his heart lurked the feeling that the child ought to realize that she might have let herself in for a good deal, if she hadn't fallen into merciful hands. He was a little ashamed of himself at the sweet way she took it. She merely held herself quite still and serious, and lifted her face a little.
John was a young man who always went through with anything he had begun, and he bent over and kissed Joy, very lightly.