If it had been anybody but John she would have been much more embarrassed than she was, but by now she had come unconsciously to feel that when things went wrong John was the natural person to come to. He could always help her through them.
"Grandmother told me—" she began, then stopped. It was pretty hard to tell, after all.
"Go on," he told her encouragingly. "Grandmother told you what?"
"She told me that she wrote your mother, and your mother said—she said she wished we'd told her; but, anyway, she's sent out invitations for a big party—to meet me!"
It all came with a rush. She didn't dare to meet John's eyes after she had said it.
She heard his long, low whistle of astonishment, scarcely suppressed in time, and a lower, but quite as fervent, "Great Scott!" and then silence. It was not for a full minute that she dared look in the direction of his chair, which he had swung away when she had told him. She gave one quick glance, then another longer one. She could not see his face, but his shoulders were shaking.... Had it moved him so?
Joy was used, at Grandfather's, to hear of people being "moved."
"I didn't think John was the kind of a man to have emotions outside of him that way," she thought a little disappointedly, "but I suppose an awful thing like this—"
About then he turned himself toward her. He was laughing!
"Do you think it's funny?" she demanded.