It looked a little hopeless, to think of, at first. He was so old and wise and strong, compared to her, just a nineteen-year-old girl who had never had even one lover to practise on! Something Gail had said the night before came back to her—one of the girl's half-scornful, half-amused phrases.
"Barring a male flirt or so like Clarence over there," she had vouchsafed, "men are such simple-minded children of nature! All you have to do is to treat them like hounds and tell them what to do, and they'll do it."
Joy could scarcely imagine treating John like a hound. She was too afraid of him, except once in a while when she had a burst of daring. But, at any rate, if she went on the principle that John was simple-minded and could always be depended on to think she felt the way she acted, things would be lots easier.
"If only I can keep the courage!" she prayed.
But as to details. She would have to let John see enough of her to want her about. But—not so much that he got tired of it.
"I wonder how much of me would tire him?" she said. Anyway—Joy dimpled as she thought of it—he seemed to want to be the only one. He didn't seem to want Clarence around. They all kept telling her Clarence was a flirt—as if she wanted him to be anything else! It's a comfort sometimes to know that a man can be depended on not to have intentions.... Very well, she would try to make John jealous of Clarence. Not enough to hurt him—it would be dreadful to hurt him!—but enough to make herself valuable.
"It's going to be very hard," she decided, "because all I want is to do just as he says and make everything as happy for him as I can. Oh, dear, why are men like that!"
But she was fairly certain that they were. They were like that in the books, and Gail had said so. Gail apparently knew.
"It'll be hard," she thought sadly. Then her face brightened. "But it'll be fun! and if it works I'll be able to be as nice to John as I want to all the rest of my life, and please him to my heart's content. Why, it'll be my duty!"
She smiled and fell into another dream about John, leaning over the fountain, with her copper braids falling across her bosom.