Part 31 (1/2)

Joy had a faint feeling that Phyllis Harrington ought to have the part with her own name, but Clarence explained that names had nothing whatever to do with it unless you were a movie star, when you used your first name in order to make the public more interested in your personality.

”We will give Gail the part you don't want,” he told her, ”as a punishment for not letting you cook your eight-course dinner tonight. By the way, we must time ourselves to get back and eat it.

I wonder whether Gail can cook. On second thoughts, why not stay out till it's over?”

”The play!” said Joy imperatively.

”Well,” he said, yielding, ”would you rather be a fairy princess or a shepherdess from Arcady? I'd prefer to have you the shepherdess, for personal reasons. I wish to be the shepherd.”

”Whatever you say,” said Joy absently. ”It's getting colder. Hadn't we better walk a little?”

”Very well,” said Clarence. ”We can argue as we walk.”

The problem of making sixteen young women willing to be a chorus and of finding sixteen or twenty young men to be anything, took them quite a while to discuss. They walked on as they talked, until it began to get darker.

”By the way, have you any idea where we are?” inquired Clarence, stopping short to look about him. ”New England woods are not my native habitat.”

”Nor mine,” said Joy, startled. ”I think we ought to go back to the high road.”

”If there's any left to go back to,” suggested Clarence. ”We've been on one way-path after another so long that I don't think I could find it again.”

They turned around, and continued to follow way-paths back. Clarence had no pocket compa.s.s, such as people who get lost ought to possess.

And it was getting relentlessly darker and darker. Joy had never been lost before, and she was surprised to find the feeling of panic that possessed her when she grasped the fact that neither of them knew where they were. Finally they gained a clear s.p.a.ce where there was a tolerably traveled-looking road.

”If we wait here somebody may come along,” said Clarence. ”Jove, I'm hungry!”

”So am I,” said Joy.

But there wasn't anything to do about _that_. Finally Joy remembered that she had some chocolate in her little handbag, and they divided it and ate it. After that life was a little brighter.

”Do you suppose we'll have to stay here all night?” demanded Joy.

”We'll freeze to death if we do.”

”No, I don't,” said Clarence. ”But, Joy dear, if we do----”

The mockery was all out of his voice.

”Oh, don't talk about it!” she exclaimed. ”Surely somebody will come get us--or couldn't we go up this road till we find a farmhouse?”

”If you like,” said Clarence.

They rose and walked on for a while.

”Oh, listen!” Joy whispered. ”I hear something!”

”It's a car,” said Clarence hopefully.

And it was. It was John's car, with John in it, and the temper Joy had been thinking of tenderly was with him. He was evidently thoroughly angry, for he scarcely spoke, even when he found them.

”See here, Hewitt,” Clarence protested. ”You aren't doing the thing at all properly. You should say, 'My own! At last I have found you!'

instead of backing up the car with a short sentence like that.”