The Wishing-Ring Man by Margaret Widdemer
page 22 of 283 (07%)
page 22 of 283 (07%)
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last hour I haven't felt as if it was much of a privilege to be me,
either. Do you know that feeling of terrible personal unworthiness you get at a party where everybody knows everybody else and nobody knows you? I feel like precisely the kind of long, wiggly worm the little boy ate." Joy felt very sorry for him; because if she didn't know that feeling she knew one to match it; having everybody know her and nobody think of playing with her.... This man was playing with her for a minute, anyway. "And I'll always have him to remember," she thought happily, "even when I'm an old, old lady, writing reminiscences of Grandfather, the way they all say I should ..." She went off into a little daydream of writing all this down in her reminiscences, and having him--old, too, then--write back to her and say that he, also, had always remembered the time happily, and wondered who she was.... Then she answered him. "You know me, anyway--don't say you know no one," she told him. "Anyway, I'm glad you're talking to me. I'm Joy." He laughed again, leaning against the door-frame in the thread of light. "Then you're something I've been looking for a long time," he said. "I've had friends and success, and good times--but I've never found Joy till now." She knew, of course, that he was just being pleasant about her name, as people were sometimes. But it sounded very lovely to remember. |
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