Rebecca Mary shook her head. Not for a second did she believe that Joan's father was Count Ernach de Befort. She had met the active imagination of a child too often, and she whispered that Joan was only playing a little game of "let's pretend" before she said good-by to Granny and promised to come Thursday to dinner.
Peter was waiting beside the luxurious limousine.
"I hope I shall see you again soon, Miss Wyman," he said pleasantly, and Rebecca Mary devoutly hoped he would, too. "Good-by, Miss Loan Child." He grinned at Joan as she sat with her arms full of her treasures.
"Good-by." Joan released one hand to wave it at him as they drove away. "He's very nice, don't you think so, Miss Wyman? And awfully brave or he wouldn't have that cross. My father is as brave as a lion, too." And she held the photograph up so that Rebecca Mary could see how brave her father looked.
After Joan was tucked into Miss Stimson's abandoned bed Rebecca Mary sat by the window in the soft darkness and recalled the astonishing events of the day. How amazing they had been! And how jolly! She hoped she would see Peter Simmons again, but there wasn't much chance. He didn't go to the Lincoln school.
She laughed softly and jumped up and went to her desk to take out the insurance policy which was such a bugbear to her now and which was to be such a comfort to the old age that always had loomed so blackly before her. She read it over and then giggled as she took a sheet of paper and wrote across the top in large letters—"The Memory InsuranceCompany." And below in smaller letters she copied and adapted the form of her old policy—"by this policy of insurance agrees to pay on demand to Rebecca Mary Wyman such memories as she may have paid into the said company." And below that she wrote in large letters again just one word—"Payments."
She pressed her fountain pen against her lips and studied that one word before she chuckled and began to enter her payments.
"Kitchen curtains.
"A four-leaf clover, origin unknown.
"One loan child of mysterious parentage.
"A hero and hiscroix de guerre."
What a lot there were! Why, it was only ten days since she had promised to take out a memory insurance policy. Cousin Susan would be pleased at the number of payments she had made on it already. Her whole face twinkled as she read the list. A hero and acroix de guerre! H-m! And that four-leaf clover! Where had it come from? That list—why, that list represented securities that she couldn't lose and which no one could take from her. So long as she could remember anything she would remember Cousin Susan's kitchen curtains which never wouldbe bought now. She could scarcely wait to make another payment, and she felt in each of her two hundred and eight bones that there would be other payments,—many of them.
The very next day was Saturday so that Rebecca Mary was at home when the postman made his first round. He brought her a letter from her mother, and Rebecca Mary never suspected what a wonderful surprise was packed in the square envelope.
Mrs. Wyman's favorite aunt, a woman of some wealth and many years, had decided to give a few of her friends the legacies she had meant to leave them at her death so that she could hear how they were enjoyed. She had sent Mrs. Wyman a check for five thousand dollars and a check for a thousand dollars to each of the Wyman girls. Rebecca Mary's eyes fairly popped from her head when she saw her check and read the letter. She couldn't believe that it was her check.
"I want you to spend at least a part of it on yourself," wrote Mrs. Wyman. "You have been so splendid and unselfish in sharing everything with us that you have earned the right to be a little foolish with some of this money. You never expected to have it and so we never planned to use any of it for a new roof or akitchen stove. Take a little trip in your vacation, dear, or buy some other pleasure. If you put it in the bank the interest would pay your insurance premium, but you have sacrificed so much to the future. Perhaps I have been wrong in making so much of it for after all you are young but once. I do want my girls to have some good times to remember. Write Aunt Ellen a little note, and tell her that you are going to buy a lot of pleasure which you will remember all of your life with her generous gift."
"I want you to spend at least a part of it on yourself," wrote Mrs. Wyman. "You have been so splendid and unselfish in sharing everything with us that you have earned the right to be a little foolish with some of this money. You never expected to have it and so we never planned to use any of it for a new roof or akitchen stove. Take a little trip in your vacation, dear, or buy some other pleasure. If you put it in the bank the interest would pay your insurance premium, but you have sacrificed so much to the future. Perhaps I have been wrong in making so much of it for after all you are young but once. I do want my girls to have some good times to remember. Write Aunt Ellen a little note, and tell her that you are going to buy a lot of pleasure which you will remember all of your life with her generous gift."
Rebecca Mary had to read that letter twice before she could quite understand it, and then she looked at her loan child.
"Joan," she exclaimed breathlessly, "let us give three rousing cheers for a four-leaf clover!"
And after they had given three of the rousingest sort of cheers they put on their hats and went down to the First National Bank, where Rebecca Mary deposited the most beautiful check that she ever hoped to see. And there they met Stanley Cabot, who was very much pleased to see Rebecca Mary again and who introduced her to his older brother, Richard Cabot, who was the youngest bank vice-president that Waloo had ever had. Rebecca Mary had never expected to know a vice-president of the First National Bank, and as soon as she saw him her eyes changed from saucer size to service plates,for she recognized him at once. He was the man who had been with old Mrs. Peter Simmons that afternoon at the Waloo, the man who had looked as if he could do things, the man who had made her cheeks burn and her heart thump. She had never thought that already he had done enough to make him a bank vice-president. He looked too young. Rebecca Mary had always thought of a banker, vice-president or president, as an old man with gray hair and plenty of figure. Richard Cabot hadn't a gray hair in his head and he was as slim and straight as an athlete. He seemed wonderful to Rebecca Mary, who gazed at him with a surprise and interest which amused and flattered him. He did not recognize her at all for she had changed her face. At the Waloo tea room she had worn a yellow brown scowl and at the bank she had on a pink smile. It was not strange that Richard did not recognize her until she had agreed that it was a gorgeous day and that Mrs. Simmons was a perfect old dear. Then it was Richard who opened his eyes wide.
"That's it!" he exclaimed, and the puzzled look in his face was chased away by a slight flush, which seemed rather strange to be on the face of a banker. "I thought I had seen you before, Miss Wyman. And it was at the Waloo the afternoon Granny tookme there for tea. She would accept no refusal although I told her that bankers had no time and little use for tea. But I was glad I went."
He liked Rebecca Mary's pink smile and self-conscious manner. Richard knew any number of girls, all of those with whom he had grown up and all the relatives and friends of the older men with whom he was associated and who regarded him as Waloo's most promising young man, and those girls had always met him considerably more than half way. It was refreshing to meet a girl who blushed and hesitated over the first steps to his acquaintance. It made him feel big and mannish and important, which is exactly the way you like to feel if you are a man. That is why when he met Rebecca Mary at the bank door, after she had loaned that most beautiful check in the world to the cashier, that he said more impulsively than he usually spoke to a girl:
"If you have finished your banking, may I walk up the avenue with you?"
"My banking never takes long." Rebecca Mary was all in a flutter at the thought of walking up the avenue with Mr. Richard Cabot. Why, it would be like taking a stroll with the ten story bank building. "I just put a little in, and it seems to come out by itself," she explained sadly.
The walk up the avenue was a royal progress for Richard seemed to know every one. His hat was never on his head. Rebecca Mary was rather tongue-tied, but Joan's tongue was not tied. Before they were out of the bank she had told Richard that she had been loaned to Rebecca Mary and that they were going to dinner at Mrs. Simmons' house on Thursday evening.
"I've never been to a party dinner in all my life," she finished with great importance, "so I hope nothing will happen."
"What could happen?" asked Richard with a smile for Rebecca Mary, who gave him a shy smile in exchange.
"Lots of things. Scarlet fever or mumps or——"
"My goodness gracious, Joan! I hope you haven't been neighborly enough to take mumps or scarlet fever!" The mere hint that Joan might have been that neighborly was startling to Rebecca Mary.
"But I'm not going to think of them because they aren't going to happen, and there isn't any good in thinking of what never will happen, is there?" went on Joan.
"Not a bit," agreed Richard. "Are you going in here?" For Rebecca Mary had stopped before the very smartest shop in Waloo.
"We're going to buy clothes for the dinner," Joan whispered confidentially. "My father said that ladies, even as little ladies as I am, can't ever go anywhere without buying new clothes. He thinks it's very strange."
"So it is. No wonder their money won't stay in the bank. I am very glad to have met you, Miss Wyman, and I hope to see those new clothes some time soon." He looked straight into Rebecca Mary's gray eyes as he told her what he hoped to do before he said good-by and went on up the avenue.
"Joan, you are an awful chatterbox," rebuked Rebecca Mary.
"I only talk because my head is so full of words that they just tumble off my tongue. Don't the words want to tumble from your tongue?" Joan asked curiously as they went into the smartest shop.
Rebecca Mary looked at the beautiful frocks about her. Oh, Cousin Susan was right, and her clothes were a disgrace. They weren't clothes at all, they were only covering. She sent a little thank you message to Aunt Ellen by telepathy before she began that easiest of all tasks for a woman, to spend money.
She had an odd feeling that she was not herself as she went up Park Terrace with Joan on Thursdayevening, and she surely did not look like her old shabby self. How could she when she wore a smart white Georgette crepe frock under a smart beige cape and her big black hat had been designed by a real milliner and not copied by a "make over person?" Rebecca Mary had spent an hour with a hair dresser that afternoon after school so that from the wave in her yellow brown hair to the sole of her white pumps she was absolutely new. She felt as new as she looked, for there is nothing which will take the tired discouraged feeling from a woman, or a man either, quicker or more effectively than new clothes. Festal garments had been found for Joan in the suit case which Mrs. Muldoon had packed so that any one who saw Rebecca Mary and Joan walk up Park Terrace knew at once that they were going out to dine.
They were early, and Rebecca Mary was dreadfully mortified. It looked so eager, so hungry, she told herself crossly, to be early. Joan was not mortified at all for in her small mind a guest could not go to a party too early. Mrs. Simmons joined them in a very few minutes. Joan curtsied prettily and kissed Granny's wrinkled white hand.
"Did you teach her to do that in the Lincoln school?" Granny asked Rebecca Mary after Joanhad gone into the sun room to see the gold fish in their crystal globe. "Have you heard anything from her father yet? If Mr. Simmons were here we would soon know all about Mr. Frederick Befort, Count Ernach de Befort," she corrected herself with a chuckle of amusement. "But he isn't here, and I don't like to make trouble at the office. I hope Mr. Befort comes back soon for your sake. Here is Richard Cabot. He asked himself," she explained as Richard came toward them. "He called me up and asked if I would give him some dinner. He often drops in when Mr. Simmons is away to keep me from being lonesome. I'm glad he came to-night."
Richard looked a trifle conscious himself as he took Rebecca Mary's hand and told her that he was very glad to see her again.
"And her new clothes, Mr. Cabot," whispered an anxious little voice at his elbow. Joan was desperately afraid that Richard would not see Rebecca Mary's new frock. "You said you wanted to see her new clothes soon, and here they are. Aren't they beautiful? And they were marked down from sixty-nine fifty! Doesn't she look like a princess?"
"I've never seen a princess," laughed Richard, his eyes telling Rebecca Mary more than his lips how very much he liked her marked down frock.
"Haven't you?" Joan looked quite surprised and sorry. "I have. I've seen the Belgian princess and some of the English ones and, of course, all of the German ones."
Rebecca Mary and Granny looked at each other as Joan spoke of the many princesses she had seen. They couldn't help it. And Rebecca Mary began to think that perhaps Joan had too much imagination.
It was a very gay little dinner, and before they had finished their coffee young Peter Simmons and his mother ran in to ask what Granny had heard from grandfather. They were followed almost at once by Sallie Cabot and her husband, young Joshua Cabot, and close on their heels came young Mrs. Hiram Bingham with her adoring father-in-law. Richard drew Rebecca Mary to the other side of the grand piano and told her how Sallie Cabot had eloped with her great aunt and found a husband and of the jam rivalries which had threatened the romance of Hiram and Judith Bingham. It was like reading two volumes from the public library to hear Richard, and Rebecca Mary's eyes sparkled. So there really was some romance in the world. She had been afraid there wasn't any left. She had thought it must all be shut up in books.
"You ask Sallie," advised Richard, when she saidthat. "She'll tell you that there will be romance in the world as long as there are people in it. I used to laugh at her but, by George, I'm beginning to think that she is right!"
"Of course, I'm right," declared Sallie, who had strolled near enough to hear herself quoted. "Wherever did you find that child?" she asked Rebecca Mary with a nod toward Joan. "Granny said she was a mystery, but she is also a darling. She talks like an American kiddie, but she doesn't act like an American. She acts more like a—like a French child," she decided. Sallie Cabot had been at a French convent so she thought she knew what French children were like.
"Her mother was an American, from New Orleans." Rebecca Mary didn't know what Joan's father was so she couldn't tell Sallie. "She is a dear, isn't she? When she told me she had been loaned to me I was scared to death and furious, too, but she really is fun. I expect I was in a rut," she confessed with a shamed little face and voice which quite enchanted Richard.
"A rut? What an unpleasant place for a pretty girl to be. May I tell you that I love your frock?"
Rebecca Mary glowed with pleasure to hear young Mrs. Joshua Cabot admire her marked down frock.Every one in Waloo knew that Mrs. Joshua Cabot could have a new frock every day and two for Sunday if she wanted them.
"I like it," Rebecca Mary admitted with adorable shyness.
"So do I!" Richard did not speak at all shyly but very emphatically.
Sallie smiled as she moved away. "Any new fox trots, Granny?" she asked. "I depend upon you to keep me up to the minute. Put on a record, Peter, and let us jig a bit. You like to trot, don't you, Miss Wyman?"
Rebecca Mary admitted that she did, and Richard asked her to have one with him as if he were afraid that some one would claim her before he could. He was a perfect partner for he extended just far enough above her five feet and three inches to hold her right, and their steps suited perfectly. Rebecca Mary had never enjoyed a dance more, she thought breathlessly, when at last they stopped because the music stopped.
"Here's your next partner," announced Peter, when he had changed the record and another fox trot called them to dance.
If Rebecca Mary had been thrilled to dance with Waloo's youngest bank vice-president you mayimagine how bubbly she was inside to fox trot with Waloo's hero. Peter smiled as he looked at the flushed face so near his own. Lordy, but he hadn't realized what a jolly little thing Granny had found. Nothing school marmish about her with her shining gray eyes, which were almost black now, and her yellow-brown hair and her pink cheeks and her smart new frock. Absolutely nothing.
Looking up to make a little remark about the call of the fox trot, Rebecca Mary caught the admiration in Peter's face, and she was so astonished that she lost the step. That made her furious, and she frowned impatiently.
"By thunder!" exclaimed Peter in quick surprise, and he stopped dancing to look at her. "Now I know where I saw you before! It was at the Waloo, and you scowled at me like a pirate. I was scared to death for fear you didn't like me."
"You scowled at me first!" Rebecca Mary's defense of her scowl was more emphatic than logical.
"Oh, come now!" Peter wouldn't believe that he had been that culpable. "I couldn't scowl at you. My old Granny was quite broken hearted to see you frown. She said if you were her daughter she'd lock you up until you had learned to smile. Granny's strong for the grins. Give one and you'll get oneis her motto. You can see for yourself how it works. You scowled at me,—sure it was that way!—and I scowled at you, although I don't see now how I ever did it."
"It's a very bad habit," Rebecca Mary told him severely. Her mouth was as sober as a judge's mouth ever was, but her eyes crinkled joyously. "You should break yourself of it."
"I shall," Peter told her promptly. "Just how should I go to work? You seem to have broken yourself of it." His eyes were full of boyish admiration.
"Not entirely." Rebecca Mary sighed, "I wish I could. A frowning face is horrid. If you ever see me scowl again I wish you would shout 'Pirate' at me as loud as you can. I'm afraid I do it unconsciously." And sure enough her eyebrows did begin to bend together unconsciously.
"Pirate!" shouted Peter instantly. "I can see it's going to be some work to be monitor of your eyebrows," he chuckled.
Rebecca Mary was sorry when the dance with Peter was over although she turned politely to Joshua Cabot when he spoke to her.
"Peter's a lucky chap," he said as he swung her out into the room. "All girls love a hero, and he'sa hero all right. I'd like a decoration myself, but I don't know as I'd care to be kissed on both cheeks by a hairy French general. That duty should have been delegated to fat Madame General or better still to pretty Mademoiselle General. Peter is a good old scout, and modest. He blushes like a girl when any one speaks of what he has done."
Rebecca Mary nodded. She had seen him blush. She colored delicately herself, and Joshua looked wisely over her head to his wife. Hello, another victim for old Peter, his glance seemed to tell Sallie Cabot.
Joan danced, too, with old Mr. Bingham, who was not as light on his feet as he had been once.
"I do it for exercise," he explained to Granny. "Judy thinks it's good for me."
"You needn't make any excuse to me, Hiram Bingham. I take exercise myself, don't I, Peter? And if old Peter Simmons comes home in time we shall dance nothing but fox trots at our golden wedding."
"A golden wedding!" Joan had never heard of such a thing. "What does that mean, dear Granny Simmons? Would I like one?"
Granny patted her rosy cheeks. "If you have any kind of a wedding I hope you will have a goldenone, too. It stands, Joan, for fifty years of self-control and unselfishness and forbearance and——"
"And love," interrupted Sallie Cabot quickly. "Don't leave out the love, Granny. No man and woman could live together for fifty years without love."
"I reckon you're right, Sallie," agreed Granny meekly.
"I've never been to a golden wedding," ventured Joan, playing with the black ribbon which kept Granny's glasses from losing themselves. "I've never been invited to one!"
"You are invited to mine this minute," Granny told her with beautiful promptness.
"Oh!" Joan balanced herself on her toes and exclaimed rapturously: "A golden wedding! What good times I've had since I was loaned!"
"I suppose you young people think you are having good times," murmured Granny wistfully, "but they aren't a patch on the good times we had, are they, Hiram? I like to take my memories out and gloat over them when I hear you young people talk. I have a lot of them, too. Why, Joan, if I should take all my memories out and put them end to end I expect they would reach around the world, and if they were piled one on top of the other they wouldbe higher than the Waloo water tower." She named the highest point in Waloo.
Joan was not the only one impressed by the vast number of Granny's memories.
"Imagine," Rebecca Mary turned to Richard, who was at her elbow, "having so many things you want to remember. Most of my experiences I want to forget." And she shivered.
"Have they been so unpleasant?" Richard had never imagined he could be so sympathetic. "But I've heard that the hard experiences are the very ones that people like best to remember."
Rebecca Mary shook her head. "How can they?" She didn't see how any one would want to remember unpleasant experiences.
"But you aren't going to have any more disagreeable times," promised Richard confidently, as if he knew exactly what the future had in store for her. "You are going to walk on Pleasant Avenue from now on."
"I hope so." But Rebecca Mary was not so confident, although she looked up and smiled at him. "I surely have been on Pleasant Avenue this evening, but now I must run back to Worry Street. I'm like Cinderella, only out on leave." And she laughed athis prophecy before she went over to tell Granny that she had never had such a good time.
"Must you go?" Granny held her hand in a warm friendly clasp and thought that the child looked as if she had had a good time. "Wait a minute. Peter——"
Rebecca Mary's heart thumped. Was Granny going to ask Peter to take her home? But if Granny was she didn't for Richard interrupted her.
"Let me take Miss Wyman home. I have my car."
"I have mine, too," grinned Peter.
"But you have your mother. I'm alone."
Beggars cannot be choosers and although she would far rather have gone with Peter it was pleasant to ride with Richard in his big car, Joan tucked between them. Richard bent forward.
"Tired?" he asked gently.
"I'm glad to be tired to-night." Rebecca Mary spoke almost fiercely. "I've been dead tired from work and from disappointment, but it hasn't been often that I've been tired from pleasure." And then she amazed herself and charmed Richard by telling him something of her life, which had been so full of work and disappointment and so empty of pleasure. She even told him of Cousin Susan and the price she had paid for their tea at the Waloo, and Richard,banker though he was, had never heard of kitchen curtains buying tea for two.
"You were there that afternoon," she reminded him after she had decided that she would not tell him about the four-leaf clover. It would sound too foolish to a bank vice-president.
"I know," Richard said hastily before he went on in his usual matter-of-fact voice. "You modern girls are wonderful. You are as brave as a man, braver than lots of men I know."
"That's because we have to be brave," Rebecca Mary explained. "I don't know why I've bored you with my stupid past," she said, rather ashamed of her outburst. "I've never spilled all my troubles on any one before."
"I'm mighty flattered that you told them to me. It means that we are going to be friends, doesn't it?" He bent forward to see as well as to hear that she would be friends with him. It was not often that Richard had asked for a girl's friendship.
Rebecca Mary felt that in some occult feminine fashion, and she offered him a warm little hand and said indeed she should be glad to be friends with him. If her voice shook a trifle when she said that it must have been because Richard was such a very important young man in Waloo.
Before she went to bed Rebecca Mary took out her memory insurance policy and entered another payment.
"A fox trot with the hero of Waloo."
So far as her memory insurance went the most promising young man in Waloo did not seem to exist although she liked him very very much. But Rebecca Mary was like everybody else, she would rather have what she wanted than what she could get.
"I can't blame any one but myself because I don't know all about Joan." Rebecca Mary was an honest little thing and she made no attempt to shift the blame to any one else. She packed it all on her own slim shoulders. "If I had been a good teacher according to my principal I should have called at the house long ago and heard the whole story from Mrs. Muldoon. But I didn't. I kept putting it off, and so I don't know much."
Granny had stopped at the Lincoln school at the close of the afternoon session to inquire if Rebecca Mary had learned anything more about Joan's father. But Rebecca Mary hadn't learned a thing. Joan was an odd mixture of frankness and reserve. There were times when Rebecca Mary thought that she must have been forbidden to speak of her old life in the town with the German name. The whole situation was puzzling. Rebecca Mary could not understand it at all.
If you imagine that Joan's company was a constant joy to Rebecca Mary you imagine all wrong.Rebecca Mary liked to have Joan with her well enough at times, but there were other times when she was perfectly indifferent to her guest and still other times when Joan was almost an irritation, and Rebecca Mary could not see why of all the teachers in the Lincoln school she should be the one to have to borrow a child whether she wanted one or not. She had not had a chance to say "Yes, thank you."
"I've learned that Frederick Befort is on the factory pay-roll and as Frederick Befort," Granny said slowly. "There is no record of any Count Ernach de Befort. Of course now that the war is over I don't suppose it matters if he is a German. There wouldn't be any secrets for him to learn. Germany wouldn't be interested now in what is being done at the factory."
"But de Befort sounds French," objected Rebecca Mary, who could not see that Joan bore any resemblance to any German child she had ever taught. "Joan was born in Yokohama but that doesn't tell us anything. She certainly isn't a Japanese. It's funny but she doesn't seem to want to tell me what country she did come from. I was stupid enough to lose her nativity card, and when I made out another and asked her what nationality her father was she said he was going to be an American. I told herI wanted to know what he was now and she said he had told her that they would forget what they were before they came to this country. That seemed rather queer. But Joan talks of Paris as much as she does of Berlin. I wish I spoke French half as well as she does."
"She speaks very good German, too. And as you say there is something suspicious in the way she avoids any reference to her nationality. It does seem as if she had been told not to speak of it. I suppose I am a silly prejudiced old woman, but I should rather have Joan and her father almost anything but German. Are you through? Don't you want to take a spin down the River Road before you go home? It's perfect out, a real June day. Do come with me."
Rebecca Mary had no trouble at all to say "Yes, thank you" to that invitation. She called Joan, and they went with Granny to the limousine which was waiting at the curb.
"I wonder if Cinderella's coach went as fast as this?" Joan said as they flew toward the River Road. "We read about Cinderella this very day," she explained to Granny. "It would be more interesting to have rats than engines, wouldn't it? I'd like a pair of glass slippers, too, even if they would breakso easy. Wooden ones would be the strongest. That's what they wear at home, you know, wooden ones."
"In Germany, you mean?" asked Granny quickly.
Joan wriggled. "Yes, in Germany they wear wooden ones," she said as quickly, "I've never seen glass slippers, not in London nor Paris nor Vienna nor anywhere. Aren't they any place but in fairy land?" she twisted around to ask.
"Nowhere. No matter how much money you have you can't buy Cinderella's slippers anywhere but in fairy land," Rebecca Mary told her with a sigh as if she, too, would like to find glass slippers somewhere else.
For a while Joan was silent, meditating perhaps on the shoe shops in fairy land with their glass slippers of every size and color.
Granny and Rebecca Mary were silent, also, but they were not thinking of glass slippers as the car swung into the River Road, which is quite the prettiest drive about Waloo. Never before had Rebecca Mary driven over it in a smart limousine with a liveried chauffeur at the wheel. She had walked there times without number, but walking is not like riding in a pneumatic-tired machine, and Rebecca Mary did enjoy the change. She was afraid thatthere was the making of a snob in her for she did like to ride with Mrs. Peter Simmons better than she liked to walk with a teacher as shabby as she had been. Yes, she was a perfect snob. She laughed as if she found it funny to be a snob. Joan looked up and laughed, too.
"I like you best when you laugh." She squeezed Rebecca Mary's fingers. "Of course I like you always, days and nights and every minute, but when you let your face break into little holes," she reached up and touched Rebecca Mary's one dimple, "why I just love you!"
"So do I," said Granny. "And it makes my old face break into little holes, too. Dear me, that makes it very serious, doesn't it? It is our own fault when people frown at us. Don't ever forget that, Joan. If you smile at people they will smile at you."
"Will they? But I like to have people frown at me sometimes. It makes me shiver all down my back. Don't you like to have your back shiver?"
"My back is too old to like to shiver. It's far too old and too stiff."
Rebecca Mary caught the note of sadness in Granny's voice and ventured to touch her hand. "It's the heart not the back which should be young,"she said softly. "I read that somewhere so it must be true. And your heart, dear Mrs. Simmons, will never in the world be old. Gracious, I should say it wouldn't!" she added emphatically as she remembered how far from old Granny's enthusiasm was.
"Don't call me Mrs. Simmons," begged Granny, and she took Rebecca Mary's hand in hers. "I'm Granny to all of my young friends. I'd like to be Granny to you."
Rebecca Mary caught her breath. Just imagine calling Mrs. Peter Simmons,—Mrs. Peter Simmons of Waloo—, Granny!
"I'm not going to let my heart grow old either," exclaimed Joan before Rebecca Mary could tell Mrs. Simmons how glad she would be to call her Granny. "I want to keep it young for ever. But how can I when it gets older every year? To-day my heart's eight and next May it will be nine! How can I keep it young for ever?" Joan's voice was a wail.
"Yes, Miss Wyman, how can we keep our hearts young when there is always a birthday before us?"
"You know. No one can give a better rule than you can."
But Granny shook her head. She declared that there wasn't any rule, that was why there were so many old hearts. People didn't know how to keeptheir hearts young. They weren't taught in any school she knew of.
"I'll ask daddy," promised Joan. "I expect he'll know. I'll ask him just as soon as I see him. But I hope he won't come for me before the golden wedding." She turned pale at the mere thought of missing a golden wedding.
"The golden wedding won't be until July," Granny told her. "Imagine any one being married in July. It was the most scorching day. I thought I should melt and that old Peter Simmons would melt and there wouldn't be any one left to be married. We went to New York and the sea shore on our wedding trip, and Peter ate too many lobsters and was ill. Such times as we had!" She smiled at their memory. "The twenty-second of July," she said dreamily. "Will you keep Joan until then, Miss Wyman? Oh, I have a plan! This is the last week of school, isn't it?"
Rebecca Mary nodded to the last question before she answered the first. "I'll take Joan down home with me, to Mifflin, if Mrs. Muldoon doesn't come back."
"No, I want you both to come to me. Please," as Rebecca Mary looked at her in surprise. "I'm so lonely in that big house by myself. Mr. Simmonsis away so much, I never know when he will be home. It would keep my old heart young," she hinted, "to have two young things in the house again. Do, please take pity on a crabbed old woman."
"You're not a crabbed old woman!" Rebecca Mary said fiercely.
"I shall be if you don't come and stay with me. We might motor up to Seven Pines, that's our country place, for a few days. Most people think it's very pretty there. You want to come, don't you, Joan?"
"Yes, I do." Joan did not hesitate a breath. "I want to help you keep your heart young. Don't you want to help too, Miss Wyman?" She didn't see how Miss Wyman could refuse to help.
"But my mother and sister will expect us in Mifflin."
"We can run down Saturday and tell them," suggested Granny. "We can motor down and back in a day. I know your mother will be willing."
But still Rebecca Mary hesitated although it would be fun to go rolling into Mifflin in the big limousine, and it would be fun, too, to stay with Mrs. Simmons in her big house, but—— Her fingers touched her pocket and felt a hard round object, the locket which held the four-leaf clover. Thelocket reminded Rebecca Mary that she couldn't refuse Granny Simmons' kind invitation if she kept her promise to Cousin Susan. She blushed and stammered a bit as she said "Yes, thank you." And then impulsively she showed Granny the locket and told her what a mystery it contained.
"Well, upon my word!" Granny seemed as surprised and interested as Rebecca Mary could wish. "How romantic! We must find who gave it to you. I do hope it wasn't that fat old waiter who sniffs. Haven't you any clue? Who was in the tea room that afternoon?"
"I was there with daddy, wasn't I, Miss Wyman?" Joan pulled her sleeve. "But I gave you violets. I didn't give you any lucky clover."
"Did you see her father?" Granny asked immediately. She was surprised that Rebecca Mary hadn't told her she had seen Frederick Befort.
Rebecca Mary shook her head. "You can't really say you have seen a man when you have had only a fleeting glimpse of a back. You were there, Mrs. Simmons. And your grandson!" To save her soul Rebecca Mary could not keep the crimson wave from her cheeks when she just the same as put a wish in words.
But Granny shrieked with delight. "If it wasPeter!" she chuckled. "If it only was Peter! He is such a matter of fact old boy. I'd love to think he went around giving girls four-leaf clovers."
"Matter of fact!" Rebecca Mary stared at Granny. Peter was anything but matter of fact to her. Her voice told Granny so.
Granny stopped in the very middle of another chuckle. "Perhaps my eyes are as old as my heart," she admitted. "You'll have to come and help me see Peter as you do, help me change my old eyes."
"Can you do that?" Joan wanted to know at once. "Can you change your eyes and your heart if you don't like the ones you have, like Mrs. Muldoon changed the bread one day? She said it was stale."
"Indeed you can change a stale heart, Joan. It is wrong and foolish to keep such a useless thing as a stale heart. You should change it at once."
"Where?"
Granny looked helplessly at Rebecca Mary. Joan's endless questions were sometimes hard to answer. Rebecca Mary laughed and answered for her.
"Wherever there is anything to love," she suggested.
When Richard heard that Granny was going to take Rebecca Mary and Joan to Mifflin in her limousine he discovered that he had to call on the Mifflin National Bank, and he suggested that they should make the trip together.
"I'll drive you in my big car," he said. "We could stop at the River Club for lunch and come home by way of Spirit Lake for dinner. You'll like the River Club," he told Rebecca Mary. "It's on an island in the Mississippi and the dining room hangs over the river. You can catch your lunch from the window."
"What fun!" dimpled Rebecca Mary. "It sounds like a most beautiful pink plan."
"Pink plan?" Richard didn't understand what she meant, but he thought she looked rather beautiful and pink herself as she stood beside him.
"Whenever I hear of anything that is absolutely all right," Rebecca Mary explained, "I seem to see it as the most lovely rose color. And so I always think of absolutely all right things as pink. Howlucky it is for us that you owe the Mifflin Bank a call."
"It's lucky for me," insisted Richard with a smile.
So on Saturday Richard brought his big car to Rebecca Mary's door, and Joan and Rebecca Mary ran down from the window where they had been watching for him for hours. Rebecca Mary wore another portion of Aunt Ellen's gift, a new motor coat—to tell the truth it was the only motor coat she had ever had—and a fascinatingly small hat demurely veiled. She looked just exactly right for a motor trip, and Richard told her so with his eyes while Granny, who was already in the tonneau, admired her with her lips as well as her eyes.
"That's a very smart and becoming coat and hat, Rebecca Mary," she said at once. "Suppose you sit in front with Richard? Riding in an open car always makes me sleepy and if you are back here you will talk to me and keep me awake."
"Won't I talk to you?" Joan didn't know how she was going to keep from talking all the way from Waloo to Mifflin, but she obediently nestled down beside Granny.
"I rather think you will." Granny smiled at her and patted her fat little hand. "But beforeyou begin to talk you must help me plan how we shall persuade Mrs. Wyman to loan us her daughter. That will take a lot of thinking, and you can't talk very well while you are thinking."
On the front seat Rebecca Mary laughed joyously. "It sounds as if this was going to be a very important expedition," she said.
"It is," Richard told her with a flash of his eyes. "All ready? Quite comfortable?"
And when Rebecca Mary had said she was quite ready and comfortable he took the seat beside her and did something to buttons and levers and they were off.
Rebecca Mary felt like one of the princesses Joan talked about so intimately as they rolled down the street, through the suburbs and into the real country. Richard called her attention to this old house, a relic of pioneer days, or to that new public library, and to the white sign boards which told them that they were on the Jefferson Highway. The name was between a palmetto and a towering pine to show them that New Orleans was at one end and that Minnesota was at the other end of that ribbon-smooth road. Richard seemed to know the way and there was nothing which Rebecca Mary should have seen which he did not show her.
"Want to go faster?" he asked when she leaned forward to look at the speed indicator. He touched a button again and they went faster.
"It's like flying!" she exclaimed with shining eyes. "Oh, I do think there are such wonderful things in the world! Aren't you glad that you are living now!"
He laughed at her enthusiasm. What a jolly little thing she was! And he told her that he most certainly was glad to be living that moment in a way which deepened the vivid color in Rebecca Mary's cheeks.
"Of course it's an old story to you," she went on quickly. "But this is the very first time I ever motored from Waloo to Mifflin. I've always gone in a stuffy day train and had cinders get into my eyes. Once the train was held up four hours by a wash-out on the road and an old Norwegian gave me some cookies. They did taste good," she assured him for he seemed as interested in the cakes as if he were a baker instead of a banker.
"Norwegian women are good cooks, and Norway is a beautiful country."
"I suppose you've been there? Every country will be beautiful to me unless I am so old when I start on my travels that I can't see. My favoritecastle is a railroad ticket. I've never been farther than Waloo in all my life. I don't know why I tell you that for of course you know it. Any one can see that I've never been anywhere nor seen anything."
"Yes." Richard agreed with her so promptly that she felt as if he had pinched her for naturally she had expected that he would say that any one to see her would think she had been everywhere and seen everything. The sting was taken from the pinch when he went on: "If you had been everywhere you wouldn't be so jolly and enthusiastic as you are. Girls who have been everywhere and seen everything aren't satisfied with anything."
"I wonder," meditated Rebecca Mary. "Then you think it's better not to have and want, than to have and not care for?"
"Much better. Very much better!"
"M-m," murmured Rebecca Mary doubtfully. "I don't believe you know a thing about it," she exclaimed suddenly. "You've had all of your life!"
"Not everything," Richard insisted. "There is at least one thing I've never had." But he did not tell her what that one thing was, and she did not ask him.
The River Club was all that Richard had said itwould be. They crossed a bridge to the island at one end of which was the rambling shingled club house which really did overhang the river. Richard was quite right, and Rebecca Mary could easily have fished from the window of the big dining room, but she preferred to let Richard order her lunch from the club pantries. A dozen or more men were lunching at the little tables, and Rebecca Mary heard scraps of their talk—"fifteen pounds"—"the brute got off with my best fly"—"that darned pike couldn't have weighed less than six pounds." She looked at Richard and laughed.
"I suppose more lies are told in this room than anywhere in the state," she whispered.
"I expect you are right," he whispered back.
They had a most delicious luncheon of black bass fresh from the river, of new potatoes and peas and salad and strawberries from the club garden. Many of the fishermen who had nodded to Richard came over to speak to Granny, and Richard introduced them to Rebecca Mary, and told her in an undertone that this one was a lumber king and that one was an iron king and the other one was a flour king. Rebecca Mary had never been in a room with so many kings in her life, and she looked after them curiously as she said so.
"Yes," Granny murmured. "They call this the millionaires' retreat, don't they, Richard?"
"I prefer the River Club, myself," was all Richard would say.
The club with its royal members seemed to make Richard even more important to Rebecca Mary, and she looked at him a trifle oddly as they left the island and went on to Mifflin. She had known that Richard was very clever and important—Granny had told her that old Mr. Simmons considered Richard Cabot quite the most promising young man in Waloo—but she hadn't thought these elderly kings of lumber and iron and flour would listen to him as they had listened. Richard seemed too young to belong with those bald-headed white-haired pudgy kings and yet they had greeted him as if they were very glad to see him. Rebecca Mary stole a shy glance at Richard. He was looking at her instead of twenty feet in front of his car as a motor driver should look, and he smiled.
"Like it?"
"Love it!" And she smiled, too, and forgot all about kings. How splendid it was to have Richard for a friend. And if he hadn't been a friend he never would have smiled at her like that. It gave her such a warm cozy little feeling to have a manlike Richard for a friend. "Oh, isn't this the most wonderful day that was ever made out of blue sky and golden sunshine!" she cried suddenly. "And we're coming to Mifflin. There's Peterson's farm!"
And now it was Rebecca Mary who pointed out the points of interest, the old mill, the spire of the Episcopal church and the new starch factory, which was going to make the fortunes of the farmers, she told Richard with a serious little air which he liked enormously.
"What do you know about starch?" he teased.
"Lots. I know that the farmers have planted loads of potatoes, and they are going to sell them to the starch factory for enormous prices."
"Farmers always expect to sell for enormous prices, but if they have all planted enormous crops some of them will be disappointed. There is a little old law of supply and demand which regulates that sort of thing, you know."
"That's just it," Rebecca Mary exclaimed triumphantly. "The demand for Mifflin starch is going to be so great that there will be a huge demand for potatoes. I have a tiny bit of money that I might invest myself now," she told him a little proudly as she remembered how much was left ofAunt Ellen's gift. "I might become a starch queen," she giggled.
"You might. But you might become a starch bankrupt, too. Don't you put any of your money into anything until I have a chance to look into it," he said firmly.
"I never should have dared to ask you for advice," she began, but he interrupted her.
"You haven't asked, I've offered, and I want you to promise you won't buy shares in anything until you have talked to me. I've had more experience in picking out good investments than you have."
Rebecca Mary laughed. "You couldn't have had less. It's awfully good of you, Mr. Cabot, to be willing to bother about my pennies, and when I have enough to do anything with I'll remember your very kind offer. Turn down this street if you want to find my home. Perhaps you would like to know whom you will see there. There is only my mother and sister. Mother is a dear, and she has had an awfully hard time. Grace is a dear, too. She is a year and a half older than I am and looks after the public library for Mifflin. There is the house, the big frame one on the corner. Why——" for the big frame house on the corner had just been treated to a coat of fresh white paint, and RebeccaMary scarcely knew it when it shone forth so resplendent with its green-blinded windows.
"What an attractive place!" Granny woke up to lean forward and tell Rebecca Mary how much she liked her old home. "It looks as if it had been a home for more than one generation."
"It has!" Rebecca Mary twisted around to tell her its history. "My grandfather built it when he brought my grandmother here a bride just after the Civil War. It's grown since then, of course; that wing on the right and the L. It's really too big for mother and Grace but we couldn't sell it if we wanted to. I'd hate to sell it if we could." Rebecca Mary really loved the old house and she loved it more than ever now that it was repaired and painted. It really looked imposing. She had no reason to be ashamed of her home, and she was very grateful to Aunt Ellen as she slipped her arm through Granny's and led her up the bricked walk as Mrs. Wyman and Grace hurried out to meet them.
Rebecca Mary's eyes widened as she saw the pretty summer frocks which her mother and Grace were wearing and when she kissed Grace she whispered in her ear: "Hurrah for Aunt Ellen!" They all stood talking and laughing on the wide porch.
"So this is where you grew to be such a big girl?" Richard looked at the ample lawn which the white fence enclosed. He seemed to find it of great interest.
"Yes," nodded Rebecca Mary. "That is where I made mud pies, and there is the apple tree I climbed. I pretended it was a ship which was taking me to the Equator. I had the wildest interest in the Equator when I was ten. And that is the gate I was always running out of until mother tied me to the apple tree."
"Why, Miss Wyman!" Joan's very foundations seemed to totter. "Were you ever a bad little girl?" She couldn't believe it. Miss Wyman was her teacher and teachers,—could they ever have been bad little girls?
"Very bad!" Rebecca Mary's laughing answer did not sound at all convincing. "At least that is what my mother said, and she should know."
Joan might have carried her investigation of this startling statement further if Grace had not called to her to come and see the new brown cocker puppy and help choose a name for him. Richard and Rebecca Mary were left alone to talk of the days when Rebecca Mary had to be tied to the gnarled old apple tree.
"Richard!" It was Granny who interrupted them. "If you are to call on the Mifflin Bank don't you think you had better go?" Granny's voice almost sounded as if she didn't quite believe that Richard owed the Mifflin Bank a call.
Richard jumped up and looked at her in a dazed sort of a way for he had completely forgotten the business which had brought him to Mifflin. Rebecca Mary walked to the gate with him and gave him careful directions as to how he should find the Mifflin Bank. When he had driven away she went with Grace to the kitchen, where she mixed sprays of mint, fresh from the garden, with sugar and lemons and ice and ginger ale until she had a most delicious drink. Grace arranged the little cakes she had made on one of Grandmother Wyman's old plates.
"A new recipe of Anne Wellman's," she said, giving one to Rebecca Mary to sample. "An after the war recipe. There is nothing conserved in these cakes. Rebecca Mary, do you know what mother and I planned last night? Neither of us has ever seen the Atlantic Ocean. I suppose you will think we have lost our minds but we are going to take a part of Aunt Ellen's present and go to the sea shore."
"I don't!" exclaimed Rebecca Mary quickly. "I think you've just found your minds. As a familywe should have lost the art of spending if Aunt Ellen hadn't sent her present just when she did. I'm glad you and mother are going to have some fun. Good old Aunt Ellen! You must send her a post card. Send her two post cards!" And the two girls laughed joyously. "That's all right," Rebecca Mary went on more soberly, "but just let me tell you what her present has done for me. I wrote you that I'd met the wonderful Peter Simmons, didn't I?"
"Seven pages. You do have the luck, Rebecca Mary! Why didn't you bring the wonderful Peter with you to-day instead of the First National Bank?"
Rebecca Mary chuckled. "The First National Bank is really splendid," she insisted. "And awfully important. He's been perfectly corking to me. But Peter Simmons, Grace, Peter Simmons!"
"M-m," murmured Grace enviously.
Granny was enthusiastic over the old mahogany and walnut furniture which filled the house and which Grandfather Wyman had brought from his grandfather's old home in Pennsylvania.
"It's beautiful," she exclaimed. "You don't seem to have anything but old mahogany and walnut, Mrs. Wyman. This is a real museum piece." Andshe ran her fingers over the smooth surface of the old Sheraton sideboard and looked at the old Chippendale chairs.
Rebecca Mary had come in with her big crystal pitcher and she placed the tray on the old Chippendale table. "And the reason we have nothing but old stuff," she confessed frankly, "is that we never could buy new. I suppose it is lucky we couldn't, but it just about broke my heart a few years ago that we didn't have anything but four post beds and gate legged tables. I yearned for a davenport upholstered in green velours instead of that ancient sofa. I wanted less old mahogany and more new clothes. Is that Mr. Cabot?" The sound of a motor car drew her to the window. "I hope he found the Mifflin Bank at home."
It was Richard, and when he came in he had a big box of candy under his arm. He gave it to Mrs. Wyman.
"This isn't Mifflin candy," Grace exclaimed when she saw the tempting contents. "You never found this in Mifflin!"
And Richard had to confess that he hadn't, that he had brought the box from Waloo for Mrs. Wyman, and Grace looked at Rebecca Mary significantly."Very thoughtful of your First National Bank," she seemed to say.
Mrs. Wyman drew Rebecca Mary from the little group to ask her if she wouldn't rather go east and be introduced to the Atlantic Ocean than accept Granny Simmons' invitation. She and Grace would love to have Rebecca Mary with them, but they wanted her to do exactly as she wished.
"I think I'll stay with Mrs. Simmons," Rebecca Mary said after a moment's frowning thought. "You see there is Joan. I couldn't take her east very well. And, anyway, the Atlantic Ocean will keep. It has been there for some years, and Mrs. Simmons may never ask me again. I should like to visit in a big house like hers, and she said she would take us to her country place, Seven Pines. I can board at a sea shore hotel whenever I have the money, but I can't always visit an old dear like Granny Simmons."
"That is true. I hope you don't think we are foolishly extravagant, Rebecca Mary? Aunt Ellen said we were to use the money for pleasure. And then you wrote me what Cousin Susan said to you about memories. I do want Grace and you to have some good times to remember. I hope it isn't foolish," Mrs. Wyman repeated, for deep down in herheart she was almost sure it was foolish to spend Aunt Ellen's present for a trip when she could buy a mortgage with it.
"If I told you what I honestly think we'd never save another cent, and we'd have to take our memories to the poor house some day. Really, mother, it is the wisest thing to do. Cousin Susan convinced me that sometimes you can pay too big a price when you save and scrimp. Do get some pretty clothes, lots of them. They make you feel all new and—and efficient," she laughed at her choice of a word. "That's a love you have on now. You never got it in Mifflin. And if Joan's father comes for her and Mrs. Simmons gets tired of me I'll come east and join you. I should like to meet the Atlantic Ocean. I've heard quite a lot about it."
Her mother looked at her and smiled. The last time Rebecca Mary had been home she had not laughed like that. She had frowned over the bills and talked of the future as of a barren desert. If taking out a memory insurance policy would change a girl as Rebecca Mary had changed, Mrs. Wyman was going to advocate memory insurance policies for every one.
Granny was delighted that no objections were made to her invitation, and she asked Mrs. Wymanand Grace to spend a few days with her on their way east. But Mrs. Wyman thanked her and said that they had planned to do their shopping in Chicago and it would be out of their way to go to Waloo. Altogether it was a very satisfactory visit, and every one was sorry when it was over and Granny and Joan were once more in the tonneau of Richard's big car.
"I like your mother and your sister and your home so much, Rebecca Mary," Granny said when they had waved a last good-by before they turned the corner.
"So do I!" exclaimed Richard heartily.
"I do, too," repeated that echo, Joan. "Am I to talk to you on the way home, Granny, dear?"
"If you think it will make the ride pleasanter," Granny obligingly told her. "But you must not be surprised if I doze in the middle of your story. Motor riding does make me sleepy."
The way to Mifflin had led them down the river and the way to Spirit Lake took them back through a rich farming country. Richard astonished Rebecca Mary by the ease with which he could distinguish young wheat from oats and oats from barley or buckwheat when he was passing a field at the rate of thirty-five miles an hour. The fieldswere only a green blur to Rebecca Mary. They reached Spirit Lake just at sunset and were pleasantly surprised to find Stanley Cabot perched on the railing of the hotel veranda smoking a cigarette. He jumped up and threw his cigarette away as he came to meet them.
"How pretty it is!" Rebecca Mary looked around with shining eyes. "What is that down by the lake?" And she nodded toward a screened pavilion which wore a gay necklace of colored lanterns.
"That's the dancing pavilion," Stanley told her eagerly. "Want to run over and have a fox trot? There's just time before your dinner will be ready."
Rebecca Mary's eyes sparkled. "Shall we?" But she said it to Richard instead of to Stanley.
"Sure. Come along." And Richard held out his hand.
"The dickens!" Stanley looked after them as they ran to the pavilion. "I thought I issued the invitation. She seems to have made an impression on old Dick, Granny? I thought he was immune to girls. What is it?"
Granny, comfortably settled in a big rocking chair, looked mysterious. "I expect it was her scowl. She frowned at Richard, and Richard, you know, Stanley, isn't used to frowns. Girls havealways smiled at him. I expect Rebecca Mary's scowl interested him."
"That might be. A girl has to offer a man new stuff to interest him. You may be right."
"Of course I'm right. What are you doing here, Stanley?"
And while Stanley told Granny and Joan about the sketching trip which had brought him to Spirit Lake, where he had found some corking effects, Rebecca Mary and Richard danced on a floor which was far from smooth and to the music of a piano and a violin which were not as harmonious as you would wish a piano and a violin to be, but both Rebecca Mary and Richard said that it was the jolliest dance they had ever had when it was over, and hand in hand they ran back to the hotel and the waiting dinner. It seemed the most natural thing in the world for them to go hand in hand, but Rebecca Mary was quite breathless when she came up the steps after she had pulled her fingers from Richard's hand.
"I hope we haven't kept you waiting," she cried. "But it was such fun."
"Much you care about us when you scorned my invitation and went off with my brother," Stanley said, as if cut to the very quick. "I don't knowwhat reparation you can make unless you sit beside me and talk exclusively to me."
"Oh!" Rebecca Mary was pinkly embarrassed. "I didn't hear you deliver any invitation," she stammered, but her explanation only made matters worse.
"Granny heard it and so did Joan." Stanley quite enjoyed teasing Rebecca Mary into pink embarrassment. Perhaps he wanted to see the scowl which had interested Richard, but if he did he was disappointed for Rebecca Mary never frowned once. She was too happy and too contented. She could only laugh and smile as she promised to sit beside him and talk exclusively to him. That wasn't so easy to do as to promise for there were other girls on the screened porch where the dinner tables were arranged, and they smiled and nodded to Richard until he had to go and speak to them.
"My brother Richard is very popular with the girls," Stanley told Rebecca Mary with a twinkle. "He's quite a boy, is my brother Richard."
"M-m," was all that Rebecca Mary would say to that, but she watched his brother Richard out of the tail of her eye.
Although Stanley was jolly and Richard was as devoted as those other girls would permit, Rebecca Mary was glad when they were in the car again andhad said good-by to Stanley and the other girls and were speeding over a road which was quite as perfect as the Jefferson Highway.
"You drive awfully well!" Rebecca Mary told Richard.
"Want to learn? It wouldn't be any trick at all to teach you."
"You shan't teach her now," exclaimed Granny, who was not so drowsy but she had overhead him. "This is no time to teach any one. You can hold your automobile class, Richard Cabot, some time when I'm not with you."
"All right. Miss Wyman, I'll hold a class limited to one, in motor driving some other time. Want to be the one?" He smiled down at her.
"Do I?" Rebecca Mary was almost speechless. She could only look at Richard until he flushed and murmured that he knew it would be no trouble at all to teach her, absolutely no trouble at all.
"It's been the most wonderful day!" Rebecca Mary was almost at a loss to tell them how wonderful it had been when at last they stopped at her door again. Words seemed too inadequate.
"As pink as you expected?" asked Richard.
"Pinker. The most beautiful shade imaginable. I'll never forget how pink it has been."
"If you liked it so much we'll go again," promised Richard, eager to give Rebecca Mary another good time. Her enthusiasm made him feel very generous. "And don't forget that motor class of mine!"
"Forget!" Rebecca Mary stared at him. How could she ever forget. She expected to remember his motor class as long as she lived, but she didn't tell him that. She just thanked him sedately and told him to let her know when his motor class would meet and she would try to be on time. She did dislike tardy scholars.