Rebecca Mary could never believe that the next two weeks really happened. They were far too wonderful. They couldn't have happened to her for nothing but influenza and moths and insurance premiums had come to her. She felt as if she were in the middle of the very nicest dream a girl could have when she stood in the most attractive bed room she had ever seen and looked around her. It certainly was going to be jolly to perch in the lap of luxury for a while.
No wonder Rebecca Mary liked Mrs. Peter Simmons' guest room. It was so very different from the dingy rectangle which was her sitting room by day and her sleeping room by night. Mrs. Simmons' guest room, with its flower strewn chintz whose roses were repeated in the garlands on the ivory bed and dresser, overlooked Mrs. Simmons' garden from which the roses seemed to have strayed. A white bathroom opened from this rose bower and beyond it was a blue room among whose forget-me-nots and bachelor buttons Joan had found a placefor her family portrait, her clock and her potato masher.
And Rebecca Mary's days were as different as her bed room. Instead of going to school Rebecca Mary went about with Granny and met a lot of pleasant people of all ages. Granny was a favorite with the young people, and as there was no end to what she would do for them she was always the center of a jolly little group.
"It's the prescription I'm trying to keep my heart young," she told Rebecca Mary wistfully.
So there were luncheons and teas with girls Rebecca Mary had never imagined she would ever know, and informal dinners and dances at the Country Club and long automobile drives. One morning Granny took her guests to see Mrs. Hiram Bingham's small sons, and Joan hung enraptured over the dimpled twins.
"Horatio and Hiram!" How Granny laughed at the names. "What should you have done, Judith, if there had been but one baby? Which father would you have honored?"
"Thank goodness I didn't have to make a choice!" Judith shivered at the mere thought of honoring but one father. "Providence was mighty good to send me two sons. Horatio and Hiram are dreadfulnames, aren't they? But I just had to name the boys for my daddy and for Father Bingham."
"If there had been but one you could have named him for the jam which brought you and Hiram together," suggested Granny with a twinkle.
"They name babies for kaisers but do they ever name them for jam?" Joan could not believe that a jar of preserves would furnish a suitable name for any child. "My daddy was named for a kaiser, not this kaiser but another one. His name is Frederick William Gaston Johan Louis," she announced proudly.
"Mercy me, what a mouthful! What does he do with so many?" Granny had emphasized each name with a squeeze of Rebecca Mary's arm. Surely Joan could never have imagined such a combination.
"He doesn't use them all now." Joan was almost apologetic. "In Waloo he only uses the Frederick one. Isn't it funny how your names change? In Germany I'm Johanna. 'Ein gutes Kind, Johanna,' the kaiser said I was himself, and in France and America I'm Joan. Oh, did you see that?" For young Horatio had seized a handful of Joan's black hair. "Isn't he a darling! He's—he's a lot better than a potato masher, isn't he?"
They all laughed, and names were forgotten for the moment although Granny gave Rebecca Mary an extra hard squeeze when she heard what the kaiser had called Joan.
"They must be German," Granny said, when she and Rebecca Mary were alone. "I thought so all the time. No one but a German would go away and leave a little girl as Joan was left. I shouldn't be surprised if Count Ernach de Befort never came back," she added cheerfully.
"Oh!" Rebecca Mary was stunned at such a thought. "Of course he will come back. And Joan didn't say she was a German."
"Joan doesn't say she is anything. I don't believe she knows even if she did say she was from Echternach. Never mind, Rebecca Mary, if she is left on your hands I'll help you take care of her. She amuses me with her contradictory statements. I like a mystery now that the war is over."
"I'm not sure that I do," murmured bewildered Rebecca Mary.
She really didn't have much time to wonder about Joan for Granny's friends seemed to have entered into a delightful conspiracy to make much of Rebecca Mary. Sallie Cabot gave a dinner dance for her and Rose Horton, who had been Rose Cabot,gave a tea and even Madame Cabot, who was Richard's great aunt, gave a theater party, after which she took her guests to the Waloo for supper and to dance. You can't really blame Rebecca Mary for rubbing her eyes and wondering if she could be Rebecca Mary Wyman.
Stanley Cabot was at several of these affairs, and he watched Rebecca Mary with an amused smile.
"I thought you said she scowled at old Dick," he said to Granny. "Perhaps I don't know a scowl when I see one, but I didn't think it was like that." And he nodded toward Rebecca Mary, who was smiling at Richard Cabot.
"Dear child," murmured Granny. "When you are my age, Stanley, you will hate to see anything but smiles on young faces. I hope Rebecca Mary has forgotten how to frown. But it was a scowl, Stanley, I know it was, which first attracted Richard."
It almost seemed as if Rebecca Mary had forgotten how to do anything but smile, and young Peter had no occasion to shout "Pirate." He was in and out of the house at all hours and so had every opportunity to see what Rebecca Mary was doing. It was not often that she could persuade him to talk to her of his experiences in France.
"Of course a man can't get it out of his thoughts," he did say one day, "but it isn't anything he wants to talk about. It was just luck that got me up to the front. If I hadn't been lucky I shouldn't have gone any farther than Dick Cabot. You know he tried to get into the service, any service? Yep. But he broke his arm when he was a kid and it's a little stiff. The doctors wouldn't pass him. Then he tried for the Red Cross and Uncle Sam said, 'No, you're a banker, Dick Cabot, and the work you can do is to sell Liberty bonds.' I'd hate to tell you how many bonds Dick did sell. It was owing to him that this district went over the top as soon as the sales were on. He's a corker, Dick Cabot, all right, all right. And he did as much at home to win the war as I did in France."
"Oh!" breathed Rebecca Mary, trying to grasp this point of view which Peter was offering her. It was splendid of Peter to talk that way but she couldn't really think that Richard at home had done as much as Peter in France, and she said so.
"That shows what an ignorant little girl you are," Peter retorted. "But don't let's talk about the war. There are a lot of pleasanter subjects."
"Such as?" If he wouldn't talk about the war he could choose his own subject.
"You," Peter told her as she should have known he would tell her. And he chuckled when she flushed as he had known she would flush. Peter loved to make Rebecca Mary blush and stammer although it was not as easy as it had been. Rebecca Mary was acquiring poise.
Richard's class in motor driving met as he had planned, and his one pupil would never forget the first time that she had her hands on the wheel and felt the pull of the sixty horses harnessed under the hood.
"It makes you feel like a—like a god!" she gasped, not daring to take her eyes from the road.
"It makes you look like a goddess," laughed Richard. "You're going to make a good driver, Miss Wyman. You can follow instructions and keep your mind on what you are doing. You don't try a dozen things at once."
"That was what I was trained to do. A school teacher has to keep her mind on her work, and, goodness knows, she is given plenty of instructions to follow."
"You won't be a school teacher long," prophesied Richard, reaching over to show her something, and his hand covered hers.
A thread of fire seemed to start from his fingersand run all over Rebecca Mary. She couldn't speak for a second, and when she did speak her voice was not as steady as she wanted it to be.
"Gracious me, I hope not," she stuttered. "Who would want to teach school for ever?"
"You won't do it for ever!" Richard said again, and no seventh daughter of a seventh daughter could have been more emphatic about the future. He smiled at Rebecca Mary as she sat beside him, her cheeks pink, her eyes black with excitement, her hair blowing about her face. She wore another small portion of Aunt Ellen's present, an old rose silk sweater, and it was wonderfully becoming.
"I'd like to do this for ever," she murmured. "I've at last found an occupation which suits me right down to the very ground."
"Would you like to do it for me for ever?" The question did not surprise Rebecca Mary half as much as it did Richard. It was not often that he uttered soft nothings to a girl. He was more accustomed to talk of stocks and bonds, and he thought it was strange that he never wanted to talk of stocks and bonds to Rebecca Mary. "You must have another lesson very soon," he went on in a more matter of fact voice as she did not tell him whether she would like to drive for him for ever. "Practice is theonly thing that will make you perfect. You must have a lot of practice."
When Peter heard that Richard was teaching Rebecca Mary to drive his big car he pretended to be vastly indignant.
"Why didn't you tell me you wanted to learn?" he demanded.
"I didn't have to tell Mr. Cabot," she answered triumphantly.
"Great old mind reader, Dick Cabot is, isn't he? Well, if you're learning to drive his big car you had better let me teach you how to manage a roadster and Granny's small car and the limousine."
"And then I can stop teaching school and open a garage," dimpled Rebecca Mary. "Very well, bring out your roadster."
"You drive very well," Peter was good enough to say when Rebecca Mary had demonstrated what she could do. "A little more practice and you can drive anywhere."
"Really!" Rebecca Mary liked his words so much that she wanted to hear them again.
"Really."
And then Rebecca Mary killed her engine and couldn't remember how to start it again. Peter put his hand on the button at the same moment shedid, and his five fingers closed over Rebecca Mary's five fingers. Rebecca Mary quivered to her toes, but she tried to be very matter of fact.
"Granny said I might have to drive for her," she said quickly. "Karl is going to leave, and she hasn't found a new chauffeur yet."
That evening she actually did drive Richard through the traffic which surged around the pavilion where the weekly band concert was given. If Peter had been there he would have had to shout "Pirate" several times for Rebecca Mary did scowl yellow brownly, but that was because she was so anxious to drive well.
"Aren't you shaking in your shoes?" she asked when they were held up at a very busy crossing. "No one can question your bravery now. You've certainly earned a medal."
Richard looked at her sparkling eyes, and his staid invulnerable heart gave a flop which startled him, and a flash appeared in his dark eyes.
"I'm a man who always collects what he earns," he told her in a way which made her heart thump a bit, too, although she would not let him know that, not for worlds. "There isn't a better collector in all Waloo than I am."
"My goodness gracious AND my gracious goodness!"Rebecca Mary seemed much impressed by Richard, the bill collector. "But you must not read the future by the past," she cautioned gravely. "I seem to remember that at college I was told that even Napoleon had his Waterloo."
"We are not discussing Napoleon Bonaparte but one Richard Deane Cabot," Richard reminded her severely.
"Vice president of the First National Bank of Waloo," she nodded as if to make sure that they were talking of the same Richard Deane Cabot. "That sounds very important, doesn't it? Important and rich and—and solid. How does it feel?" she asked with a certain gay insouciance which was as new to Rebecca Mary as it was becoming.
He laughed. "Just at present it feels mighty good. I'm very grateful to the First National Bank. I owe my present job as a motor teacher to that same bank."
Rebecca Mary's sober face made a desperate attempt to conceal her amused smile. "That's true," she said, but her voice was as much of a failure as a disguise as her sober face. "The two most important buildings in Waloo are undoubtedly the First National Bank and the Waloo Hotel. At last!" as the traffic policeman gave them the right of way."I hope I don't do the wrong thing now and mortify my teacher as well as myself. You never can tell what a pupil will do."
"I'm not afraid of my pupil." Richard was stimulatingly confident.
"I told you that you were a brave man. There!" Rebecca Mary drew a long breath. "We are on our way again." She turned impulsively to Richard and exclaimed from the very depths of her heart: "I can't ever tell you, Mr. Cabot, how happy you have made me!"
"I'm glad," was all Richard said, but his eyes flashed again. "It doesn't take much to make some little girls happy."
"Don't belittle your own generosity," scolded Rebecca Mary. "You've given me a lot and you know it."
Joan ran out to meet them when they returned.
"Granny is going to let me have a party!" she cried, scarcely able to believe her news herself. "I'm to choose the guests and the dinner and everything. I'm going to have you and the Bingham twins and Mr. Peter. And I can't think whether to have little pig sausages and waffles like we did the other morning for breakfast or nightingales' tongues like in the story you read me, Miss Wyman. Granny saidsausage and waffles didn't belong to dinner, but if we had them for dinner they would, wouldn't they? And she said she was afraid there weren't any nightingales' tongues in the market, and if there were did I think the Bingham twins could eat them. Once at home we had a swan with all its feathers on, and another time, at Echternach, when the kaiser came, we had a boar's head. Do you think you'd like one of those?" doubtfully.
Rebecca Mary looked up quickly to see Richard's face when Joan spoke of the kaiser as a dinner guest at Echternach, but he only looked amused so Rebecca Mary stooped and kissed the flushed little face. "What I should like best would be a little spring chicken," she said.
"Odd little thing, isn't she?" Richard said when Joan had danced away to ask Granny if the three months' old Bingham twins could eat spring chicken. "Have you heard from her father?"
"Not a word. Nor from Mrs. Muldoon. We drove over yesterday, but Mrs. Lee hadn't heard anything."
"It was mighty good of you to take her in." Richard spoke as if no one in the world but Rebecca Mary would have taken charge of a child whohad been left on the door step with a clock, a portrait and a potato masher.
"What else could I do?" Rebecca Mary would like to be told how she could have done anything else. "She was—loaned to me." And she laughed. It was so easy to laugh at the loan now.
"All the same it was mighty good of you." He wished she would laugh again. Like Joan, Richard did admire Rebecca Mary's face when it "broke into little holes." "I don't know many girls who would have taken care of a child who had no claim on them."
"But she did have a claim on me. I was her teacher." And Rebecca Mary did laugh again.
Granny was just hanging up the telephone receiver when Rebecca Mary went into the house.
"I've been talking to Seven Pines," she said. "Is there any reason why we shouldn't drive out there to-morrow, Rebecca Mary? Mrs. Swanson just called me up to tell me that Otillie is going to be married and she wants me to come out and see her wedding things."
"A wedding!" Joan jumped up and down on delighted toes. "You'll take me, Granny Simmons? You'll never leave me in Waloo? You know I'venever been to a wedding. I've only been to church and school and a moving picture show."
"Then you certainly shall go to Otillie's wedding. We'll start in the morning and take our time," Granny suggested to Rebecca Mary. "What do you say?"
"I say goody, goody!" exclaimed Rebecca Mary. "You have told me so much about Seven Pines I'm crazy to see it."
That night when she went to her room she nodded merrily at the radiant face of the girl in the big mirror.
"Well, Rebecca Mary Wyman," she murmured joyously. "You certainly have turned over a new leaf—a real four-leaf clover leaf. You're having the time of your young life. You must send Cousin Susan a testimonial for her memory insurance company!" For she remembered to give the credit for her new leaf to where credit was due. "You've had more fun since you took out one of her policies than you ever had before. Gracious, I should think you had!"
She was still looking at the happy face in the mirror and dreamily wondering about the bright new leaf she had turned over when the door opened and there stood Granny Simmons. She wore herhat and her motor coat dragged from her arm. In her hand she held a yellow telegram.
"Come, Rebecca Mary," she said impatiently. "Put on your hat. We'll go to-night!"
"To-night!" Rebecca Mary swung around to look at her. It was almost midnight, time to go nowhere but to bed, but Granny was not dressed for bed. What on earth did she mean?
"I promised Mrs. Swenson I'd come and see Otillie's things," Granny spoke almost fretfully. "I know what time it is, Rebecca Mary, but if we don't go before old Peter Simmons comes we'll never leave. He'll want us to stay at home until he can go with us, and he can never go. He's always too busy."
Rebecca Mary's eyes opened wider. She didn't understand why Granny should want to leave for Seven Pines in almost the middle of the night if old Peter Simmons was coming home. Rebecca Mary did not know old Peter Simmons, she did not know very much about him except that he was the head of a big manufacturing plant and that he was to have a golden wedding on the twenty-second of July. Granny had always spoken as if she adored her husband. It seemed strange for her to leave for Seven Pines if he was coming home.
"Just put a few things in a suit case," ordered Granny. "We shan't be away more than a couple of days."
Rebecca Mary only stared harder. There was an expression on Granny's face which she did not understand.
"We'll go to Seven Pines to-night for several reasons," went on Granny impatiently. "First because I want to go to Seven Pines before my golden wedding for a special reason, and I promised to take you and Joan there, and because Otillie Swenson wants us to see her wedding things. If we don't go before old Peter Simmons comes we won't go at all, as I said. When he is in Waloo he wants me to be in Waloo. I can gad as much and as far as I please when he's away but when he is in town I must be home. I know very well the way he'll stamp in here and say: 'Hello, Kitty! How are you?' and kiss me and go to bed and sleep like a log until seven in the morning and then he'll eat his breakfast and go to the factory and I shan't see him until dinner time. I might as well be at Seven Pines. And then—I suppose you'll think I'm crazy, Rebecca Mary, but I never was saner in my life. You would understand perfectly if you had been married to old Peter Simmons for almost fifty years." The twinkle diedout of her eyes as she spoke of those fifty years, and she borrowed a frown from Rebecca Mary.
Rebecca Mary caught her breath and wondered if there could be any trouble between Granny and old Peter Simmons. Granny had always talked so proudly of her husband and what he had done to help win the war, quite as proudly as she talked of young Peter.
"Oh!" was all she could say, but Granny seemed dissatisfied with that startled exclamation.
"Read that!" She thrust the crumpled telegram into Rebecca Mary's hand.
"'Will be home on the 11.55 what do you want for the jubilee?'"
Even after she had read the telegram and mechanically divided it into two sentences, Rebecca Mary did not seem able to understand.
Granny took the message from her and read it aloud with an indignant snort.
"You see?" She looked at Rebecca Mary as if she defied her to say that the situation was not spread out before her as clearly as the green vegetables at the grocer's. "'What do you want for the jubilee?'" she read scornfully. "If that isn't just like old Peter Simmons! For almost fifty years, Rebecca Mary, I've told that man what I wanted foranniversary and birthday and Christmas presents. I've even had to tell him when the anniversaries and the birthdays were. Never once has old Peter Simmons remembered them for himself. He has never brought me a present without first asking me what I wanted. He can't even remember whether I like white meat or dark when we have chicken for dinner. He asks me every single time just as if it were the first time. And I'm tired of doing his thinking for him. He knows very well what I want. We've talked of it often enough. But I feel in my bones that if I see him to-night and he asks me what I want for my golden wedding I'll say something that will make trouble. And I don't want any trouble that will interfere with my golden wedding. I've earned that, and I'm going to have it. I'm not going to take any chance of an argument to-night. And the safest way to avoid an argument is to run away from it. We'll go Out to Seven Pines and look at Otillie Swenson's wedding clothes and then I may feel different. Put on your hat, Rebecca Mary. I know Peter does a lot of this only to tease me, but I don't feel like being teased now. Isn't there something else you should take with you?" she asked, and she looked vaguely around theroom when at last Rebecca Mary was hatted and packed.
Rebecca Mary stopped feeling anxious and giggled. It did seem so absurd for her to run away with Granny from old Mr. Simmons' frantic question. She could visualize just how frantic old Mr. Simmons was, and she felt sorry for him. At the same time she didn't blame Granny. It was irritating to be asked continually what you wanted a person to give you. Rebecca Mary's mother was something like old Peter Simmons. For weeks before Christmas she wrote and asked Rebecca Mary what she wanted when all the time she knew that Rebecca Mary would have to take what she needed.
"Isn't there something else you should take?" Granny asked helplessly as Rebecca Mary put her in her motor coat and straightened her hat.
"There's Joan?" suggested Rebecca Mary, trying to keep her face from breaking into the little holes Joan liked.
"Of course." Granny pulled herself away before Rebecca Mary could button her coat. "We can't leave Joan until we find her father. You call her, while I explain to Pierson."
Joan was an interrogation point when she was wakened and told that she was to go to Seven Pinesat once. She caught the picture of her father and mother from the table but Rebecca Mary was glad to see that she left the potato masher where it was.
"I don't care as much for it as I did," Joan confessed, a little ashamed of her fickleness. "But I just have to take the picture and the clock, too."
"Aren't you ready?" called Granny. "It's half past now." And as if to prove that she was right Grandfather clock in the hall boomed the half hour. It sounded very solemn, and Joan slipped her free hand into Rebecca Mary's hand. "It is fortunate you have learned to drive the car, Rebecca Mary," Granny said as they went down the stairs. "Karl left this morning, you know, and the new man isn't to come until to-morrow. We'll take the small car, the five passenger. You can drive it, can't you?" she stopped on the last step to ask.
"I hope so." That was as much as Rebecca Mary could promise for it was one thing to drive a car over a smooth boulevard in broad daylight and with a helping hand at her elbow, and a vastly different thing to drive a car over an unknown country road in the moonlight and without a helping hand. Rebecca Mary was really scared to pieces, but Granny was so confident that Rebecca Mary didn't like to confess how scared she was.
She looked to see that there were gasoline and water for Richard had told her never to take out a car without seeing that it had plenty of food and drink. "You'll save yourself a lot of trouble in the end," he had promised, and, goodness knows, Rebecca Mary didn't want any trouble.
"You're taking a lot of time," fretted Granny from the tonneau where she sat with Joan. "And we haven't a minute to waste. It's a quarter to twelve now. If old Peter Simmons finds us in this garage we'll never see Otillie Swenson's wedding things."
"I'm ready now." Rebecca Mary wiped her hands on a piece of waste and slipped in behind the wheel.
They had to stop at the house for Pierson was waving a small basket.
"I put up a few sandwiches for you, Mrs. Simmons." She was breathless from the haste she had made. "You'll be hungry before you get to Seven Pines."
"That's very thoughtful of you, Pierson," commended Granny as Pierson put the basket on the seat beside Rebecca Mary. "Now, remember, you are not to tell Mr. Simmons when we went. Just say that I am on a motor trip with a couple of young friends. And don't tell him we are at Seven Pines.If he doesn't know where I am he can't keep asking me irritating questions. Now, my dear, straight ahead until you come to the end of the boulevard. Yes, Joan, it is very wrong to run away from home in the middle of the night and you are never to do it until you are sixty-eight years old and not then unless your husband will annoy you by asking what you want for a golden wedding present."
"I won't, Granny." Joan promised solemnly, although she knew that she would never live to be sixty-eight. Why, it would take years and years and years. But it was enough to make a little girl feel solemn to be wakened in the middle of the night and told to get up and run away from a question. No wonder Joan shivered. "And I know why you are running away," she went on eagerly. "It isn't from any question, is it? It's to find the young heart you are always talking about. I'm going to look for my father. Why are you going, Miss Wyman?" she leaned forward to ask.
Alone on the front seat Rebecca Mary laughed. "I reckon I'll find a payment on my memory insurance," she said, and over her shoulder she told Granny of the policy which Cousin Susan had persuaded her to take out and which was to be payable at any time during her old age. And Granny, whohad reached her old age, thought that it was a most wonderful and business-like arrangement.
"Your Cousin Susan is exactly right. Young people begin all their thoughts with 'I shall,' but old people think 'I did' or 'I had.'"
"I'm young then," Joan announced with much satisfaction, "for I always think I shall."
"So do I!" Rebecca Mary was quite astonished to find that she did. "How far is it to Seven Pines, Mrs. Simmons?"
"Sixty-three miles from our front steps. Listen—is that the train? I reckon we are safe now." And she leaned back with a sigh of relief.
"Sixty-three miles!" gasped Rebecca Mary, who never had driven one mile by herself. But there is always a first time, and she remembered that she would have to drive only a mile at a time, and anyway it would be Granny who would be responsible for what would happen.
They did not talk much after the first few miles. Joan fell asleep and even Granny dozed although she really couldn't sleep for Rebecca Mary had to ask her every few minutes the way to Seven Pines. Long before they reached the end of the boulevard Rebecca Mary forgot to be frightened or nervous. She found it rather thrilling to run away from oldMr. Simmons' question in the moonlight. They seemed to have the world to themselves for they met no one. Rebecca Mary thought she should like to go on for ever and ever.
She would never forget this ride, and she chuckled to herself. When she was as old as Granny she would remember how they had fled from old Mr. Simmons' irritating question. And thinking of old Mr. Simmons, whom she had never seen, made her remember young Mr. Simmons, whom she admired so much. What would he think when he came to-morrow, no, to-day, and found her gone? And Mr. Cabot? She had promised to drive out to the Country Club with Richard that very afternoon after banking hours. Richard was going to teach her to play golf. She was sorry that Granny had not given her time to write a little note, to write two little notes.
But she would not be away long. Granny had said only a few days. And she could telephone to Richard and to Peter from Seven Pines the very first thing, before she even looked at Otillie Swenson's wedding things. She hoped Peter and Richard would miss her for she knew that she would miss them. A month ago she had known neither of them. And now——
Young Peter Simmons was the most fascinating man. She flushed as her thoughts strayed back to young Peter, and she wondered if the day ever would come when he would ask his wife what she wanted for a birthday or an anniversary present. She knew that Richard Cabot would never ask. He would never have to ask for he would make a note of the date in his memorandum book and would be ready with his gift on the proper day. Young Peter and Richard were as different as a vanilla ice and a cherry pie. She liked them both. She couldn't think which she did like the best. Peter had fascinated her ever since she had seen him eating fresh tomato sandwiches with such gusto at the Waloo, and Richard did give her such a comfortable, well cared for, warm feeling. It was like being wrapped in a down comforter on a winter night to be with Richard. Hello, here they were at another cross road. Should she turn to the right or the left or keep straight ahead? She would have to ask Granny.
But when she turned she saw that Granny was fast asleep beside Joan. Joan's sleek little head was on Granny's shoulder and Granny's gray head was resting on Joan's black hair. They looked so comfortable cuddled close together that Rebecca Mary had not the heart to disturb them. And anywaywhat difference did it make when they reached Seven Pines?
"She'll be awake in a few minutes," she thought lazily. "And in the meantime I'll stretch myself and take a sandwich."
She slipped from her seat to draw a rug over the two sleepers and then stretched herself luxuriously before she took the place beside the wheel where she would have more room to stretch while she ate her sandwich.
"Chicken salad," she murmured approvingly when she opened a package.
What a strange world it was, she thought as she lounged back in Mrs. Peter Simmons' car and ate Mrs. Peter Simmons' chicken salad sandwiches. A month ago and she would have hooted at the person who would have suggested that she ever would do either. She never would have had the chance to do either she acknowledged if it had not been for Joan the young Countess Ernach de Befort, she laughed. Joan was a dear if she was sometimes a nuisance. How cross and horrid she had been when Joan had announced that she had been loaned to her. Why, if it had not been for Joan she would be fast asleep this minute in her old walnut bed in her shabby little room in Mifflin. She would never in the worldbe eating chicken salad sandwiches in Mrs. Peter Simmons' car, with Mrs. Simmons and Joan asleep in the tonneau. She was sleepy herself, and she yawned. But she could not go to sleep. She was on guard and—and what happens when sentries go to sleep at their post?
"I'm hungry!"
Joan's plaintive wail woke Rebecca Mary, and she opened her eyes and then sat up very straight.
"Why—why——" she stammered, rubbing her sleepy eyes to make sure that they were telling her the truth. "Where are we?"
For they were no longer under a star-studded moon-illumined sky. They were in a rough shed with a roof so close to Rebecca Mary's head that she could have touched it if she had stretched up her arm. She looked at hungry Joan and then at Granny, who was rubbing her eyes, too, and feeling for the glasses which should hang around her neck.
"This isn't Seven Pines!" Granny declared crossly, as one occasionally speaks when roused from sound slumber. "Where have you brought us, Rebecca Mary?"
Rebecca Mary's bewildered face turned a lovely pink and the corners of her red mouth tilted up. "Then it wasn't a dream," she said softly. "It wasn't a dream!" she told Granny triumphantly.
"What wasn't a dream?" Granny's voice still had a bit of an edge to it. "Don't ask conundrums the first thing in the morning, Rebecca Mary. What wasn't a dream?"
"Well," began Rebecca Mary, and her voice sounded as if she wasn't quite sure of her story herself. "You know you went to sleep in the car last night, and when we came to a cross road I didn't know which way to turn. I hated to waken you, so I ate a couple of sandwiches while I waited for you to waken yourself. Suddenly I heard some one laugh and say: 'Hello, I thought I knew this old boat. Where do you think you are going?' And there was Mr. Simmons——"
"Not old Peter Simmons?" exclaimed Granny excitedly. "It couldn't be! He was to be in Waloo at eleven-fifty-five. He couldn't have been at the cross roads!"
"It was young Mr. Simmons," Rebecca Mary hastened to explain. "He was in a roadster with another man. I told him we were going to Seven Pines, and he wanted to know why we were going at night, why we didn't wait for morning. And I said it would be so warm in the morning. I didn't know whether you wanted him to know——"
"Indeed he may know. I don't care who knows," declared Granny generously.
"And he said he knew the way to Seven Pines, and he got in our car and took the wheel, and we started again. But the road was so long and so white and the car ran so smoothly and we didn't talk much of any, and I was so glad to have him drive that I must have dozed off, too. Anyway, I just remember that we turned in at a big gate where Peter talked to a man. I thought of course that it was Seven Pines. And then we went a little further, I suppose into this shed, and Peter got out and said he would see about something and—That's all I remember," she finished abruptly.
"But that's perfect nonsense," insisted Granny. "What would Peter be doing at the cross roads at that time of night? You must have been dreaming, Rebecca Mary. And I wasn't asleep all the time. I was awake off and on, and I remember now, that at one time I thought I heard you talking to some one. But it couldn't have been to Peter. You must have been dreaming, Rebecca Mary!"
She was so very positive that she made Rebecca Mary wonder if she could have gone to sleep at her post. It didn't seem possible that she would have closed her eyes when she had the responsibility ofGranny and Joan on her hands but sleep can sometimes be a wily enemy. It isn't always a helpful friend. But if slumber had stolen insidiously over her how had they reached the old shed? Her story furnished the only possible explanation, and yet Granny frowned and said that her story was nonsense.
"Are you afraid?" whimpered Joan, suddenly clutching her arm. "Shall I be afraid, Granny? Are you afraid, Miss Wyman?"
"I'm scared to death!" But Rebecca Mary laughed softly, and she put her arm around Joan. "But it is because I went to sleep on guard. Granny said I did. I should have stayed awake to watch. But you needn't be frightened, Joan. There is nothing to be afraid of, is there, Granny?"
"Nothing at all." Granny made the endorsement strong and prompt. "But we might as well look around and make sure."
But when she stepped from the car she had to catch hold of the door or she would have fallen for her limbs were cramped and stiff from spending the night in the tonneau.
"If you live to be sixty-eight, Joan," she explained a little impatiently as she straightened herself, "you will have learned that there is nothing inthe world to be afraid of. Come and let us see if we can find some breakfast. I don't suppose whoever brought us here plans to starve us to death."
They presented rather a disheveled and crumpled appearance as they stood in the open doorway of the shed and looked across the green grass which ran without stopping to the green hedge a half of a mile away. What was on the other side of the hedge was kept a secret by the arbor vitæ. Near the shed the grass was marked by many wheel tracks. There was no one to be seen, and Granny went bravely forth with Rebecca Mary on her right and Joan clinging to her left hand.
"The grass is wet." Granny looked down at her shoe. "Was there any rain in your dream?" And she laughed at Rebecca Mary's puzzled face.
"I don't know." Rebecca Mary's voice was as puzzled as her face.
They passed a huge stone barn and several small sheds but there was no one about them. From somewhere they could hear the sound of a gasoline engine. Puff—puff it said, but the silly words conveyed absolutely no information to Rebecca Mary.
When they rounded the corner of the barn they faced a great stone house which might have begun its existence as a giant's bandbox, it was so verybig and square. But some one had added wings on either side so that now it looked like a home and sprawled so hospitably among the shrubbery that it seemed to call: "Come in, come in."
Granny gave a funny little exclamation when she saw it, and she hurried around to the front, where she stood and stared at the house and then at the formal garden with its pool and borders and its pergola, which ran all the way from the west wing to the river bank. The barn and sheds were on the other side of the house and, at some distance. In front the trimly shaven lawn was broken by a driveway which slipped in from the high road half a mile away to encircle and say "howdydo" to a huge flower bed which flaunted its red cannas before the wide front terrace. There were two tennis courts on one side of the driveway, down near the secretive hedge.
"God bless my soul!" gasped Granny, as she looked around her. The wind blew her gray hair about her face, which looked a bit pinched in the strong morning light. "Whose place do you think this is?"
"The beautiful princess's!" Joan jumped up and down in delight. "It's too pretty to belong to an ogre."
"It's Riverside, Rebecca Mary!" But as thatname conveyed nothing to Rebecca Mary, Granny gave her more information. "Joshua Cabot's grandfather's old home. Did you ever! It must have been Joshua instead of Peter who came along and found us. But we certainly haven't anything to be afraid of now. We'll go right in and ask Joshua for breakfast, and then we'll scold him for bringing us out of our way, and then we'll go on to Seven Pines."
Rebecca Mary did not think that she could have confused young Peter Simmons and Joshua Cabot, but she did not say so as she followed Granny and Joan up the steps and in through the open door. There was no one in the broad hall but Joshua Cabot's great grandfather and grandmother and they hung quietly on the wall in old gilt frames. No one was in the big dining room to which Granny turned, but some one had been there for the table was laid for breakfast. Covers were placed for three. Granny drew a chair from the table and sat down before a plate of tempting strawberries.
"I'm old enough to take privileges," she said. "I hope there are more strawberries, but if Joshua Cabot has been playing a practical joke on an old lady he should pay for it. Come, children, and eat your breakfast."
Joan obeyed with hungry alacrity, but Rebecca Mary hesitated, wondering if she dared. But the strawberries looked so delicious, Granny and Joan enjoyed them so heartily that Rebecca Mary found that she did dare. In a very few minutes there was not a strawberry left on that table. Then Granny rang the bell for what was to follow, but no one answered it. She rang again, and when again there was no response Joan jumped up and ran into the kitchen. She came back in a minute, big-eyed and important, to report that there was no one, no one at all, in the kitchen. Granny pushed back her chair.
"The maid has probably gone out for the eggs," she said with unruffled serenity. "I expect Joshua insists that they shall be perfectly fresh. While we are waiting, Rebecca Mary, come into the parlor. I want to show you a portrait of Joshua Cabot's great-grandmother. She was Richard Cabot's great-grandmother, too, you know."
Rebecca Mary rose obediently and followed Granny and Joan across the hall and into the parlor, which ran the full length of the house and whose many French windows opened on the formal garden and furnished many charming pictures of the riverand the low hills beyond. And the sweet-faced young girl in a gauzy white frock and with a pink rose in her long slender fingers was Richard Cabot's great-grandmother. Rebecca Mary quite forgot that the sweet-faced girl was also Joshua Cabot's great-grandmother as she gazed at her. There were several other pictures to which Granny called Rebecca Mary's attention, but always Rebecca Mary's eyes strayed back to the portrait. It seemed to call to her in some strange fashion. Suddenly they heard a clatter, and a door slammed.
"There are the eggs!" exclaimed Granny with a sigh of relief. "I suppose they will be ready in three minutes. Dear, dear, it is very plain that Sallie isn't here. She would never put up with such careless service, not for a minute."
She was interrupted by a roar, a very bellow, which made them draw close together.
"Here!" cried a harsh voice which sounded for all the world like the voice of the Big Bear. "Who has been eating my strawberries?"
The words rang through the hall and came into the big parlor with inhospitable roughness. There was a startled, an awed silence.
"That," whispered Rebecca Mary, as Joan huddledagainst her, "doesn't sound a bit like Mr. Cabot."
"It sounds like an ogre," Joan was sadly disappointed because it hadn't sounded like a prince. "It sounds exactly like an ogre!"
Almost immediately there were steps in the hall, and a man stood in the doorway. He did not look unlike an ogre for he was short and fat and had a round red face which was topped with a shock of grizzled hair and bisected by a bristling grizzled mustache. Between the hair and the mustache were two piercing blue eyes which seemed to bore right into Granny and Rebecca Mary and Joan. Behind the short fat man were two tall slim young men, who seemed very much surprised and pleased to find that guests had arrived so unexpectedly. The short fat man looked angry as well as surprised, and he showed no pleasure at all.
"My country!" he growled, still playing very realistically the role of Father Bear. "Where did you come from? How the dickens did you get in? And what the deuce do you want?"
Granny did not answer him because she never had been spoken to in quite that tone and manner. Men always approached Mrs. Peter Simmons of Waloo with courteous deference, and this isolated case ofgruff rudeness left her speechless. Rebecca Mary could not speak because a hot indignation clutched her by the throat and made it impossible for her to utter a word. It was Joan who mastered her tongue. She looked fearlessly up at the frowning ogre and answered his last question to the best of her knowledge.
"We want a young heart and a big payment on a memory insurance and my daddy," she announced clearly and somewhat peremptorily, as if she were accustomed to receive what she wanted.
If Joan had not mentioned her daddy the ogre would have thought they were all three mad, but he could understand a daddy if he could not comprehend a young heart or a big memory insurance payment.
"My country!" He breathed heavily and looked first at the young man at his right shoulder and then at the young man at his left shoulder. But they never looked at him at all. They were staring at Rebecca Mary in her crumpled white frock and her pink sweater.
"How did you get in here?" demanded the ogre, and it was plain to each one of them that he would have an answer, an intelligent answer, at once or know the reason why.
Granny drew herself up and looked at him with cold disdain. She did not like his manner, and as he wore big round glasses he must have seen that she didn't.
"We don't know," she told him in a very frigid voice.
"Don't know?" he repeated, almost sure now that they were mad. Surely an old woman and a young woman would know how they had entered a house if a child didn't. He excused Joan on account of her age but he did not excuse Granny nor Rebecca Mary. "You must know!" he told them with that unpleasant dictatorial impatient voice, although the man at his right touched his arm suggestively.
"Don't say 'must' to me!" Granny rather lost her temper. There is no doubt that bad manners are contagious. "Where is Mr. Cabot? I will make my explanation to him, although I think he owes me an apology." The ogre might have been but a speck of dust on the threshold from the way she looked beyond him.
"Mr. Cabot isn't here." The ogre's high and mighty manner began to slip from him.
"This is his house," began Granny, as if a man were always to be found at home.
"Not now——"
"He hasn't sold it?" Granny couldn't wait for him to put a period to his sentence. "Joshua Cabot never would sell his great-grandfather's house." She was so sure that he wouldn't that she stopped being indignant or cold and was just frankly curious.
The ogre looked as if he were not sure that it was any of her business what Joshua Cabot would do before he made a grudging explanation. "No, Mr. Cabot hasn't sold Riverside, but he has turned it over to us. We are making a very important experiment for the government and we cannot be disturbed."
Granny's manner changed at once. It became quite friendly. "In that case I shall tell you how we happened to disturb you." And she did tell them that she and Rebecca Mary and Joan had left Waloo in their automobile the night before and this morning they had found themselves in a shed at Riverside. But she never said a word of Rebecca Mary's dream.
"But that's a ridiculous story," objected the ogre. He didn't believe a word she had said, for he had his own reasons for being suspicious of strangers at Riverside. "You must know who brought you here. Why should any one bring you? How did you pass the guard at the gate?"
Granny looked at Rebecca Mary questioningly, but as Rebecca Mary only seemed bewildered, she shrugged her shoulders. It was not for her to explain the whys of other people. "I am Mrs. Peter Simmons of Waloo," she said with great dignity. "And people believe what I tell them."
"Mrs. Peter Simmons!" The ogre found it hard to believe that was who Granny was. "My country!" he muttered under his breath. "Mrs. Peter Simmons—of Waloo?" Granny nodded stiffly. "Mrs. Peter Simmons!" He didn't seem able to make himself understand that she was Mrs. Peter Simmons, and his voice grew more like the voice of a human being with every word. "My country! Mrs. Simmons, of course. I don't doubt the truth of what you say," he stumbled on, "but this is strange, very strange. I can't understand why——" He stopped abruptly and no one said a word. It was so very plain that he could not understand. "I am surprised to see you, Mrs. Simmons." He made a fresh start, and no one questioned the truth of that statement, either.
"Have you had your breakfast? Ben will make you some fresh——" His voice choked again and he had to swallow hard before he could bring it up from his boots. "I am Major Martingale of theengineer corps of the United States Army," he announced explosively. That was the only fact he was sure of just then, and he made the most of it.
Granny was not of the type which bears malice and the strawberries had not conformed to her old-fashioned idea of what a breakfast should be nor satisfied her appetite, so she accepted the white flag which he was holding out so ungraciously.
"Thank you, we should like some toast and coffee and perhaps a fresh egg. I rather think we ate your strawberries. We should have eaten the rest of your breakfast if Ben had answered the bell."
"Ben went over to the farmhouse with a message to Erickson," ventured the young man at the left of Major Martingale, glad to have a chance to speak. "You didn't find any one to answer the bell, did you?" He seemed quite grieved that he had not been there to answer it.
"Not a soul. It was most mysterious. I dare say it was all right but I should never approve of leaving unlocked a house with as many valuable things in it as this house has." Granny glanced around the room with its many souvenirs of pioneer days. "The front door stood wide open. I am sorry if we disturbed you, but if you will give us somethingmore substantial than strawberries to eat we will go on and leave you to your experiment."
Major Martingale tugged at his mustache and looked at her in surprise. "That's the trouble, you know," he rumbled. "You can't go on."
"Can't go!" Rebecca Mary found her tongue, and the men behind Major Martingale smiled pleasantly. They liked Rebecca Mary's voice as soon as they heard it. They thought it harmonized with her eyes. "Why can't we go? Is there anything the matter with the car?" She wouldn't be surprised if there was. She never had driven a car alone by moonlight over a country road before. Perhaps she had done something to it.
"I don't know anything about your car," fussed Major Martingale unhappily. "But you should have known, the guard at the gate could have told you, that no one is allowed to enter Riverside now without a permit, and no one who enters is allowed to leave. No one!" He exploded again.
Granny and Rebecca Mary stared at him and then at each other. They didn't believe him. It sounded too ridiculous.