Rebecca's Promise Part 12

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 world be 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?

CHAPTER IX

"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 gla.s.ses 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: 'h.e.l.lo, 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 of Granny 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 endors.e.m.e.nt 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 in the 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 gra.s.s 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 vitae. Near the shed the gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 very big 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.

"G.o.d 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 that name 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 river and 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 huddled against 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!"

CHAPTER X