Rebecca's Promise Part 4

"Kitchen curtains.

"A four-leaf clover, origin unknown.

"One loan child of mysterious parentage.

"A hero and his _croix 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 a _croix 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 would be 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.

CHAPTER IV

The very next day was Sat.u.r.day 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 a kitchen 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 took me 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 a.s.sociated 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 Thursday evening, 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 Joan had 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. "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 said that. "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?"