Rebecca's Promise Part 5

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 may imagine 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 one is 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's a 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. h.e.l.lo, 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 golden one, 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 gla.s.ses 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 would be 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 at his 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.