Rebecca's Promise Part 9

"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 know what reparation you can make unless you sit beside me and talk exclusively to me."

"Oh!" Rebecca Mary was pinkly embarra.s.sed. "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 embarra.s.sment. 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 and had 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 cla.s.s, Richard Cabot, some time when I'm not with you."

"All right. Miss Wyman, I'll hold a cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s of mine!"

"Forget!" Rebecca Mary stared at him. How could she ever forget. She expected to remember his motor cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s would meet and she would try to be on time. She did dislike tardy scholars.

CHAPTER VII

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 b.u.t.tons Joan had found a place for 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 dreadful names, 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 d.i.c.k," 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 d.i.c.k 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 pa.s.s him. Then he tried for the Red Cross and Uncle Sam said, 'No, you're a banker, d.i.c.k Cabot, and the work you can do is to sell Liberty bonds.' I'd hate to tell you how many bonds d.i.c.k 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, d.i.c.k 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 cla.s.s 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 G.o.d!" she gasped, not daring to take her eyes from the road.

"It makes you look like a G.o.ddess," 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."