"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 died out 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 for
anniversary 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 the room 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 Pines at 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, who had 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
old Mr. 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
anyway what 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 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?