If Richard was a tower of strength that night he was a veritable
magician the next morning, for he extracted the two women and a half
from a carefully guarded place as easily as most men would take a friend
out for a walk or to a theater or church. Granny had been delighted to
accept Richard's kind invitation to run away to Waloo. Her faded blue
eyes sparkled when Rebecca Mary gave it to her.
"Of course, I'll go," she said at once. "It's too great a strain to be
under the same roof with old Peter Simmons. I'm crazy to see him,
Rebecca Mary, but I don't dare. Perhaps if I run away again he'll know
that I don't want to be teased. I simply can't discuss a golden wedding
present now. We've done it too often. But I don't know what I'll do,
Rebecca Mary, if he doesn't remember what we planned. If I weren't so
proud I should tell him that it begins with an H. But I can't even do
that, Rebecca Mary. It's funny I should feel this way after fifty
years, but I do. I can't help it even if I do know how silly it is."
So in the early morning Granny and Rebecca Mary and a very sleepy Joan
left the house as stealthily as if they had been robbing Riverside and
made their way from one clump of shrubbery to another to the gate. It
thrilled Rebecca Mary, whose teeth fairly chattered. It even thrilled
old Granny a bit, but it only puzzled Joan, who could not understand why
she had been wakened so early nor why she was being taken from Riverside
without saying good-by to her father although Granny told her that they
had left a note for her father and one for old Peter Simmons. How
Rebecca Mary did blush when Count Ernach de Befort was mentioned!
Before they reached the gate Richard came down the driveway in the car
which had brought Granny and Rebecca Mary and Joan to Riverside. He
stopped to speak to the guard, who was on the other side of the car so
that the three prisoners were able to slip by it and hide themselves in
the bushes which were most conveniently placed just outside the gate.
"Pooh!" exclaimed Granny as she settled herself in the tonneau with
Joan, "if I had known how easy it would be I shouldn't have stayed
twenty-four hours. Oh, well, I don't know as I care so long as I shall
get home before old Peter Simmons. We have had a rest and a change. I
don't often find fault with an experience after it is over. I did want
to go to Seven Pines before the golden wedding, but perhaps it is just
as well. You haven't anything to complain of, have you, Rebecca Mary?
Riverside was more interesting for you than Seven Pines would have been.
Wasn't it?"
"Much more interesting!" Rebecca Mary had never seen a foot of Seven
Pines and so should not have been so quick to decide that Riverside was
more interesting. "I'm glad that Major Martingale made prisoners of us."
And then she remembered what had happened the last day she had been a
prisoner, and she flushed and stammered. "At least I was glad." She
looked at Richard to see if he remembered the secret that they shared,
and he nodded and smiled. Rebecca Mary did not like to think of that
last night. It made her hot all over, from the top of her head to her
very heels, to remember what she had done. She hoped that no one but
Richard would ever know.
"We're going home, we're going home," sang Joan to an air of her own
composition. "I'm the only one who has what we came for," she announced
jubilantly. "I came for my father and I found him right away. But you
haven't your young heart, have you, Granny? And dear Miss Wyman hasn't
found the payment for her insurance, have you, Miss Wyman?" How
disappointed Granny and Rebecca Mary must be!
"Perhaps I didn't find the real young heart I wanted, Joan, but then I
knew that an old body isn't just the place for a real young heart,"
Granny confessed honestly. "But my old heart is a lot younger than it
was. It makes an old heart young in just the right way to match an old
body to be with young people, you know." She gave the prescription
gravely to Joan, and Joan received it as gravely.
"That makes two of us who have what we came for." Joan was even more
jubilant. "I'm sorry you haven't, Miss Wyman." Miss Wyman couldn't know
how sorry she was.
But Rebecca Mary didn't want sympathy from any one, and she said so at
once. "Indeed I did make a payment on my memory insurance policy, Joan.
I made a lot of payments. Why, at the rate I've been paying I shan't be
able to collect all the payments on that memory insurance policy, not if
I live to be a hundred!"
Joan bounced up and down on the seat beside Granny. "Then it's time to
go home," she said with funny solemnity. "When you get what you want it
is always time to go home."
They stopped at a farmhouse to telephone to Pierson to have breakfast
ready for them, and when they reached the house a most delicious
breakfast was waiting in the dining room.
"I'm glad you're back, Mrs. Simmons," Pierson said. "Young Mrs. Simmons
and I don't agree about the arrangements for your golden wedding."
"Don't you, Pierson?" smiled Granny. "I wonder if you and I will agree
about them. If we don't you must remember that the golden wedding is
mine. Gracious, but I am glad to be home again where I can look after
things myself! I declare, Rebecca Mary, I can't think now why we ever
went away. I must have been in a panic."
"Mr. Simmons came about fifteen minutes after you left, ma'am,"
explained Pierson, who stood beside Granny, eager to tell her what had
happened. "He was quite put out, I can tell you, when I told him you had
gone on a motor trip. He wanted to know where----"
"You couldn't tell him that, could you, Pierson?" Granny seemed quite
pleased to think that Pierson couldn't. "You didn't know where we were.
We haven't been near Seven Pines."
"No, ma'am, I know. Mrs. Swenson called me up to ask where you were. But
when Mr. Simmons asked me the way he did he got me all flustered and
before I knew it I told him you had gone to the Cabot country place. You
often go there, you know, Mrs. Simmons, so it wasn't strange I told him
you were probably at Riverside."
Granny put down her knife and fork and stared at her. "You never told
him that, Pierson?" She hid her face in her napkin, and her shoulders
shook. "What did he say? What did Mr. Simmons say, Pierson?"
"He didn't say anything for a minute, ma'am, and then he laughed in a
funny sort of a way. 'At Riverside?' he said, ma'am. 'Well, I'll be
darned! The devil she is!' That's exactly what he said. But you often go
there as Mr. Simmons knows, and yet he seemed surprised as anything to
hear you might have gone there now. But I had to tell him something,
Mrs. Simmons, when he asked me like he did."
Granny was laughing so that she almost choked. "Pierson," she said when
she could control her voice, "I shall raise your wages. I never
suspected that you had an imagination. No wonder Mr. Simmons wasn't
surprised to find us at Riverside. I dare say Major Martingale told him,
too, and young Peter, in spite of their promise to me. Dear, dear! Mr.
Simmons always seems to get the best of me." She shook her head
ruefully. "I wonder what he said when he found that we had run away from
Riverside."
"He probably said 'Well, I'll be darned' again," laughed Richard as he
repeated a phrase which was often on old Peter Simmons' lips when he was
surprised. "You mustn't be too hard on him, Granny. You know this
experiment is frightfully important and--you know him," he finished
rather lamely.
"I do," nodded Granny. "If I didn't know him I should never have done a
lot of things that I have. You must put off fireworks to make old Peter
Simmons see anything besides his business. If men weren't so queer women
wouldn't have to be so peculiar," she sighed. "You might remind old
Peter Simmons that he was married at noon. It would be just like him to
come in at night," she prophesied gloomily.
"Mr. Simmons won't be late," Richard promised somewhat rashly. "I'll see
myself that he is here by noon."
"You always were a good dependable boy. I can trust you. It is a great
thing, Rebecca Mary, to have a man about whom you can trust." There was
something so significant in the way she spoke that Rebecca Mary turned
pink until she matched the sweet peas in the center of the table.
She looked so pretty in her self-conscious confusion that Richard had to
stop eating omelet and muffins and look at her.
Granny went to telephone to young Mrs. Simmons about the golden wedding,
and Joan ran after Pierson to tell her all that they had found at
Riverside. Rebecca Mary pushed back her chair and rose, too. She just
couldn't sit there and let Richard stare at her as he was doing. It made
her feel--she could scarcely tell you how it did make her feel when she
remembered the way Richard had comforted her the night before. She could
still feel the pressure of his arm about her when he had told her that
she was a goose. She slipped out on the porch where Richard found her in
the swing beside the rambler rose.
She looked up with a smile. "It doesn't seem as if it could be true that
we are free again. I think it was wonderful the way you got us out of
Riverside."
He smiled, too. "Can you keep a secret?" he asked impulsively.
"I can!" She turned a curious face toward him. "I'm a perfect wonder at
keeping secrets. I love 'em so I just can't give them away. Do tell me
one!"
"I hate to be told how wonderful I am when I haven't been wonderful at
all," he said honestly. "So I'll confess that Mr. Simmons asked me to
bring you and Granny and Joan home."
"He did?" Rebecca Mary couldn't believe it. She visualized the caution
with which Granny had slipped from bush to bush, how stealthily she had
crept to the gate. And there had been no need of caution. How old Peter
Simmons could tease Granny now! By running away from his teasing she had
only given him more material with which to tease her. "She'll be
furious," she said, not sure but she was a little furious herself.
"She must never know." Richard reminded her that what he had given her
was a secret. "Mr. Simmons said if Granny could slip out of Riverside
and get home before he did she would think she was getting the better of
him and be a lot happier."
"The dear old man," breathed Rebecca Mary, forming a new opinion of old
Peter Simmons instantly. "What next?"
"And he asked me to bring her to Waloo. That's all, but you see you
can't pin any cross on me. I was just obeying orders. I thought you
would enjoy the joke, but we won't tell Granny. Let her think that she
did get ahead of Mr. Simmons."
"I should say so. That dear old Peter Simmons to let Granny retreat with
honor! He's not such a bad sort if he does forget his anniversaries and
presents and things. Dear me, how long ago it seems since we ran away
from here! Otillie Swenson must be an old married woman by now."
"I don't suppose you thought of me once while you were at Riverside,"
Richard said jealously.
"Well," a perverse imp appeared in Rebecca Mary's cheek just above the
corner of her lip, and there was a perverse imp in her voice, also, "I
was rather busy you know. I was the only girl there and four, no, five,
men, for old Major Martingale had to have a word now and then, five men
in the hand didn't leave much time for one in----"
"The heart," suggested Richard quickly and eagerly, and he dropped into
the swing beside her. "If you tell me you kept me in your heart,
Rebecca Mary, I shan't mind how many men there were in your hand?"
But Rebecca Mary wouldn't tell him that although the question sent her
into the strangest flutter she had ever been in in her life, and Richard
frowned. He remembered how the men at Riverside had hung about Rebecca
Mary.
"You girls are all alike," he said bitterly, and he jumped up from the
swing. "I thought that day at the Waloo you would be different----"
"At the Waloo!" interrupted Rebecca Mary. "I should say I was different
that day! Why, nothing had ever happened to me then; every day was just
like every other day, gray and stupid, but now----" she stopped,
appalled at all that had happened since that day at the Waloo, at the
few gray stupid days there had been and the many many rosy interesting
ones. "Just suppose Cousin Susan had bought kitchen curtains!" she
exclaimed with what Richard considered irritating irrelevance.
"Never mind about curtains." Richard wasn't interested in anything
connected with the kitchen just then. "They aren't important----"
"Oh, but they were! Frightfully important. Why, there was a moment when
my whole future was wrapped up in ten yards of cheap swiss?" She looked
almost frightened as she thought of her future in a neat parcel with ten
yards of cheap swiss. "You know I was a very selfish self-centered
disagreeable person,--yes, I was!--before I went to the Waloo with
Cousin Susan that day. But there must have been magic in the tea or--or
in the favors," she laughed tremulously as she remembered the favor she
had received. "I haven't been the same since," she confessed in a way
which told him that she was very glad that she hadn't been the same.
"If you would only be the same for two minutes in succession," begged
Richard helplessly. He never felt helpless before a man at the bank, no
matter who he was, but he felt absolutely helpless as he stood before
Rebecca Mary and looked into her rosy face. There was so much he wanted
to tell her, and yet he didn't seem able to form an intelligent
sentence. He could only stand there like a silly fool and look at the
rosy face in which two gray eyes sparkled so adorably. His own face
reddened, and his heart seemed to miss a beat.
"Better change your mind and stay for luncheon, Richard." Granny came
out with a cordial invitation. "My, Rebecca Mary, but it does seem good
to be at home again!" And she said, as she had said so many times in
the past few days; "I don't understand now why I ever ran away. But if
you won't stay, Richard, you must be sure and tell Mr. Simmons that he
should be here by twelve o'clock at the latest. If he isn't here--if he
isn't here----" she stopped aghast at the possibility she had voiced.
"If he isn't here I don't know what I shall do," she finished truthfully
if weakly.