Rebecca's Promise Part 29

"I'm going to live forever!" Joan danced out to tell them her news.

"Granny said I should. Are you, dear Miss Wyman? Do you like the golden wedding? I'm disappointed in it," she confessed loudly. "It's just like any grown-up party. I don't see exactly why Granny wanted it so much."

"Oh, don't you, miss?" And there was Granny. "It wasn't like any grown-up party to me, not a bit! You just have one wedding, Joan, and then you'll understand why I've wanted fifty. You understand, don't you, Rebecca Mary?" She put her arm around Rebecca Mary and hugged her after her keen eyes had searched Rebecca Mary's tell-tale rosy face.

"But Miss Wyman hasn't had one wedding." Joan didn't see why Rebecca Mary should understand so much more than she could.

"No, but Miss Wyman is engaged," Granny told her as if it were a great secret.

But every one heard her, and every one was astonished. No one was more astonished than Rebecca Mary unless perhaps it was Richard.

"Rebecca Mary engaged!" Young Peter couldn't believe it. "That wasn't fair, Rebecca Mary, not to tell a fellow."

"What is she engaged to?" asked Joan jealously, although she didn't understand what being engaged meant.

Granny told them that, too, before Rebecca Mary could open her mouth.

"To a four-leaf clover. Aren't you, Rebecca Mary?" And then she told them what had happened to Rebecca Mary the afternoon when she went to the Waloo for tea, that some one had thrust a four-leaf clover into Rebecca Mary's hand. Consequently by all the laws of romance Rebecca Mary was engaged to that some one.

"But who was it?" Joan expressed the curiosity which was on every face.

"I wish I knew!" Rebecca Mary had quite forgotten the mystery of the four-leaf clover in the greater mystery of Richard's love.

"Don't you know?" Richard asked in a queer sort of a voice. Was he jealous?

She shook her head. No, she didn't know. She never had known where that clover leaf had come from but it had brought her luck. Yes, it had! And she would keep it to her dying day. But she should like to know who had given it to her.

Richard laughed. "Granny," he said, "come and confess."

"Granny!" What had Granny to do with it? A gray-haired old Granny was not according to the laws of romance.

Granny realized that, and she made her explanation apologetically as if she understood that it might not be wholly satisfactory.

"You were such a dear scowling thunder cloud that afternoon that I was sorry for you. It seemed such a wicked waste of a perfectly good girl that I simply had to offer a little first aid. Richard and I talked you over"----

"Richard!" Rebecca Mary remembered very vividly how curiously Richard had regarded her over his sandwich.

"And we decided, I did at least, that you needed a little mystery in your life. You looked as if you had been fed entirely too long on stern reality. It was easy enough to diagnose your case, but we didn't know how to get the prescription to you until we were all jammed together at the door. I had the clover leaves in my corsage bouquet, old Peter Simmons had sent them to me, and I made Richard push one into your hand.

He didn't want to do it. He said it was silly and impertinent." Oh, the scorn in Granny's soft voice. "But I have a very persuasive way with me at times," she added as Rebecca Mary stared at her, her mouth and eyes all wide open. "I told him if he didn't do it I should, and I'd tell you that he did it."

Rebecca Mary swung around to look at Richard. "Then you--you----" but words failed her. It was so altogether as she wanted it to be.

"Yes, I did," admitted Richard with some shame, for there are those who might think it unseemly for a bank vice-president to slip four-leaf clovers into the hands of strange scowling girls. "Granny has, as she said, a very persuasive way with her. I never before did such a thing,"

he explained unnecessarily. "And I shouldn't have done it then if I hadn't been so sure that she would make her threat good." His voice sounded as if even yet he could not understand how he had let Granny coerce him. "I'll never do it again," he promised with a rare twinkle in his eyes. "But I did do it that afternoon. Are you sorry?"

Rebecca Mary looked from him to Granny and then back at him again. But before she could find breath with which to tell him that she was anything but sorry Granny said slowly, as if she were still visualizing the Waloo tea room:

"You were with such a dear looking woman that afternoon."

"Yes," dimpled Rebecca Mary, all flushed and sparkling at the astonis.h.i.+ng news she had heard. "My insurance agent. She was trying to persuade me to take out a policy," she giggled.

"And did you?" Joan always wanted to know whether one did or didn't.

"Did I!" Rebecca Mary drew a deep breath as she thought of the policy she had taken out and the long record of payments she had made on it. "I should say I did!"

"That's all very interesting," Richard broke in after she had told them a little more about her memory insurance and they had laughed and trooped away again, "but it interrupted a question that I wish to ask you. What I want to know is, are you going to marry me?" He put the question in his best vice-presidential manner, although there was a twinkle in the far corner of his eyes.

Rebecca Mary laughed and twinkled, too. The old negative phrase never came near her lips. Her cheeks were as pink as pink and her eyes were like stars as Richard's arm slipped around her shoulders and drew her closer.

"Will you marry me, sweetheart?" he asked her again, very gently this time, not a bit like a bank vice-president.

Rebecca Mary caught her breath. She put up her hand and clutched the edge of his coat with trembling fingers as if to keep him near her until she could answer him. Her eyes crinkled and the corners of her mouth tilted up. My! but she was glad that Cousin Susan had told her what she should say.

"Y-yes," she stuttered, half laughing, half crying. "Y-yes, thank you!"