Rebecca's Promise

by Frances R. Sterrett

"It is a day to make a man have the fidgets," and her father stopped on his way back from the window to pat her cheek. "You will never know, mignonne, what this day means to your father."

"You could tell me?" hinted Joan.

But he only laughed and patted her cheek again before he went back to his place. Rebecca Mary looked at him curiously. What a strange man he was, not a bit like an American, like young Peter or—or Richard. She wasn't sure she understood him, he was so strange. But she really didn't bother very much about Frederick Befort then for she, too, was in a strange mood. She wanted to be by herself and think. She scarcely knew of what she wanted to think but she was conscious of a little glow of content. Perhaps if she went down by the river bank she could discover why she felt so contented and happy when she had been so restless and unreasonable. She was glad to hear Frederick Befort promise to play ball with Joan although she wondered again why he did not go to the shop, but that was his business, not hers.

She ran upstairs to find Granny asleep and with a sigh of relief she crossed the terrace on her way to the river bank. But Joan called to her from the tennis court and ran toward her. Rebecca Mary might have ignored the childish hail once, but she couldn't do it now, and she walked slowly toward the court.

"Look what my father made for me!" Joan demanded breathlessly. She always spoke of her father with an emphasis as if her father was made of "sugar and spice and everything nice" while other fathers were compounded of dust and water without a grain of seasoning. She held up what was meant to be a ball, but it was made from an old glove stuffed with—papers. Rebecca Mary could feel them crackle. The glove fingers were wound around the palm to hold the papers firm. It really wasn't much of a ball to any one but Joan, who capered proudly and almost snatched it from Rebecca Mary as if she could not quite trust even her with it. "My father made it for me," she repeated joyously.

Her father laughed. "Miss Wyman does not think that was any great feat, ma petite," he teased. "She does not think it is a very good ball."

Miss Wyman was a true descendant of George Washington, and she horrified Joan by confessing that Frederick Befort was right, and she had seen better balls than the one he had made out of an old glove and some scraps of paper.

"What do you really think yourself?" She caught a tennis ball from the court, where it lay neglected, and showed him what a ball could be.

"But that's a ball from a store!" Joan saw the difference in a flash. "And my father never made a ball before. He said so. This is the first one he ever made, and he made it for me."

"No one else would accept it." He pinched her cheek. "Now, Joan, you must play by yourself. I must go to the shop, but I tell you again you cannot throw this ball I made over the hedge. It is not like a store ball."