Over her head Mrs. Simmons looked at Rebecca Mary and raised her eyebrows questioningly, but Rebecca Mary could only shake her head. Rebecca Mary began to see that there might be something in her principal's wish to have her teachers know more of their pupils than their ability to read and cipher. There was such a lot more about Joan that Rebecca Mary would like to have known that very minute.
"Where was your old home, my dear?" Mrs. Simmons did not hesitate to ask for any information she wished to have.
"Over the sea—at Echternach." Joan turned an eager face toward her, quite willing to talk of that old home where she had lived with her daddy and her mother until she had come to the United States with her mother. Her mother had died suddenly, leaving Joan with a grandmother who had lived only long enough to give the little girl back to her father when he came a year later. And as she chattered Mrs. Simmons and Rebecca Mary looked at the coat of arms on the silver frame and at the photograph of the gorgeously uniformed man and the beautiful woman.
"Tell me about your father?" Mrs. Simmons asked as soon as she could slip a word in edgeways.
Joan looked up, a trifle puzzled by the question. "Daddy?" she repeated. "Why, he's just—daddy. He's like—well, his eyes always look at me so lovingly and his mouth talks to me so sweetly and his ears hear everything I say and his hands work for me and his feet bring him to me." She kept her eyes on the photograph to make sure she left nothing out. "That's my daddy!" she finished triumphantly, and she looked up as if she dared them to find fault with such a daddy.
Mrs. Simmons patted her shoulder, and Rebecca Mary hugged her.
"That's a very good working description of a daddy," smiled Mrs. Simmons. "And here is Sako with the tea."
When the Japanese butler had placed the tray on the low table beside Mrs. Simmons, Joan handed cups and passed sandwiches quite as if she were accustomed to that pleasant task.
"I'm consumed with curiosity," Mrs. Simmons whispered to Rebecca Mary. "She is a most unusual child. You must tell me anything you learn about her. Echternach sounds German, doesn't it? And although the war is over and we're told we are to forgive our enemies, I can't quite forgive the Germans for all the dreadful things they did. Nor the Turks. Of course the children aren't to be blamed, but—That's my grandson," she told Joan, who was looking at a large framed photograph on the table. "Young Peter Simmons, and I'm sinfully proud of him. He was my first grandchild, and even when he was a fat bald-headed baby I knew that some day he would do wonderful things. I suppose all grandmothers think that, just as all mothers do. But I really didn't think Peter would do as wonderful things as he has," she went on more to Rebecca Mary than to Joan. "You know he has a croix de guerre?" She drew a quick breath and looked at Rebecca Mary with a smile which was not at all a laughing smile. "I'm apt to be a bit foolish when I talk of young Peter Simmons," she admitted as she wiped her eyes.
"I don't wonder!" Rebecca Mary drew a quick breath, too. "I should think you would be proud!" She knew she should be proud if young Peter Simmons belonged to her. She didn't care if he had scowled at her.