"She looks as if she had just wakened up," he said to himself.
But suddenly the bright color faded from Rebecca Mary's cheeks. "We must go home," she said quickly. "Come, Joan."
"Not yet," begged Granny. "You can't stay? Peter, will you see if Karl is waiting? He will drive them home. Yes, my dear," as Rebecca Mary protested that it was not necessary, they could go home in the street car. "You have too much luggage," she laughed as Joan gathered her photograph and her clock and her potato masher. "The suit case is in the car, isn't it? I hope you will come very soon again," she said cordially, as she went into the hall with them. "I want to see more of you and of Joan. I love young people, and I love to have them with me. It makes me feel young. I hate to be old, but I am old, and the only way I can cheat myself is to have young people with me. You and Joan must come to dinner some night. Come Thursday. Perhaps we shall have heard something from Mr. Befort by then."
Joan, struggling with the potato masher and the clock, heard her. "My father's name," she said quickly, "isn't Mr. Befort. It's Count Ernach de Befort."
"What!" exclaimed Granny, who had no idea that she had been entertaining a young countess.
"Joan!" cried Rebecca Mary very much surprised, indeed, to learn that a young countess was in the third grade of the Lincoln school.
They were so amazed that Joan flushed and her fingers flew to her guilty lips. "Oh," she cried, "I forgot! I wasn't to tell. They don't have counts in this country."
"Ernach de Befort," murmured Granny in Rebecca Mary's ear. "That sounds like a queer Franco-German combination. I'd like it better if it were one thing or another, if it were French. Never mind, Joan," as Joan began to whimper that she had forgotten that she wasn't to tell. "We'll keep the secret, won't we, Miss Wyman? Do you believe her?" she whispered to Rebecca Mary.
Rebecca Mary shook her head. Not for a second did she believe that Joan's father was Count Ernach de Befort. She had met the active imagination of a child too often, and she whispered that Joan was only playing a little game of "let's pretend" before she said good-by to Granny and promised to come Thursday to dinner.
Peter was waiting beside the luxurious limousine.