"Joan doesn't say she is anything. I don't believe she knows even if she did say she was from Echternach. Never mind, Rebecca Mary, if she is left on your hands I'll help you take care of her. She amuses me with her contradictory statements. I like a mystery now that the war is over."
"I'm not sure that I do," murmured bewildered Rebecca Mary.
She really didn't have much time to wonder about Joan for Granny's friends seemed to have entered into a delightful conspiracy to make much of Rebecca Mary. Sallie Cabot gave a dinner dance for her and Rose Horton, who had been Rose Cabot, gave a tea and even Madame Cabot, who was Richard's great aunt, gave a theater party, after which she took her guests to the Waloo for supper and to dance. You can't really blame Rebecca Mary for rubbing her eyes and wondering if she could be Rebecca Mary Wyman.
Stanley Cabot was at several of these affairs, and he watched Rebecca Mary with an amused smile.
"I thought you said she scowled at old Dick," he said to Granny. "Perhaps I don't know a scowl when I see one, but I didn't think it was like that." And he nodded toward Rebecca Mary, who was smiling at Richard Cabot.
"Dear child," murmured Granny. "When you are my age, Stanley, you will hate to see anything but smiles on young faces. I hope Rebecca Mary has forgotten how to frown. But it was a scowl, Stanley, I know it was, which first attracted Richard."
It almost seemed as if Rebecca Mary had forgotten how to do anything but smile, and young Peter had no occasion to shout "Pirate." He was in and out of the house at all hours and so had every opportunity to see what Rebecca Mary was doing. It was not often that she could persuade him to talk to her of his experiences in France.
"Of course a man can't get it out of his thoughts," he did say one day, "but it isn't anything he wants to talk about. It was just luck that got me up to the front. If I hadn't been lucky I shouldn't have gone any farther than Dick Cabot. You know he tried to get into the service, any service? Yep. But he broke his arm when he was a kid and it's a little stiff. The doctors wouldn't pass him. Then he tried for the Red Cross and Uncle Sam said, 'No, you're a banker, Dick Cabot, and the work you can do is to sell Liberty bonds.' I'd hate to tell you how many bonds Dick did sell. It was owing to him that this district went over the top as soon as the sales were on. He's a corker, Dick Cabot, all right, all right. And he did as much at home to win the war as I did in France."
"Oh!" breathed Rebecca Mary, trying to grasp this point of view which Peter was offering her. It was splendid of Peter to talk that way but she couldn't really think that Richard at home had done as much as Peter in France, and she said so.