"Odd little thing, isn't she?" Richard said when Joan had danced away to ask Granny if the three months' old Bingham twins could eat spring chicken. "Have you heard from her father?"
"Not a word. Nor from Mrs. Muldoon. We drove over yesterday, but Mrs. Lee hadn't heard anything."
"It was mighty good of you to take her in." Richard spoke as if no one in the world but Rebecca Mary would have taken charge of a child who had been left on the door step with a clock, a portrait and a potato masher.
"What else could I do?" Rebecca Mary would like to be told how she could have done anything else. "She was—loaned to me." And she laughed. It was so easy to laugh at the loan now.
"All the same it was mighty good of you." He wished she would laugh again. Like Joan, Richard did admire Rebecca Mary's face when it "broke into little holes." "I don't know many girls who would have taken care of a child who had no claim on them."
"But she did have a claim on me. I was her teacher." And Rebecca Mary did laugh again.
Granny was just hanging up the telephone receiver when Rebecca Mary went into the house.
"I've been talking to Seven Pines," she said. "Is there any reason why we shouldn't drive out there to-morrow, Rebecca Mary? Mrs. Swanson just called me up to tell me that Otillie is going to be married and she wants me to come out and see her wedding things."
"A wedding!" Joan jumped up and down on delighted toes. "You'll take me, Granny Simmons? You'll never leave me in Waloo? You know I've never been to a wedding. I've only been to church and school and a moving picture show."
"Then you certainly shall go to Otillie's wedding. We'll start in the morning and take our time," Granny suggested to Rebecca Mary. "What do you say?"