Granny took the message from her and read it aloud with an indignant snort.
"You see?" She looked at Rebecca Mary as if she defied her to say that the situation was not spread out before her as clearly as the green vegetables at the grocer's. "'What do you want for the jubilee?'" she read scornfully. "If that isn't just like old Peter Simmons! For almost fifty years, Rebecca Mary, I've told that man what I wanted for anniversary and birthday and Christmas presents. I've even had to tell him when the anniversaries and the birthdays were. Never once has old Peter Simmons remembered them for himself. He has never brought me a present without first asking me what I wanted. He can't even remember whether I like white meat or dark when we have chicken for dinner. He asks me every single time just as if it were the first time. And I'm tired of doing his thinking for him. He knows very well what I want. We've talked of it often enough. But I feel in my bones that if I see him to-night and he asks me what I want for my golden wedding I'll say something that will make trouble. And I don't want any trouble that will interfere with my golden wedding. I've earned that, and I'm going to have it. I'm not going to take any chance of an argument to-night. And the safest way to avoid an argument is to run away from it. We'll go Out to Seven Pines and look at Otillie Swenson's wedding clothes and then I may feel different. Put on your hat, Rebecca Mary. I know Peter does a lot of this only to tease me, but I don't feel like being teased now. Isn't there something else you should take with you?" she asked, and she looked vaguely around the room when at last Rebecca Mary was hatted and packed.
Rebecca Mary stopped feeling anxious and giggled. It did seem so absurd for her to run away with Granny from old Mr. Simmons' frantic question. She could visualize just how frantic old Mr. Simmons was, and she felt sorry for him. At the same time she didn't blame Granny. It was irritating to be asked continually what you wanted a person to give you. Rebecca Mary's mother was something like old Peter Simmons. For weeks before Christmas she wrote and asked Rebecca Mary what she wanted when all the time she knew that Rebecca Mary would have to take what she needed.
"Isn't there something else you should take?" Granny asked helplessly as Rebecca Mary put her in her motor coat and straightened her hat.
"There's Joan?" suggested Rebecca Mary, trying to keep her face from breaking into the little holes Joan liked.
"Of course." Granny pulled herself away before Rebecca Mary could button her coat. "We can't leave Joan until we find her father. You call her, while I explain to Pierson."
Joan was an interrogation point when she was wakened and told that she was to go to Seven Pines at once. She caught the picture of her father and mother from the table but Rebecca Mary was glad to see that she left the potato masher where it was.
"I don't care as much for it as I did," Joan confessed, a little ashamed of her fickleness. "But I just have to take the picture and the clock, too."
"Aren't you ready?" called Granny. "It's half past now." And as if to prove that she was right Grandfather clock in the hall boomed the half hour. It sounded very solemn, and Joan slipped her free hand into Rebecca Mary's hand. "It is fortunate you have learned to drive the car, Rebecca Mary," Granny said as they went down the stairs. "Karl left this morning, you know, and the new man isn't to come until to-morrow. We'll take the small car, the five passenger. You can drive it, can't you?" she stopped on the last step to ask.
"I hope so." That was as much as Rebecca Mary could promise for it was one thing to drive a car over a smooth boulevard in broad daylight and with a helping hand at her elbow, and a vastly different thing to drive a car over an unknown country road in the moonlight and without a helping hand. Rebecca Mary was really scared to pieces, but Granny was so confident that Rebecca Mary didn't like to confess how scared she was.