There were any number of girls in the Viking room with whom Rebecca Mary would have changed places in the twinkling of an eye. It hurt almost as much as an ulcerated tooth to watch those radiant young people. And when you have an ulcerated tooth you don't, unless you are strong-minded or philosophical or stoical, laugh and chatter gayly; you know you don't. Rebecca Mary wasn't strong-minded nor philosophical nor stoical, she was just a girl who had never had anything and, oh, how she did want something, and she wanted it right away. That was why her eyebrows frowned yellow-brownly, and the corners of her mouth drooped a bit.
"Oh, Cousin Susan!" she groaned, "why did we ever come here? Why didn't you take me to Childs'?"
"Eh?" murmured Cousin Susan, still hovering between expense and curiosity.
But before she could say another word a little girl ran up to them, an elflike little thing, who held a huge bunch of violets in her hand. She had been following a man from the room when she had seen Rebecca Mary and dashed around the tables, just missing a disastrous collision with a fat waiter, to arrive breathless beside her.
"Oh, Miss Wyman!" she whispered, her small face aglow with importance. "I'm so glad I saw you. This is my birthday, and my daddy brought me here for tea just as if I were all grown up. He bought me these violets, too, and I've had them all afternoon so I'd like to give them to you now because," her face grew crimson, and her voice rang out above the hum of voices, "I love you!" She thrust the violets into Rebecca Mary's hand and ran away without giving Rebecca Mary a chance to say one word.
Rebecca Mary just saw a portion of her father's back as he disappeared through the door, and she looked down at the violets with an odd flash in her gray eyes. No one ever had given her violets before. She had always picked them herself on the sunny slope of the bluff at Mifflin.
"What a dear child," smiled Cousin Susan. "Who is she?"
"One of my pupils, Joan Befort. Yes, she is a dear." Rebecca Mary buried her hot cheeks in the cool fragrance of the violets for a moment.
When she lifted her head she met the amused glance of an elderly woman at the next table. She must be a grandmother woman, Rebecca Mary thought swiftly, although she did not look like any grandmother Rebecca Mary knew with her smart and expensive hat and blue gown, on the front of which was pinned a bunch of violets and an orchid encircled with foliage. The smile which lurked around the lips of this most ungrandmotherly looking grandmother made Rebecca Mary remember little Joan Befort's fervent declaration of affection, and she smiled, too. How funny it must have sounded in the crowded tea room. "I love you!" Rebecca Mary giggled, she couldn't help it, even if she was most dreadfully embarrassed.