"A question?" Peter looked hopelessly bewildered. "Why should any one, least of all an old woman of sixty-eight, run away from a question?"
Even when Rebecca Mary had explained what question it was which had made Granny abandon her comfortable home in Waloo at midnight Peter didn't seem to understand, and he said so.
"That's because you're a man!" Rebecca Mary was very scornful of a man's power of comprehension. "I understand perfectly, and I don't blame Granny a bit. It must be perfectly maddening to have your husband ask you whether you want light meat or dark every time a chicken comes to the table or what you want for a birthday or a Christmas present. I don't blame Granny," she repeated for fear he had not heard her the first time she said it.
"Neither do I when you say it like that," Peter agreed amiably. "Although I can't see why she didn't go to grandfather and tell him how she felt. My grandfather, Miss Rebecca Mary Wyman, is the best old scout in the world. Don't think for a minute that he is a crabbed selfish old dub because he isn't. He's the head of a big manufacturing plant which he had ready to turn over to the government before the war because he saw it coming, and it's been no joke to get it back to a peace basis since the war. I don't know anything about this chicken meat proposition, but I do know that granddad has so much on his mind that it isn't surprising if he has forgotten a little thing like an anniversary——"
"Little thing!" Anniversaries were not little things to Rebecca Mary. They aren't little things to any woman. "A golden wedding a little thing!" It was perfectly clear to Peter that a golden wedding with all its tributes and attributes would never be a little thing to Rebecca Mary.
"She's going to ask me," Joan broke in excitedly. "I've never been to one, and I can't think what it will be like. What will be golden? The bride can't be, can she?"
"No," Rebecca Mary put an arm around Joan as she explained. "No, honey, the golden part will be the beautiful memory the bride and bridegroom will have of the fifty happy years they have spent together." She stopped suddenly as she remembered that was what Cousin Susan had said, that memories were golden. "What a long time that is!" she murmured dreamily. "Fifty years!"
"Not too long for two people who love each other," suggested Peter in a voice which sent the ready color to her cheeks. "When you are married you will want a golden wedding, won't you?"
"I wonder," her lips murmured perversely, although her heart told her with one big beat that she would, she most certainly would, want a golden wedding.
"I know," insisted Peter. "Come on in and help me find some breakfast. I haven't had a thing to eat since last night," piteously.