But Granny was still asleep under the rose strewn coverlet, and Rebecca Mary slipped out as quietly as she had slipped in.
Peter had finished his breakfast when she returned to the dining room, and they all walked out to the garden where he smoked a cigarette.
"But you know Granny can't stay here without sending word to grandfather," insisted Peter.
"Why can't she?"
"Why can't she?" Peter stared as if Rebecca Mary should have known better than to waste words on such a question. "My grandfather adores my grandmother, Miss Wyman, although he does tease her to death, and he'll worry his old gray head off if he doesn't know where she is."
"Mrs. Simmons left a message with Pierson."
"That she had gone to Seven Pines. When grandfather calls up Seven Pines Granny won't be there. No, she must send him a message at once."
"You can't send any messages from Riverside. Major Martingale told us so most emphatically."
"I rather guess we could get a word to old Peter Simmons if we went about it in the right way." Young Peter seemed much amused to hear that she imagined that they couldn't. "Don't you know——" he began, and then he laughed and stopped short.
Rebecca Mary knew, of course, that he had meant to tell her what an important man his grandfather was, and she liked him the better for breaking his sentence off in the middle and not boasting. He chuckled to himself several times as he walked with Rebecca Mary through the garden which was such a riot of gorgeous color, around the flower-bordered pool, by the old lichen-studded sun dial and through the green wreathed pergola to the river bank, where Peter forgot his grandparents as he remembered his history and told Rebecca Mary the legend the Indians had written on the big rock on the other side. It was a gruesome tale, and Joan shook in her small shoes. Rebecca Mary would have shivered in her larger oxfords if she had not remembered that the gruesomeness was some two hundred years old. They had a most delightful morning and strolled back when they heard the clang of a big bell, a bell which Peter told Joan talked of absolutely nothing but food.