Cousin Susan looked at her frowning little face and fingered the silver in front of her with hands which although well cared for showed that they were more for use than ornament. Cousin Susan's hands exactly illustrated Cousin Susan's heart, which was so big and generous and helpful that the hands were often overworked. As she looked at Rebecca Mary Cousin Susan took a sudden determination and followed an impulse, which was nothing new for her, and which sometimes brought her great satisfaction and sometimes nothing but dissatisfaction.
"Don't frown like that, Rebecca Mary," she commanded like a general speaking to a very small private. "It is a lot easier to put a wrinkle in your forehead than it is to get one out as you'll learn some day. And while we are on the subject of your looks I'm going to take an old cousin's privilege and tell you what I think of you. It's a shame to do it here," she acknowledged ruefully, "but if I take the six-twenty train I shan't have another chance. You know," she went on in a firm low voice, "I don't like the way you live, and your mother wouldn't like it if she knew. Why, you don't get a thing out of your life, Rebecca Mary, not a thing!"
"I don't see what I can do," murmured Rebecca Mary with a twist of her shoulders and a rebellious flash in her gray eyes. "You needn't think I like my life, Cousin Susan. It isn't one I should ever choose. I should say not! But I try to make the best of it."
"But you don't make the best of it. That is just the point. You make such a horrid worst of it. Yes, you do!" as Rebecca Mary indignantly declared that she didn't. "Listen. I've watched you and I never imagined a girl could detach herself from life, real life, as you have done. You haven't any friends, you don't go anywhere but to school, you don't do anything but teach the third grade in the Lincoln school."
At that Rebecca Mary did interrupt and there was a bright red spot on each of her cheeks, like a poppy in a bed of lilies. "It costs money to have a share in real life," she said in a suppressed voice which made you think how very thin the crust of earth around a volcano must be. "And I haven't any money. You know how awfully little we have and how much it costs to live now. I have to send something home every month and there are always taxes and insurance. And I have to provide for my old age! You have no idea what a nightmare that is," tragically. "I wake up in the night thinking what will happen when I'm too old to teach. It's—it's ghastly!" It was so ghastly that she shivered, and the poppies left her face so that it was just a field of white lilies.
"You are thinking entirely too much of your old age. You are robbing your youth for it. It is perfectly ridiculous for you to make such a nightmare of the future. I know it isn't entirely your fault. Your mother is rabid on the subject. She has brought you and Grace up to think of old age as a blood-thirsty old beast who has to be fed with youth. Yes, I know all about your Aunt Agnes and your second Cousin Lucy. But, my dear, they could have saved and saved and their money might have been lost just when they needed it. You can't be sure of keeping money no matter how you save it. That's why I spend mine." She looked at the dainty expensive sandwiches the waiter placed before her and laughed. "It's gospel truth, my dear," she went on soberly, "that the only thing you can be sure of taking into the future is what you can remember, the memory of the good times you have had, the people you have met, the places you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard. Don't you know that youth should enjoy things for old age to remember? And take it from me, Rebecca Mary, that the old find their greatest pleasure in recalling their youth. Will you have cream or lemon in your tea? Lemon always seems more like a party to me."
Rebecca Mary took the lemon while a puzzled frown appeared between her two eyebrows. "It isn't that I don't like my work, Cousin Susan," she said slowly, "for I do. I love children, and I love to teach. If I had a million I should want to teach somewhere, in a settlement or a mission, you know. But I'll admit that the future does scare me blue. Suppose I should be ill, suppose——"
"Suppose fiddlesticks!" Cousin Susan broke in impatiently.
"It's all very well for you to talk. You have some one to take care of you, a husband, and——"
"My dear, you can't guarantee a husband any more than you can a savings account. Women are left penniless widows every day. Don't misunderstand me, Rebecca Mary. I believe in a certain amount of saving, but I don't believe in sacrificing everything in the present to a future you may never have. How do you know you will live to grow old? How do you know that a grateful pupil won't leave you an income?—that has happened if you can believe the newspapers. How do you know that you won't make your own fortune in some marvelous way? That's the loveliest part of life, Rebecca Mary. You don't know what is waiting for you around the corner so you might as well expect riches as poverty; better in my opinion. I'd always rather look forward to a fried chicken than a soup bone hashed."