"Do you know what I am going to do?" Peter demanded gloomily when he found Rebecca Mary in the pergola overlooking the river at the foot of the garden.
Rebecca Mary was reading a book which she had found in one of the big cases in Joshua Cabot's grandfather's library. She flushed guiltily when Peter discovered her and put her book hurriedly behind her, which was no way to hide it from him. Peter immediately wanted to know what was the matter with her book that she should put it behind her back when he came in sight, and what was her book, anyway? A minute later Rebecca Mary had yielded to brute force, and Peter read the title of the thick volume—"The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg," and then he took up a small volume which was on the bench beside Rebecca Mary and read the title of that—"French Grammar."
Then and there Peter had taxed her with giving more of her time and thoughts to Frederick William Gaston Johan Louis, Count Ernach de Befort, than she did to him, plain Peter Simmons, a former private in the Lafayette escadrille.
"You are always talking education with him. Education!" he sneered. "Or reading about his blamed little country or studying his blamed,—no, I can't call the language of the French names. But you know, Rebecca Mary, that you give him more of your company than you give me." And when Rebecca Mary just sat there flushed and guilty, Peter went on with great determination, "Do you know what I am going to do?"
Rebecca Mary could truthfully say that she didn't, she hadn't the faintest idea what he was going to do.
"I'm going to take this many-named count out and drown him. Oh, yes, I know we're forbidden to go on the river and that Befort is needed at the shop, but I'm going to drown him just the same. Yes, Rebecca Mary Wyman, that is what I shall do, I'll take him out on the river and drown him. What does he mean by butting in, anyway? Doesn't he know that I brought you here to get you away from old Dick Cabot?"
"Oh!" Rebecca Mary was all in a flutter when he spoke of old Dick Cabot.
"Doesn't Befort know that you are my girl?" went on Peter with a frown, although there was a grin lurking around the corners of his mouth.
"Am I?" dimpled Rebecca Mary, pink to her hair to hear that she was Peter's girl.
"Aren't you?" Peter could answer one question with another as well as any Irishman, and he leaned closer to see if Rebecca Mary agreed that she was his girl. "And I'm not going to let another fellow cut me out," he went on sternly. "Marshall and Barton are bad enough, but I can manage them."