Rebecca's Promise

by Frances R. Sterrett

"How?" interrupted Rebecca Mary, eager to hear how Peter was going to manage Wallie Marshall and George Barton.

"I'm a bigger man than they are and a better," Peter explained promptly. "They don't worry me, but this Befort—I'm bigger than he is, too, but he's romantic, and all girls fall for romance. I can see that he might have quite a drag with you. Most girls would rather have a diamond already cut and polished in their platinum ring than one in the rough. I like old Befort myself, but I'll have to drown him just the same. Godfrey!" he jumped to his feet and looked down at her. "There's no time like the present. I'll hunt him up and ask him politely to come for a little row on the river, and then I'll drown him."

Rebecca Mary laughed. "There used to be an old saying that ran something like this—'First catch your hare.'" Her eyes danced. It was such fun to hear Peter run on. Not one of the eight-year-old men she had known in the third grade of the Lincoln school had ever talked to her like this.

Peter grunted scornfully. "Oh, I'll catch him," he promised confidently. "I have only to stay here with you, and I'll catch him and drown him."

Neither of them knew that just behind the vine wreathed pergola Joan was playing with the farmhouse kitten which she had borrowed without permission. She had hesitated between the baby asleep in a chair on the porch and the kitten asleep on the step and then had wisely chosen the kitten.

When she first heard Peter talking to Rebecca Mary she had not listened to him for the kitten was so cunning as it played with the string Joan held just out of reach of the four paws, but when Peter kept on insisting that he was going to drown some one she had to listen. When she heard who Peter was going to drown she jumped to her feet, almost on the borrowed kitten, and gasped. Her first impulse was to rush to Peter and tell him that he couldn't, he just couldn't, drown her father for liking to talk to Rebecca Mary. If he did that he would have to drown himself and every one at Riverside and a lot of people at Waloo, for almost every one liked to talk to Rebecca Mary. He even would have to drown her. And then another plan slipped swiftly into her startled brain, and her slim legs scarcely touched the ground as they carried her around the pergola and up through the garden.

It was the greatest luck that just as she passed the tall clump of larkspur she should see her father coming leisurely toward her. If Joan had been older and in less haste she would have seen that her father had changed since the day the tennis ball had found him. He did not look as haggard nor quite as absent-minded and his shoulders did not sag. He looked just then as if he had come from the hands of a very good valet.

"Eh, Joan," he called when he saw the flash of her bare knees. "What now? Where are you going in such haste?"

Joan threw herself against him, clasping his legs in her arms, and gasped, "You won't let him drown you, will you?" she begged.