The days flew by as days will fly whether they are bright with diamonds or veiled in gray. Granny became rested, Joan was spoiled, and even Rebecca Mary began to feel the effect of too much attention. There had been a time when Rebecca Mary had thought that it would be perfect bliss to have just one man devoted to her, but now that she had four she found that she never had a minute to herself. Whether she wanted to or not she had to play tennis with Wallie Marshall, walk with George Barton, ride the farmhorses with Peter Simmons, recite French verbs to Frederick Befort or play accompaniments for Major Martingale, who still liked to hear the young people sing the old war songs. And you know how it is yourself if you have just had a generous portion of plum pudding you don't care to see another plum pudding no matter how holly wreathed it is. In spite of all the admiration and attention which were falling on Rebecca Mary like an April shower she was not satisfied; she was conscious of a vague longing for something, she didn't know what, for she did not analyze the faint discontent which annoyed her. She only knew that she wanted something which she did not have and she told herself that she was an ungrateful beast to ask more of her talisman when already the clover leaf had given her so much.

It was the same way with Granny, who had looked on Riverside when she arrived as a haven of rest, but she soon was as surfeited with rest as Rebecca Mary was with admiration. Granny had so little to occupy her mind that she just had to think of old Peter Simmons, to wonder uneasily what he was doing, to ask herself if he were thinking of her instead of his factory, if he had received her letter, and a thousand other things all of which had old Peter Simmons for their subject. Twice Major Martingale found her with her hand on the door of the room which he used as an office and which held the only telephone at Riverside and to which he alone had the key.

"Do you wish to leave any message with me?" he asked each time.

"If I said what I wanted to say I expect the message would be left with you," Granny said sadly. "You never would send it on. How much longer will it be before we may leave, Major Martingale?"

"You know as much about it as I do." Major Martingale was discouraged just then and was sadly in need of a word of encouragement.

But Granny hadn't enough encouragement for herself; she couldn't spare a word for any man. "The twenty-second is a week from yesterday," she said significantly. "I told you, you know, that we wouldn't stay a minute after the twentieth," she added in case he had missed the significance.

"I hope none of us will have to stay later than the twentieth, but you should have thought of that before you came."

"Came!" Granny was indignant. "I didn't come!"

"Well, I didn't bring you!" He was too exasperated to remember the courtesy which is ever due a lady.

"A perfect bear, my dear," Granny told Rebecca Mary five minutes later. "If he has his way we'll be here for Thanksgiving," she prophesied gloomily.

Rebecca Mary sat up on the chaise longue where she had hidden herself for a quiet half hour and stared at her. "Thanksgiving! We can't stay that long. Why, school begins the first of September!" The beginning of school was an event so large in the life of Rebecca Mary that everything should give away to it. Everything always had.

"Major Martingale wouldn't care for that. It isn't our wishes nor our convenience he is thinking of. If we could do anything to help him I shouldn't say a word. If we even knew anything about this wonderful experiment it would be different, but we might as well be in New York or Bombay for all we know of what is going on in that shop. We couldn't tell anything intelligent enough for even a German to understand. I'm beginning to feel that the whole thing is nonsense, Rebecca Mary, and so I don't think that we have to stay. And I'm worried for fear Edith won't order things the way I want them for my golden wedding. I never meant to stay away so long. I'm sorry we ever started for Seven Pines. But we can go back. We'll run away from here."

"But how can we run away from Riverside?" It didn't sound as easy to Rebecca Mary as it had to Granny.

"I'll find a way." Granny was not to be daunted. "I'll have to. I'm tired being a prisoner."

"So am I." Joan dropped her doll and came to tell them that she, too, was ready to leave Riverside. "I'd like to go somewhere else."

"I'm sorry now," went on Granny, "that I didn't stay at home and let old Peter Simmons ask his tormenting question and take the consequences."

"I'm not!" Indeed, Rebecca Mary wasn't. She had made far too many payments on her memory insurance policy ever to regret the past few weeks. "You see, we've helped here," she explained when Granny and Joan had cried, "You're not!" "The boys say we've been an inspiration to them, that they have worked a lot better because we were here to cheer them up."

"They would have worked a lot faster if we hadn't been here." There was a dry tone to Granny's soft voice which sent the ready color into Rebecca Mary's cheeks. "I've no doubt Joan and I have furnished lots of inspiration. It is pleasant to think so, isn't it, Joan?"

Joan looked doubtful. "Is it the same as being a nuisance? Mrs. Erickson said we were all nuisances, but I was the biggest. But she never said we were inspirations."

"Let her complain to Major Martingale. Is that only two o'clock?" as the old clock called to them from the hall. "How many hours are there left until bedtime?" There was no doubt that Granny was losing patience.

It was a warm sultry day, the sort of a July day which tries the disposition in normal conditions, and by evening every one was more or less on edge. It showed in the increased politeness with which they spoke and in the silence which fell over them as they sat on the terrace under the stars and tried to think that there was a breeze blowing up from the river. Joan had gone to bed most reluctantly, and her father was sitting beside Rebecca Mary on the broad balustrade. Peter sat on the other side so that they made a sandwich of her. And in front of her lounged Wallie in a steamer chair reciting nonsense rhymes to which she scarcely listened, and not a yard from Wallie was George Barton singing sentimental verses under his breath as he touched the strings of a ukelele.

Not so many days had passed since Rebecca Mary would have thought that it would be heaven for a girl to sit on the terrace balustrade of a beautiful old country place with a Luxembourg count on one side of her and a croix de guerre man on the other while two very likable young men were in front of her, but now she was only vaguely conscious that they were not what she wanted at all. She didn't want any more plum pudding. She wished irritably that they wouldn't sit so close to her. She wanted all the air she could get. And her wandering thoughts led her back to where she would be if she were not at Riverside and that brought her to Cousin Susan and the mysterious talisman and to—Richard Cabot. When her thoughts reached Richard they loitered there with a strange little feeling of satisfaction. She knew that Richard would never have let her remain so uncomfortable on a hot July night. Richard would have taken her for a swift ride in his big car to some cool place where ice tinkled in tall glasses. Rebecca Mary was not exactly fair for it was not the fault of Peter nor Wallie nor George nor even Frederick Befort that she was not flying over the country road with them. But Rebecca Mary did not want to be fair. She just wished that Richard were there—she wished——

She startled Peter and Frederick Befort and offended Wallie and George by jumping to her feet in the middle of Wallie's funniest poem and the most sentimental of George's songs. But before she could utter a word of explanation or apology there came the sound of voices and another sound, sharp and clear like a trumpet. It woke Granny, who was half asleep in her chair.

"God bless my soul!" she exclaimed, and she sat up with a bewildered, almost a frightened, expression on her face. "No one blows his nose like that but old Peter Simmons. He must have come for me. Run, Peter!" She was in a panic. "And tell him to stay in the road. Major Martingale will lock him up if he comes in."