"It was a big success." Old Peter Simmons looked as if he was more than satisfied with the way the great experiment had worked. "We've given it every sort of try out and it can't go wrong. If we hadn't made sure of that I couldn't have come to your golden wedding, Kitty. I should have had to send my regrets." He winked at Rebecca Mary and tickled Joan under her chin. "Some day, Miss Wyman," he told her more soberly, "you will be proud to remember that you were a prisoner at Riverside when Befort's big idea was worked out."
"What will it do?" Joan wanted to know at once. "What can you do with my father's idea, Mr. Simmons?"
Mr. Simmons tickled her under her chin again. "That would be telling," he whispered with a great show of secrecy. "And then you wouldn't be curious any longer. There is only one way to keep people interested and that is to keep them guessing," he went on with a twinkle. "If you knew what to-morrow was going to bring you wouldn't care whether you had a to-morrow or not. You'd never want to go to bed to-night."
"I'm not going to bed to-night, anyway not until the old people do. Granny said I needn't, that I could stay up until the last minute of the golden wedding!" Joan drew herself up with proud importance. "But I'll tell my father what you said about the way to keep people interested, and I'll tell Miss Wyman, too," as if she thought old Peter Simmons wanted his recipe circulated as rapidly as possible.
Old Peter Simmons chuckled. "You may tell your father if you want to, but I rather think that Miss Wyman knows. The knowledge is born in some girls. That's what makes them such a puzzle to us men. How about it, Miss Wyman?" he said teasingly to Rebecca Mary. "You don't need to be told, do you?"
Granny's golden wedding celebration was a very informal affair although many important people came to offer their congratulations and to ask Granny where on earth she had been and to tell her how much she had been missed. Although she had been married at noon Granny had chosen to have her party in the evening, and July the twenty-second offered her a wonderful evening, cool and pleasant as a July evening can be occasionally.
Old Peter Simmons was continually leaving his place beside Granny to draw Rebecca Mary into a corner and ask her if she thought that Granny really was satisfied to have a home for old couples for her golden wedding present or if Rebecca Mary thought Granny would rather have had something more personal.