He sent the letter; and the answer came promptly, and hotly. Rena was very angry, and addressed him as “Mr. Thomas Giles,” instead of “Dear old Tom,” telling him to mind his business and she would mind hers. She was doing nothing out of the way. She was not going to lie, as he seemed to think, nor deceive, either. She was simply not going to blurt out to Reginald Travers, “I am the girl you are to marry.” He probably knew she was coming with her cousin, as her aunt had written about it to Mr. McPherson, and she was going to let him find out which was which. If he asked her, or any one else asked her, she would tell the truth, instead of saying, “That is for you to find out,” as she at first intended to do; and she hoped he’d be satisfied at that. As for Irene, she was to be Miss Burdick, and Rena was to be Rena. That was all. Then she went on to say that she thought old Tom might let her have a little fun, and she didn’t know whether she was glad he was to be at Oakfield or not. On the whole, she guessed she was, but he was to hold his tongue. If questions were put to him he wasn’t to lie; she could never respect him if he did; but he must get out of it some way, and if there were blame she’d take it all upon herself and tell Mr. Travers it was one of her larks.
“He is not likely to fancy me, a little, dark, scrawny thing, when there is Irene in all her blonde beauty and style,” she wrote, “and if he happens to fancy her, as I hope he will, the only wrong I can see is that he will think he is getting fifty thousand dollars with her, and may be disappointed when he finds he isn’t; but if he is all you say he is, the soul of honor, and all that, and his love for Irene rises above his love of money, I mean to give him my share, ten thousand dollars. You can’t say that it is not fair, or that I am such a little cat as your letter implied. I cried over it and had an awful headache, and I shall be very cool to you when I first meet you in Oakfield.
“Rena.”
“P. S.—We are going next week Wednesday.”
When Tom read this letter he decided at once to go to Oakfield the following Tuesday, and wrote to Reginald to that effect. Reginald met him at the station; and, grasping both his hands, said to him: “I am so glad you have come, more glad than you can guess.”
He had never shown so much feeling before, and Tom looked at him curiously, thinking all the time of Rena, who was to arrive the next day. He knew Reginald well enough to know he would not speak of her at present, perhaps not at all in connection with the will; but in some way he must let it be known that she was his cousin before she came. There could be no betrayal of confidence in that. Consequently when they were at dinner that night, he said, very indifferently, “Do you know a Mrs. Parks, who takes boarders?”
Reginald at once began to get nervous, and his hands shook as he replied, “I know there is such a woman. What of her?”
“Nothing much,” Tom answered. “Perhaps you may remember having heard me speak of my cousin Rena when we were in college. She lived with my mother when she was a little girl.”
“Oh, yes. I remember perfectly, but I don’t recall her last name,” Reginald said.
“Burdick,” Tom replied, with a sidelong look at his friend, who dropped his knife and fork suddenly upon his plate as he repeated, “Burdick! That is not a common name. I have heard it before.”