“Well, set down anyway,” she said, just as Rena appeared, full of apologies as she took her seat at the table, her eyes dancing when Mrs. Parks explained that she was rather particular about her hours for meals, as things was apt to spile if they stood, and then Miss Bennett’s digester was bad and had to be reg’lar.
“I’m sorry if I have spoiled things and injured Miss Bennett’s digester. It shall not occur again,” Rena said, with a mischievous look at me which I understood.
It was fully ten minutes before Irene came down, seeming languid and dispirited, but brightening when she took the note and saw the flowers which Nixon had brought, and heard that Mr. McPherson would call in the afternoon. It was something to have Reginald write to her and she read his note two or three times but not aloud. She merely explained that the drive was postponed on account of the rain, while her manner indicated that there was more she could tell if she would. The prospect of meeting Mr. McPherson delighted her. To stand well with him might be a means of advancing her cause with Reginald. “Beauty and good dressing take with every old man,” she thought, and her toilet was faultless when, after dinner, she came out upon the piazza where I was sitting with Rena. Her gown, which fell in soft folds around her perfect figure, was black, with no color to relieve it except the roses she had pinned on the bosom of her dress.
“O Irene!” Rena exclaimed, “how lovely you look! I always like you best in black, and the roses are the color of your cheeks.”
“Thank you,” Irene said, smiling very graciously as she took her seat near us and remarked upon the beauty of the country now that the rain was over.
She was in the best of humors, and during the half hour which followed I found her intensely agreeable, as I listened to her animated descriptions of what she had seen abroad. Occasionally it occurred to me that Rena’s eyes opened very wide at some things Irene said and which seemed to me overdrawn. I did not then know that her theory was, “if you are telling anything make it interesting, if you have to add to do so.” She was interesting me very much with her adventure on the mer-de-glace, making up half of it, at least, when there was the sound of wheels coming down the road and the McPherson carriage stopped at the gate. It devolved upon me to present Mr. McPherson to the young ladies, and I must have spoken their names indistinctly, or he was more deaf than usual, for he said, “Which is Miss Burdick, and which is Miss—” he hesitated and looked at Rena.
“I am Miss Rena; she is Miss Burdick,” and she motioned toward Irene, who looked regally beautiful as she bowed and held out her hand, saying:
“Both Burdicks, both Irenes, and both very glad to meet you and thank you for your thoughtful kindness in sending your carriage for us to the station—and for the lovely flowers.”
“Hey, what?” he said, “carriage and flowers? Rex must have the credit of the flowers yesterday, but was too modest to have them presented in his name. Fine fellow—that Rex!”
He looked steadily at Irene, who blushed becomingly, while Rena seemed troubled as if she felt herself in the shadow of her brilliant cousin. If so the feeling only lasted a moment before she smiled again at something he said. This time his sharp, black eyes looked quickly at her through his gold rimmed glasses, scanning her closely. Then, putting his hand on her shoulder and turning her to the light, he said, “Excuse an old man who might be your grandfather; but, you are more like the picture in our drawing-room than your cousin, who should resemble her. Are you both related to Nannie—Nannie Wilkes, I mean, who drowned herself?”