Rex began to feel damp again as he had the night before, but he closed his book and said:
“You mean Miss Burdick?”
“Certainly. Whom should I mean?” Mr. McPherson replied. “The other one! What is her name?”
“Rena,” Rex said, and he went on: “Yes, Miss Rena is a nice little girl, with wonderful eyes like Nannie’s, but she can’t hold a candle to Irene. Didn’t like Glasgow, and told me so, but you ought to hear the other one talk about Scotland and what she saw there. You’ll have a chance to-morrow, for she is coming to dinner.”
“Oh,” and Rex felt the cold chills run down his back. “She is not coming alone?”
“Alone, no! I have asked Rena and that Miss Bennett, who seems a sensible woman and does not talk. That will make six—just enough for the small round table which I will have laid in the breakfast-room as more cozy than the big dining-room. As Irene is the guest of honor I naturally must take her in to dinner, and you and Mr. Giles will suit yourselves with the other two.”
Colin was full of his dinner-party, asking Reginald which he supposed would suit Irene most, green turtle soup or ox-tail, and failing to gain any information from him he hurried away to consult his housekeeper, Mrs. Fry, as to what he ought to have and how it should be served, deciding finally upon green turtle, his favorite soup. Rex tried to seem interested, and the next morning fortified himself with a plunge in the sea, although the waves were rolling high and the undertow carried him farther out than seemed safe to Tom, who was looking on and did not feel the need of a bath in that dangerous surf. It was enough for him that Rena was coming and he was to take her in to dinner, for so Rex had arranged it, appropriating Miss Bennett to himself with a great wrench of self-denial, but planning to have Rena on his left. The bath did him good, bracing up his nerves, and by the time he went to his room in the afternoon to dress, he was outwardly composed, though inwardly shaking like a leaf. He said to Tom, who was whistling cheerily in his dressing-room as he made his toilet:
“Do I look as if I were all in a tremble at the thought of meeting three ladies?” Rex asked, standing a moment in Tom’s door and trying to button his collar.
“Not a bit of it,” Tom answered, and Reginald continued:
“But I am. It’s lucky my trousers are so wide, or you’d see my legs wabbling around in them. I’ve tried that new fad, you know—denying things. I’ve said I hadn’t any nerves, nor any legs, nor any trousers, and couldn’t have, but, by George, I seem to have all three. Did you ever see such a fool?”