Rena's experiment

by Mary Jane Holmes

Irene had recovered from her little pricks of conscience, and was looking quite unmoved at the portrait supposed to be her great-grandmother’s and listening to Mr. McPherson’s question as to what her maiden name was.

“My memory is so bad it has slipped my mind,” he said.

Irene had forgotten, too, if she ever knew, which was doubtful, she said, as she feared she had not been as anxious about her pedigree as she ought to be. Then, lest she should be asked more troublesome questions, she turned from the portraits to other pictures in the room, the originals of some of which she had seen abroad and about which she could talk fluently.

“Perhaps you’d like to see the rest of the house?” Mr. McPherson said to her at last, as if she were the only one present interested in it.

If she were to live there, or spend her summers there, she must be glad to see her future home, and he led the way through the rooms of the first floor, and then to the second, where he stopped at the door of a large, airy chamber, with a fine outlook over the grounds and down to the sea.

“This was Sandy’s room,” he said. “Here he sat a great deal with his two wives, both of whom died in that bed,” and he pointed to a high poster, with a lace canopy over it. “His first died on the right side, and his second on the left, he told me. Sandy died in it, too,” he added, very reverently; while Irene stood with her head a little bent and eyes cast down, like one praying, while in reality she was trying to repress a smile at the idea of Mrs. McPherson the first dying on the right side of the bed, and Mrs. McPherson the second on the left, and Sandy probably in the middle, she thought.

Tom was thinking the same and whispering it to Rena, when Colin pointed to the large bay window at the extremity of the long room.

“The window is kept sacred to Nannie,” he said. “That low rocker was bought for her, but she never sat in it, nor saw it, nor the silver tea-set on the table by it—her work-table it was to be—nor the piano crosswise in the window. He had them all brought to his room after she died, and his two wives let him keep them here. The second one, though, put a curtain across the alcove to shut them off when she felt like it. Nobody ever sat in the chair, that I know, or used the tea-set, or touched the piano. That was Sandy’s fad. He said, though, that Rex’s wife might try it. Shall I open it?”

He was standing by the spindle-legged instrument and Irene was close to him. Just what answer she would have given was prevented by Rena, who exclaimed: “No, oh, no, it would be sacrilege not to respect the dear old man’s wishes. How he must have loved poor Nannie.”

There were tears in Rena’s eyes as she followed Colin to another part of the room, while he went on: “That was Sandy’s chair over by the desk where he wrote his will and that chair by the west window was his first wife’s, and that by the south window was his second wife’s—your great-grandmother, Miss Burdick. Sit down in it and see how you look!”