“Oh, thank you, I shall be most happy, if it will not trouble you too much,” and Irene’s face was beaming with a smile which would have stirred any man, it was so glad and winsome and frank. “Come about eleven,” she said, “that is the best part of the day.”
“All right,” Rex answered, rising to go, while Irene did not try to detain him. Her hopes were high and her spirits, too, and there was no sign of languor or weakness about her as she moved around the house singing snatches of old love songs, rallying Rena for feeling lonesome with Tom gone, and saying amiable things to all of us.
The next morning at the hour named Rex appeared, looking bright and almost hilarious for him. He had made up his mind that when alone in the shadow of the pines near Nannie’s well it would be easy to lead up to the will by speaking of Nannie and Sandy McPherson, and he would do it. There was no use in playing the coward any longer. He would be a man. Anybody would be proud of a wife like Irene. He was very loverlike in his attentions, offering her his arm on the way to the grove, and fanning her with his hat after they reached it.
“What a quiet, restful place this is,” Irene said, leaning against a tree which grew behind the bench on which she was seated. “Pity so much superstition should linger around the spot on account of poor Nannie, who must have been a little unsettled in her mind.”
She was taking the initiative and Rex kept silent and let her go on till she said, “I am not at all superstitious and have no faith in the well; and yet do you know I have heard so much about it that I really want to look in it myself. Do you think me very foolish? Rena tried it with Tom. Did you know it?”
She turned her eyes upon Rex, who answered in some surprise, “Tom and Rena tried it! No, I did not know it; and did that lead to their engagement?”
“Oh, no,” Irene replied. “That was bound to come without the help of the well. They did it for a joke, just as we shall, for you will try first, won’t you? The day is very propitious, and it is near the time when the spectre appears.”
“I!” Rex gasped, “I look in the well? What for?”
“Oh, to please me,” Irene said, and Rex continued, “But I have no faith in it.”
“Neither have I,” Irene replied. “It is all foolishness, but I feel like being foolish to-day and having a lark, just as I did when I ate the salt at school. Rena told you about it. Let’s try it. Tom looked in the well to please Rena. You will do as much for me. Won’t you?”