“Because the thing itself seems queer, I suppose.”

“You are not sorry about it, are you?  You almost act so.”

“Oh, no, I’m not sorry, but I can’t seem to realize it yet.”

“Well, I can, now I’ve had a little chance to get used to it.  I can realize that it means a new tennis suit for me, unlimited pairs of shoes, horses and carriages and perhaps my trip to Canada with the Bowmans.”

“Rex, don’t go on in that strain with the man still unburied.  If you only knew how it sounds.”

Reginald looked a little abashed, and as they reached a fork in the road just then, announced that he was going up in the town to see his friend Charlie Minturn.

“Don’t tell him about this,” Roy begged.

“What do you take me for?” returned Rex in his most dignified manner.  He strode on up the hill, his head thrown back, his chin the least bit elevated in the air.

“I’m afraid for Reggie,” murmured Roy as he kept on toward the Pellery.  “Poverty didn’t suit him at all, but it seems to me riches are going to suit him too well.”

The girls were hulling the strawberries on the side porch when he reached the house.

“Where’s mother?” he asked as he came up and sat down at their feet.

“Gone to market,” replied Eva.

“Where have you and Rex been?” inquired Jess.  “I saw you crossing the bridge together.  I thought the Crawfords were away.  There’s nobody else you’d be likely to go and see over in Burdock.”

“There’s Mr. Tyler,” replied Roy.  “He asked me to go up and see him to-day, but I was too late.  He’s dead.”

“Dead!  Oh, Roy!”

Both girls uttered the exclamation.  Death almost always horrifies.  They had Roy tell them in detail all about the talk he had had with the miser the previous afternoon.  But he said nothing about the will.  He thought his mother ought to know first.

“There come mother and Rex now!” exclaimed Jess presently.

“I suppose he’s told her,” thought Roy.

This was the case.  There was a flush in Mrs. Pell’s cheeks as she came up, and Rex exclaimed as soon as he was within speaking distance:  “Mother knows.  Have you told the girls yet, Roy?”

A look of annoyance crossed Mrs. Pell’s face, but before either she or Roy could say anything, Jess sprang to her feet, nearly upsetting the bowl of strawberries in the act.

“Told you what?  There’s been an air of mystery about you ever since you left the creek yesterday afternoon.”

“Of course there has,” exclaimed Rex exuberantly.  “And it’s something worth being mysterious about, eh, brub?  What should you say, sisters mine, if I should tell you that the magic wand of fortune has been waved over the Pellery, which will transform yonder sober fowls into gallant steeds, these homely pups into expensive hounds of the hunt, and—­”

“Reginald.”

Rex always knew he had gone too far when his mother spoke like that.  He ceased abruptly and dashed into the house, as if to cut himself off from temptation to transgress further.  The next moment they heard him whistling a comic opera air up in his room.