Reinette gave another expressive shrug, and drove next to her Aunt Lydia’s, where she found that lady seated in the parlor with a tired look on her face as if doing nothing did not agree with her, while Anna was drumming the old worn-out piano which, having been second-hand when it was bought, was something dreadful to hear.
“Oh, Phil, you here?” she said turning on the musicstool. “I was going by and by to see the girls. I hope they are well. Who was that dandyish-looking old man with them, sitting up as straight as a ramrod, with eyeglasses on his nose? Have they picked up a beau somewhere?”
Phil explained that the dandyish-looking old man was his father’s cousin, Major Lord Seymour Rossiter, from New York, where he had for twenty years occupied the same rooms at the same hotel.
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard of him; rich as a Jew, and an old bach,” Anna said. “Yes, I’ll come to dinner, Queenie, and mother too, I suppose, but I’ve no idea you’ll get father there—he doesn’t like visiting much.”
In her heart Reinette cared but little whether her uncle came or not. His presence would add nothing to her dinner; but something in Anna’s manner awoke within her a spirit of opposition, and sent her to the grocery where her Uncle Tom sold codfish, and molasses, and eggs, and where she found him in his shirt sleeves, seated upon a barrel outside the door, smoking a tobacco pipe. He did not get up, nor stop his smoking, except as he was obliged to take his pipe from his mouth while he talked to Reinette, who gave him the invitation, and urged his acceptance as warmly as if the success of her dinner depended upon it.
“He was much obliged to her,” he said but he didn’t think he should go. He wasn’t used to the quality, and hadn’t eaten a meal of victuals outside his own house in years except at Thanksgivin’ time when he had to go to his mother’s.
“And that is just the reason you will come to-morrow,” Queenie said, coaxingly. “It is my first family party, and you will not be so uncivil as to refuse. I shall expect you without fail,” and with a smile and flash of her eyes, which stirred even staid Tom Ferguson a little, Reinette drove away, saying to Phil, who was going to ride home with her and then walk back to the Knoll: “I hope he will come, for I could see that Anna did not wish him to. Such airs as she has taken on since she split up that sign and quit the business, as she terms it! Does she suppose it is what one does which makes a lady? Oh, Phil, why is there such a difference between people of the same blood? There’s your mother, as cultivated and refined as if she had been born a princess, and there’s Anna and grandma, and Uncle Tom. Is it American democracy? If so, I am afraid I don’t like it;” and, leaning back in the carriage, Queenie looked very sober, while Phil said good-humoredly:
“In rebellion against the Fergusons again, I see. It will never do to go against your family; blood is blood, and there’s no getting rid of it or of us.”
“I have no wish to be rid of you, but I may as well confess it, I do wish mother had been somebody besides a Ferguson,” Reinette replied; then added, laughingly: “Don’t think me a monster—I can’t help the feeling; it was born in me, and father fostered it; but I am trying to overcome it, you see, for haven’t I invited them all to dinner? You must come early, Phil—very early, so as to help me through.”
Phil promised, and as they had reached Hetherton Place by this time, and it was beginning to grow dark, he bade her good-night, and walked rapidly back to the Knoll.