“Grandma, isn’t it just as easy to say Reinette as Rennet? Do you know what a rennet is?”
“No, what is it?” she asked, and he replied:
“It is what farmers put in milk to make cheese curd.”
“Bless the boy!” and Mrs. Ferguson laughed till the tears rolled down her fat cheeks. “Bless the boy, that’s runnet; as if I didn’t know runnet—I, that lived with a farmer three summers, and made cheese every day.”
“No matter; it is spelled rennet, and I do not believe my cousin would care to be called that. We want to please her, you know,” said Phil, and his grandmother replied:
“To be sure we do, and we must make quite a time when she fust lands here. Your mother and the gals will come home, of course.”
“Perhaps so. I shall write them about it,” said Phil, and his grandmother continued: “We must get up a percession to meet her, in your father’s carriage, and a hired hack, and our best clothes. I’ll see Lyddy Ann to-morrow about fixin’ me somethin’ to wear. Now I think on’t, Lyddy Ann talks of sellin’ out her business—so she told me this afternoon. Did you know it?”
“I knew some one had written her on the subject, but not that she had decided to sell,” was Phil’s reply, and his grandmother said:
“She hain’t, exactly; but Anny’s puttin’ her up to it, thinkin’ she’ll be thought more on if her mother is not a dressmaker, and that sign is out of the winder. Silly critter! She gets that from the Rices, and they was nothin’ extra—I know ’em root and branch. I tell you I’m as much thought on as if I hadn’t sold gingerbread and beer; but Anny says I’m only noticed on account of the Rossiters—that folks dassent slight Miss Rossiter’s mother, and mabby that’s so.”
How dreadful her conversation was to Phil, who wondered if she had always talked in this way, and if nothing could be done to tone her down a little before Reinette came. Nothing, he finally decided, and then proceeded to tell her what changes Mr. Beresford contemplated making at Hetherton Place, and what Mr. Hetherton had written of his daughter’s tastes with reference to cats, and asked if she could help him there.