“But how came you so intimate with her, and she only a dressmaker?” Anna asked.
“It is too long a story to tell you now,” Reinette replied. “I have known her since I was a child. I never thought anything about her being a dressmaker. She is educated, and refined, and good, and true, with not a single low instinct in her nature, and that, I think, is what constitutes a lady rather than money or what one does for a living.”
Anna shrugged her shoulders incredulously. In her own estimation she was refined and educated, and yet she was not recognized as a lady by those to whose notice she aspired; but she made no reply, and Reinette continued:
“I shall take steps at once to ascertain if this Miss La Rue you speak of is my Margery, and if she is, and it is merely a matter of money which keeps her from accepting your mother’s offer, I think I can make two people happy; you first, if taking that sign from your window will do it, and myself, by bringing her here where I can see her every day, if I wish to.”
Before Anna could reply, Grandma Ferguson came in, puffing with exercise, and apologizing for her long absence.
“I didn’t mean to be gone more’n a minit,” she said, “but Mrs. Jerry offered to show me all over the house, and I kinder wanted to see it, as it’s my fust chance. The last, and I may say the only time I was ever here, I was turned out o’ door afore I could look about me.”
“Turned out of doors! For what, and by whom?” Reinette asked, in astonishment, and grandma replied:
“Turned out by your Granther Hetherton, because I came over to tell him his son Fred had run off with your mother. Why, Rennet, child, what’s the matter! you are white as a sheet,” she continued, as with a long gasp for breath Reinette clasped both hands to her forehead and leaned helplessly back in her chair.
“It’s nothing,” she said faintly, “only the pain in my head has come back again. What you told me was so dreadful—my mother ran off with my father! What for? Why, were they not married at home? Was there any reason?”
“Reason? No,” grandma returned. “There was a nice big room back of the shop, and if it was good enough for Paul Rossiter to be married in, and for your father to spark your mother in, as he did many a time, it was good enough for him to be married in. But no; he was afeard, mabby, that he should have to notice some of us, who he thought no more on than so much dirt, and so he ran off with her to New York and got married, and then started for Europe, and I’ve never seen her sence. But surely, Rennet you must have known something about it, though Anny here, and Phil too—that’s Miss Rossiter’s son—will have it that you never heard of us till yesterday, and so never knew who your mother was. Is that so?”