“Mark’s favorite,” he said, lifting up a volume of Schiller; and turning to the fly-leaf he read, “Helen Lennox, from Cousin Morris,” just as Katy returned with her sister, whom she presented to the stranger.
Helen was prepared to like him because Katy did, and her first thought was that he was very fine looking; but when she met his cold, proud eyes, and knew how closely he was scrutinizing her, there arose in her heart a feeling of dislike which she could never wholly conquer. He was very polite to her, but something in his manner annoyed and irritated her, it was so cool, so condescending, as if he endured her merely because she was Katy’s sister, nothing more.
“Rather pretty, more character than Katy, but odd and self-willed, with no kind of style,” was Wilford’s running comment on Helen as he took her in from the plain arrangement of her dark hair to the fit of her French calico and the cut of her linen collar.
Fashionable dress would improve her very much, he thought, turning with a feeling of relief to Katy, whom nothing could disfigure, and who was now watching the door eagerly for the entrance of her mother. That lady had spent a good deal of time at her toilet, and she came in at last, flurried, fidgety, and very red, both from exercise and the bright-hued ribbons streaming from her cap and sadly at variance with the color of the dress. Wilford noticed the discrepancy at once, and noticed too how little style there was about the nervous woman greeting him so deferentially, and evidently regarding him as something infinitely superior to herself. Wilford had looked with indifference on Helen, but it would take a stronger word to express his opinion of the mother. Morris, who remained to dinner, was in the parlor now, and in his presence Wilford felt more at ease, more as if he had found an affinity. Uncle Ephraim was not there, having eaten his bowl of milk and gone back to his stone wall, so that upon Morris devolved the duties of host, and he courteously led the way to the little dining-room, where the table was loaded with the good things Aunt Hannah had prepared, burning and browning her wrinkled face, which nevertheless smiled pleasantly upon the stranger presented as Mr. Cameron.
About Aunt Hannah there was something naturally lady-like, and Wilford recognized it at once; but when it came to Aunt Betsy, of whom he had never heard, he felt for a moment as if by being there in such promiscuous company he had somehow fallen from the Camerons’ high estate. By way of pleasing the girls and doing honor to their guest, Aunt Betsy had donned her very best attire, wearing the slate-colored pongee dress, bought twenty years before, and actually sporting a set of Helen’s cast-off hoops, which being too large for the dimensions of her scanty skirt, gave her anything but the graceful appearance she intended.
“Oh, auntie!” was Katy’s involuntary exclamation, while Helen bit her lip with vexation, for the hoop had been an afterthought to Aunt Betsy just before going in to dinner.
But the good old lady never dreamed of shocking anyone with her attempts at fashion; and curtsying very low to Mr. Cameron, she hoped for a better acquaintance, and then took her seat at the table, just where each movement could be distinctly seen by Wilford, scanning her so intently as scarcely to hear the reverent words with which Morris asked a blessing upon themselves and the food so abundantly prepared. They could hardly have gotten through that first dinner without Morris, who adroitly led the conversation into channels which he knew would interest Mr. Cameron, and divert his mind from what was passing around him, and so the dinner proceeded quietly enough, Wilford discovering, ere its close, that Mrs. Lennox had really some pretensions to a lady, while Helen’s dress and collar ceased to be obnoxious, as he watched the play of her fine features and saw her eyes kindle as she took a modest part in the conversation when it turned on books and literature.
Meanwhile Katy kept very silent, but when, after dinner was over and Morris was gone, she went with Wilford down to the shore of the pond, her tongue was loosed, and he found again the little fairy who had so bewitched him a few weeks before. And yet there was a load upon his heart, a shadow upon his brow, for he knew now that between Katy’s family and his there was a social gulf which never could be crossed by either party. He might bear Katy over, it was true, but would she not look longingly back to her humble home, and might he not sometimes be greatly chagrined by the sudden appearing of some one of this low-bred family who did not seem to realize how ignorant they were, or how far below him in the social scale? Poor Wilford! he winced and shivered when he thought of Aunt Betsy, in her antiquated pongee, and remembered that she was a near relative of the little maiden sporting so playfully around him, stealing his heart away in spite of his family pride, and making him more deeply in love than ever. It was very pleasant down by the pond, and Wilford kept Katy there until the sun was going down and they heard in the distance the tinkle of a bell as the deacon’s cows plodded slowly homeward. Supper was waiting for them, and with his appetite sharpened by his walk, Wilford found no cause of complaint against Aunt Hannah’s viands, though he smiled mentally as he accepted the piece of apple pie Aunt Betsy offered him, saying, by way of recommendation, that “she made the crust but Catherine peeled and sliced the apples.”
The deacon had not returned from his work, and Wilford did not see him until he came suddenly upon him, seated in the wood-shed door, resting after the labor of the day. “The young man was welcome to Silverton,” he said, “but he must excuse him from visitin’ much that night, for the cows was to milk and the chores to do, as he never kep’ no boy.” The “chores” were done at last, just as the clock pointed to half-past eight, the hour for family worship. Unaccustomed as Wilford was to such things, he felt the influence of the deacon’s voice as he read from the word of God, and involuntarily found himself kneeling when Katy knelt, noticing the deacon’s grammar it is true, but still listening patiently to the lengthy prayer, which included him together with the rest of mankind.
There was no chance of seeing Katy alone, that night, and so full two hours before his usual custom Wilford retired to the little room to which the deacon conducted him, saying, as he put down the lamp, “You’ll find it pretty snug quarters, I guess, for such a close, muggy night as this.”