About Aunt Hannah there was something naturally ladylike, and Wilford saw it; 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 Cameron's high estate. By way of pleasing the girls and doing honor to their "beau," as she called Wilford, 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 quite too large for the dimensions of her scanty skirt, gave her anything but the stylish appearance she intended.
"Oh, auntie!" was Katy's involuntary exclamation, while Helen bit her lip with vexation, for the hoop had been an after thought to Aunt Betsy just before going in to dinner.
But the good old lady never dreamed of shocking any one with her attempts at fashion; and curtseying 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 tried to divert Wilford's mind from what was passing around him. But with all his vigilance he could not prevent his hearing Aunt Betsy as, in an aside to Helen, she denounced the heavy fork she was awkwardly trying to use, first expressing her surprise at finding it by her plate instead of the smaller one to which she was accustomed.
"The land! if you didn't borry Morris' forks! I'd as soon eat with the toastin' iron," she said, in a tone of distress, but Helen's foot touching hers warned her to keep silence, which she did after that, and the dinner proceeded quietly, Wilford discovering ere its close that Mrs. Lennox, now that she was more composed, 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 still, her cheeks flushing and her eyes cast down whenever she met Wilford's gaze; but when, after dinner was over and Morris had gone, she went with him down to the shore of the pond, her tongue was loosed, and Wilford found again the little fairy who had so bewitched him a few weeks before. And yet there was a load upon his mind--a shadow made by the actual knowledge that between Katy's family and his there was a 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 the humble home, and might he not sometimes be greatly chagrined by the sudden appearing of some one of this old-bred family who did not seem to realize how ignorant they were, 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 family pride, and making him more deeply in love than ever. It was very pleasant down by the pond, and Wilford, who liked staying there better than at the house, kept Katy with him 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."