They found Grandma Ferguson weeding her flower borders in front of her house, with her cap and collar off, and her spotted calico dress open at the throat. “It is too hot to be harnessed up with fixin’s,” she said, and when Reinette, who did not like the looks of her neck, suggested that a collar or ruffle did not greatly add to one’s discomfort in warm weather and gave a finish to one’s dress, she replied: “Law, child, it don’t matter an atom what I wear. Everybody knows Peggy Ferguson.” Reinette gave a little deprecating shrug and then delivered her invitation, which was accepted at once, grandma saying, “She could come early so as to have a good visit before dinner, though she presumed Mary and the gals wouldn’t be there till the last minit.” 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.