Then, as her eye fell upon her muslin dress and lace cap, her thoughts took another channel. Out of respect to Reinette, who would of course be clad in the deepest mourning she could find in New York, she and her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Tom, and Anna, must at least wear black when they first met her. “Not that she cared for Fred Hetherton,” she said, “who had thought no more of her than he did of a squaw. But Margaret’s girl was different,” and in spite of Phil’s protest against the absurdity of the thing, the old lady bustled off in the hot sun to consult with Mrs. Lydia. The news of Mr. Hetherton’s death had preceded her, and she had only to plunge into business at once, and insist that a bombazine which she had never worn since she left off her widow’s weeds, and which was now much too small for her, should be let out and made longer, and fixed generally, and she talked so fast and so decidedly that Mrs. Tom, who never had any positive opinions of her own, and who liked to please her mother-in-law because of the money she was supposed to hold in store for Anna, was compelled to take her apprentice from a piece of work promised for the next day, and put her upon the bombazine which grandma had brought with her. Against mourning for herself, however, Miss Anna stoutly rebelled. She had tried the effect of the Swiss muslin the lovely lace scarf, the blush-rose and white parasol, and was not to be persuaded to abandon it, she said, for “forty dead Hethertons.” So the young lady was suffered to do as she liked, but the entire village was ransacked after shawls, and vails, and bonnets, for the two Mrs. Fergusons, who were to go up in the Rossiter carriage and appear as sorry and miserable as the deepest black could make them. Mr. Tom Ferguson, of whom scarcely anything has been said, and who was a plain, quiet, second-class grocer, and as obstinate in some matters as a mule, refused to have any thing to do with the affair. “Fred Hetherton had never spoken to or looked at him when a boy, and he shouldn’t go after him now,” he said. “He should stay at home and mind his own business, and let Phil and the women folks run the funeral.” This resolution Anna in her secret heart thought a very sensible one. If possible she was more ashamed of her father than of the sign in her mother’s window; and she would far rather that handsome stylish Phil should ride with her then her old-fashioned father, whom Reinette was sure to take for a peasant. But when the carriage came round for the mourning party Phil was not in it; nor did the coachman know where his young master was; his orders were to drive the ladies to the station, and that was all he knew, and Anna, always suspicious, felt like striking him because of the insolent look in his face when she bade him dismount from his box and open the carriage door for them.