Mr. Beresford looked after him a moment, and then, remembering what he had said of Philip, decided to defer his visit to Hetherton Place until he had seen the young man. Two hours later, the Boston train stopped at the station, and Phil Rossiter came up the long hill at his usual rapid, swinging gait, attracting a good deal of attention in his handsome yachting-dress, which became him so well. The first person to accost him was his aunt, Mrs. Ferguson, who insisted upon his stopping for a moment, as she had a favor to ask of him. Phil was the best natured fellow in the world, and accustomed to have favors asked of him, but he was tired, and hot, and in a hurry to reach the quiet and coolness of his own home, which was far pleasanter, and more suited to his taste than the close, stuffy apartment into which Mrs. Ferguson led him, and where his cousin sat working on a customer’s dress. Anna Ferguson, who had been called for her mother, but had long ago discarded Lydia as too old-fashioned, and adopted the name of Anna, was eighteen, and a blue-eyed, yellow-haired blonde, who would have been very pretty but for the constant smirk about her mouth, and the affected air she always assumed in the presence of her superiors. Even with Phil she was never quite at her ease, and she began at once to apologize for her hair, which was in crimping-pins, and for her appearance generally. “Ma never ought to have asked you into the work-room, and me in such a plight,” she said. But Phil assured her that he did not mind the work-room, and did not care for crimping-pins—he’d seen bushels of them, he presumed. But what did his aunt want? he was in something of a hurry to get home, as his father was expecting him, and would wonder at his delay. Phil knew he was stretching the truth a little, for it was not at all likely his father would give him a thought until he saw him, but any excuse would answer to get away from the Fergusons, with whom at heart he had little sympathy. What Mrs. Ferguson wanted was to know if he had ever heard his mother or sisters speak of a dressmaker at Martha’s Vineyard, a Miss Margery La Rue, who was a Frenchwoman, and who had written to Mrs. Ferguson, asking if she wished to sell out her business, and if it would pay for a first-class dressmaker to come to Merrivale. “Here’s her letter, read it for yourself if you can,” Mrs. Ferguson said. “Anny and me found it hard work to make it out, the writing is so finefied.” Philip took the letter, which was written in that fine, peculiar hand common to the French, and which was a little difficult at first to decipher. But the language was in good English and well expressed, and the writer, Miss Margery La Rue, late from Paris, wished to know if there was an opening for a dressmaker in Merrivale, and if Mrs. Ferguson wished to sell out, as Miss La Rue had been told she did.