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.