Helen was prepared to like him just because Katy did, and her first thought was that he was splendid-looking, but when she met fully his cold glance and knew how closely he was scrutinizing her, there arose in her heart a feeling of dislike for Wilford Cameron, which she could never wholly conquer.  He was very polite to her, but something in his manner annoyed and provoked her, it was so cool, so condescending, as if he endured her merely because she was Katy’s sister, nothing more.

“Rather pretty, more character than Katy, but odd, and self-willed, with no kind of style.”

This was Wilford’s running comment on Helen as he took her in from the plain arrangement of her dark hair to the fit of her French calico and the cut of her linen Collar.

Fashionable dress would improve her very much, he thought, turning from her 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 her 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 upon Helen, but it would take a stronger word to express his opinion of the mother.  Had he come accidentally upon her without ever having met with Katy, he would have regarded her as a plain, common country woman, who meant well if nothing more; but now, alas! with Katy in the foreground, he was weighing her in a far different balance and finding her sadly wanting.  He had not seen Aunt Hannah, nor yet Aunt Betsy, for they were in the kitchen, making the last preparations for the dinner to which Morris was to remain.  He 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, which Wilford confessed was not uninviting, with its clean floor and walls, and the table so 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 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.