Col. Rossiter at the time was thirty-five or more, and had never evinced the slightest interest in any one of the opposite sex. Indeed, he rather shunned the society of ladies and was looked upon, by them as a very peculiar and misanthropical person. He belonged to a good family, was an orphan and rich, and had no one’s wishes to consult but his own; and so, after that first call at Peggy’s establishment, when Mary entertained and waited upon him, it was remarked that he seemed very fond of root beer, and that it took him some time to drink it, for his chestnut mare was often tied before the shop door for half an hour or more, while he sat in the little room where Mary was busy with the shoes she stitched, or _closed_, as they called it, for the large shop near by. At last the gossip reached Mrs. Hetherton, whose guest the colonel was, and who felt it her duty to remonstrate seriously with the gentleman. The colonel listened to her in a dazed kind of way, until she said, although no harm would come to _him_, he certainly could not wish to damage the girl’s good name by attentions which were not honorable. Then he roused up, and without a word of reply, started for town, and entering Peggy’s shop, strode on to the back room, where Mary sat with her gingham apron on and her hands besmeared with the shoemaker’s wax she was obliged to use in her work. They were, nevertheless, very pretty hands, small, and white, and dimpled, and the colonel took them both between his own, and before the astonished girl knew what he was about, he asked her to be his wife, and told her how happy he would make her, provided she would forsake all her family connections and cleave only unto him. “I do not mean that you are never to see them,” he said, “but anything like intimacy would be very undesirable, for there would be a great difference between your position as my wife and theirs, and——” He did not finish the sentence, for Mary had disengaged her hands from his by this time, and he always insisted that she struck at him, as she rose from her seat and, with flashing eyes, looked him straight in the face, while she said: “Thank you, Col. Rossiter. You have said enough for me to understand you fully. You may be proud, but I am prouder still, and I decline your offer, which, the way you made it, was more an insult than an honor. I know I am poor, and that father is only a day laborer, but a better, truer, worthier man never lived, and I hate you for thinking to make me ashamed of him; while his wife, though not my mother, has always been kind to me, and I will never turn my back upon her, never! The man who marries me will marry my family too, or at least, will recognize them. I wish you good-morning, sir,” and she walked from the room with all the hauteur of an offended duchess, leaving the crest-fallen colonel alone, and very much bewildered and uncertain as to what had happened.