It came to him at last that he was refused by Mary Ferguson, the girl who stitched shoes for a living, and whose stepmother made and sold root beer. “Is the girl crazy?” he asked himself, as he precipitately left the house. “Does she know what she is doing to refuse me, who would have made her lady! and she says she hates me, because I will not marry her family. Well, well, it’s my first experience at love-making, and I think it will be my last.” But it was not, for Mary Ferguson’s blue eyes had played the very mischief with the colonel’s heart-strings, and he could not give her up, and the next day he told her so in a letter of three pages, which she promptly returned to him, with the words: “The man who marries me must recognize my family.” A week went by, and then the colonel sent his love a letter of six pages, in which he capitulated generally. Not only would he recognize the family, but in proof thereof, he would buy the large stone house called the Knoll, which was at present unoccupied, and he had heard was for sale. Here they would live, in the summer at least, and during the winter she might like Boston for a change, but he would not insist upon anything which did not meet her approval. All he wanted was herself, and that he must have. This was a concession, and Mary, who, while standing by her family, had not been insensible to the good fortune offered her, surrendered, and in less than a month was Mrs. Colonel Rossiter, and mistress of the handsome stone house, where her father was always made welcome, and her stepmother treated with kindness and consideration. We have dwelt thus long upon the wooing and wedding of the colonel, because the Rossiters and Fergusons have as much to do with this story as the Hethertons, and because the marriage of Mary Ferguson was the means of bringing about another marriage, without which Reinette, our dainty little queen, could never have been the heroine of this romance. Mary would hardly have been human if her sudden elevation to riches and rank had not affected her somewhat. It did affect her to a certain extent, though the villagers, who watched her curiously, agreed that it did not turn her head, and that she fitted wonderfully well in her new place. “Acts for all the world as if she was born to that grandness, and ain’t an atom ashamed of me nuther,” Mrs. Peggy said, never once suspecting that Mrs. Rossiter, as she mingled more and more in her husband’s world, did sometimes shiver, and grow cold and faint at her old-fashioned ways and modes of speech. As for the father he enjoyed to the full seeing his daughter a lady, but laughed at her endeavors to change and polish him.