“’Tain’t no use, Mollie,” he would say. “You can’t make a whistle of a pig’s tail, and you can’t make a gentleman of me. My hard old hands have worked too long in stone and mortar to be cramped up in gloves or to handle them wide forks of yourn. I shall allus eat with my knife; it comes nateral-like and easy, and shall drink my tea in my sasser. But I like to see you go through with the jimcracks, and think you orter, if the colonel wants you to. You allus had the makin’ of a lady, even when your hands, where the diamonds is now, was cut and soiled with hard waxed ends, and nobody’ll think the wus of you, unless it’s some low-minded, jealous person who, when they see you in your best silk gownd may say how you was once poor as you could be, and closed nigger shoes for a livin’. That’s human nater, and don’t amount to nothin’. But, Mollie, though you can’t lift Peggy nor me, there’s your sister Margaret growin’ up as pretty and smart a gal as there is in Merrivale. You can give her a hist if you will, and mebby she’ll make as good a match as you. She’s the prettiest creetur I ever see.” And in this John Ferguson was right, for Margaret was even more beautiful than her sister Mary. To the same dazzling purity of complexion, and large, lustrous blue eyes, she added a sweetness of expression and a softness of manner and speech unusual in one who had seen so little of the world. Mrs. Rossiter, who was allowed to do whatever she pleased, acted upon her father’s suggestion and had her sister often with her, and took her to Boston for a winter, and to Saratoga for a season, and it was in the Rossiter carriage that Frederick Hetherton first remarked the fresh, lovely young face which was to be his destiny. He might, and probably had, seen it before in church, or in the shop where he occasionally went for beer, but it had never struck him just as it did, when, framed in the pretty bonnet, with the blue ribbons vieing with the deeper, clearer blue of the large bright eyes which flashed a smile on him as he involuntarily lifted his hat. Fred Hetherton was very fond of pretty faces, and it was whispered that he did not always follow them for good, and there were rumors afloat of large sums of money paid by his father for some of his love affairs, but, however that might be, his intentions were always strictly honorable with regard to Margaret Ferguson. At first his pride rebelled a little, for he was quite as proud as any of the Hethertons, and he shrank from Aunt Peggy more than Mr. Rossiter had done. But Margaret’s beauty overcame every scruple at last, and when his father, who had heard something of it in town, asked him if it were true that he was running after old Ferguson’s daughter, he answered boldly, “Yes, and I intend to make her my wife.”