She was so young, and very pretty and plain in her dress, and looked so good and trusty that her heart warmed toward her. References were nothing to her, and turning to her husband she said, in a low tone: “Oh, Frederick, I like her so much. I am sure she will suit. Let us take her.” But Frederick demurred, urging that she had no style, no appearance of a maid. “But she is good, I am sure, and I want her,” the young wife pleaded, and Christine was retained, and entered upon her duties the next day. How peaceful, and happy, and innocent those first few months spent in Mrs. Hetherton’s service seemed to Christine now as she looked back upon them, and how sweet, and kind, and patient her mistress had always been with her, treating her more as an equal and a friend than as a servant, and thereby frequently calling down upon herself sharp reproofs from her husband, who did not approve of her familiarity with a maid. It showed at once a low-born taste, he said, and he wished his wife to conquer all such feelings, and, forgetting the past, remember that she was now Mrs. Frederick Hetherton, of Paris. But Margaret could not forget the past, or cease to pine for the dear ones at home, the plain, old-fashioned mother, whose ways she knew were homespun in the extreme, and not at all like the elegant manners of her proud husband, but who, nevertheless, was her mother, for whom she cried every day of her life. Laying her head on the lap of her faithful Christine she would sob out her homesickness, and talk by the hour of Merrivale and its people, until Christine knew every rock and crag, and winding brook in the pleasant New England town, and knew pretty well what the Fergusons were, and how they stood in Merrivale.