Their first call was upon Mr. Beresford, who came out and stood by Reinette’s horse as he talked to her, marveling at the change in this sparkling, brilliant creature, so different from the tear-stained swollen-eyed girl he had seen in the morning. She told him of her plans for improvements, which she meant to begin immediately, and which Phil had said would cost at least two thousand dollars, but that did not matter. When she wanted a thing, she wanted it, and would Mr. Beresford give her the money at once, as she had only two or three hundred dollars in her purse at home. She talked as if gold grew on bushes, and Mr. Beresford listened to her aghast, for unless he advanced it himself, there were not two thousand dollars for her in his possession. The repairs at Hetherton Place had already cost enormously, and there were still debts waiting to be paid. Mr. Hetherton’s death would of course retard matters a little, but it was impossible to refuse the eager, winsome girl, whose eyes looked so straight into his own, and he promised to give her what she asked for, and said he had already written to Paris to Messrs. Polignie & Co., who he believed had charge of her father’s foreign business, adding that he should like the papers as soon as possible. Reinette said he should have them the next day, and added: “I, too, am going to write to Messrs. Polignie, to inquire for my old nurse, Christine Bodine. She knew mother, and I mean to find her if she is alive. “Not that it matters much, as there is no doubt that my mother was Margaret Ferguson,” she said to Phil, as they rode off, “and I am getting quite reconciled to it now that I know you. Would you mind,” and she dropped her voice a little, “would you mind showing me the chimneys and _cellar_ walls our grandfather built? and the beer shop where mother sewed the pieces of cloth together, and those shoes and things?” Phil could not show her the chimneys John Ferguson had built, for though there were those in the town who often pointed them out when Mrs. Rossiter, his daughter drove by in her handsome carriage, _he_ didn’t know where they were, but he could show her the beer shop, as she termed it, though it bore no traces now of what it used to be. It was long and low, like many of the old New England houses, but it looked deliciously cool and pleasant under the tall elms, with its plats of grass and its sweet, old-fashioned flowers in full bloom. Grandma Ferguson, too, in her clean calico dress and white apron, with her hair combed smoothly back, made a different picture from what she did in the morning, with her wide ribbons and purple gloves. She was delighted to see them, and took Reinette all over the house, from the parlor where she said Paul Rossiter and Fred Hetherton had courted their wives, to the room where Reinette’s mother used to sleep when she was a girl, and where the high-post bed she occupied, and the chair she used to sit in, were still standing.