Yet from this very condition of servitude blossomed one of the purest flowers of romance that we find in the history of the early days of our country,--the story of Agnes Surriage. She was but a servant, a mere drudge, scrubbing the floor of the tavern at Marblehead, when her beauty attracted the attention of young Sir Harry Frankland, then collector of the port of Boston. Noting that she was barefooted, he gave her a crown to buy a pair of shoes; but on a subsequent visit he saw her again scrubbing and still shoeless. His question as to the disposition of his crown elicited the reply that she had bought the shoes but was keeping them "to wear to meeting;" and though there would seem to be no great wit herein, it is recorded that Frankland thought that "a reply had never been made with such charming grace." At all events, he incontinently fell heels over head in love; but his pride of family forbade marriage, and it would seem that at first his intentions toward the young girl were creditable enough, since he had her educated by the best masters in Boston, and especially instructed in religion by the Rev. Dr. Edward Holyoke, president of Harvard College. So matters went until Agnes was twenty-three; but then Frankland's passion would no longer be denied, though he had no intention of making the lowborn girl his wife. But she loved him with a love too great to balk at conventions; she felt herself his wife in heart, and she gave herself unreservedly to him. For a time they lived together in Boston; but scandal became too strong, and they went into the country, where they lived for about three years the ideal country life of that day,--a life much like that of the Virginia planter. Then they went on a visit to England; but the relatives of Frankland would have none of them, and they went to travel on the continent. After about a year of wandering they settled down at Lisbon, and were there during the terrible earthquake that visited that city on All Saints' Day, 1755. During that catastrophe Frankland was in mortal peril; and in his moments of pain and danger he vowed that, if he were saved, he would make Agnes his wife in fact as she had so long been in heart. Scarcely had the vow been recorded before Agnes was at his side, having searched for him and come in time to aid in his rescue. He did not forget his oath when the danger was passed, and the next day married her according to the rites of the Church of Rome, the ceremony being repeated according to English customs while they were on their homeward voyage. Agnes, now Lady Frankland, was on this occasion well received in England; but the hearts of the lovers--for such they still were--inclined to Boston, the scene of their first loves, and they soon crossed the ocean and took up their residence in the Clarke Mansion on Garden Street in Boston. Here they lived until 1757, when Frankland was appointed consul-general at Lisbon; but in 1763 they once more returned to the city of their early love and lived there until 1768, when they went to England, where Frankland died. Lady Frankland then returned once more to her now desolate home, though she did not live in the Clarke Mansion, but in Hopkinton, where she dwelt until the Revolution, when she once more suffered exile, this time as a Tory. She went to England, and there she harmed the romance of her life by her marriage to John Drew, a rich banker; but she died within a year, at the age of fifty-eight, and one can only regret that death did not anticipate that unfaithfulness to the memory of her first lover. Even with its luckless anticlimax, there are few stories so romantic as that of the beautiful scrubbing-girl of Marblehead, and she may well be remembered as one of the most prominent figures of colonial womanhood.