Hetty Gray | Page 9

have not met with anything so interesting for years,
and I promise myself a great deal of pleasure in the matter."
"May Hetty come to see me sometimes?" asked Mrs. Kane, humbly
curtseying her good-bye, when her visitor was seated in her pony
phaeton and gathering up the reins for flight.
"Oh, certainly, as often as you please," answered Mrs. Rushton gaily,
and touching the ponies with her whip she was soon out of sight; while
poor Mrs. Kane retreated into her cottage to have a good motherly cry
over the tiny broken shoes and the little washed-out faded frocks which
were now all that remained to her of her foster-daughter.

CHAPTER V
.
A LONELY CHILD.
Mrs. Rushton having adopted Hetty, set about extracting the utmost
amount of amusement possible from the presence of the child in her
home. She soon grew anxious to get away from her brother's
"unpleasantly sensible remarks," and Isabel's gentle excuses for her

conduct, which annoyed her even more, as they always suggested
motives for her actions which were far beyond her ken, and seemed
far-fetched, over-strained, and absurd. So she took the child to London,
where she introduced her to her friends as her latest plaything.
Hetty had frocks of all the colours of the rainbow, and learned to make
saucy speeches which entertained Mrs. Rushton's visitors.
She sat beside her new mamma as she drove in her victoria in the park;
and on Mrs. Rushton's "at home" days was noticed and petted by
fashionable ladies and gentlemen, her beauty praised openly to her face,
her pretty clothes remarked upon, and her childish prattle laughed at
and applauded as the wittiest talk in the world.
Certainly there were many days when Hetty's presence was wearisome
and intolerable to her benefactress, and then she was banished to a large
gloomy room at the top of the London house, and left to the tender
mercies of a maid, who did not at all forget that she was only Mrs.
Kane's little girl from the village of Wavertree, and treated her
accordingly. She was often left alone for hours, amusing herself as best
she could, crying when she felt very lonely, or leaning far out of the
window to feel nearer to the people in the street. The consequence of
all this was to spoil the child's naturally sweet temper, to teach her to
crave for excitement, and to suffer keenly, when, after a full feast of
pleasure, she was suddenly snubbed, scolded, deserted, and forgotten.
She began to hate the sight of the bare silent nursery upstairs, where
there were no pretty pictures to bear her company, no pleasant little
adornments, no diversions such as a mother places in the room where
her darlings pass many of their baby hours. It was a motherless, blank,
nursery, where the only nurse was the maid, who came and went, and
looked upon Hetty as a nuisance; an extra trouble for which she had not
been prepared when she engaged to live with Mrs. Rushton.
"Sit down there and behave yourself properly, if you can, till I come
back," she would say, and seat Hetty roughly in a chair and go away
and leave her there, shutting the door. At first Hetty used to weep
dolefully, and sometimes cried herself to sleep; but after a time she
became used to her lonely life, and only thought of how she could
amuse herself during her imprisonment. She counted the carriages
passing the window till she was tired, and watched the little children
playing in the garden of the square beyond; but at last she would get

bolder, sometimes, and venture out of her nursery to take a peep at the
other rooms of the house. One day she made her way down to Mrs.
Rushton's bed-room; that lady had gone out and the servants were all
downstairs. Hetty contrived to pull out several drawers and played with
ribbons and trinkets. At last she opened a case in which was her
foster-mother's watch, and as this ticking bit of gold was like a living
companion, Hetty pounced upon it at once.
She played all sorts of tricks with the watch, dressed it up in a towel
and called it a baby; and making up her mind that baby wanted a bath,
popped the watch into a basin of water and set about washing it
thoroughly.
Just as she was working away with great energy the door opened and
Mrs. Rushton came in. Seeing what the child was doing she flew at her,
snatched the watch from her hands, and slapped her violently on the
arms and neck. Hetty screamed, beat Mrs. Rushton on the face with
both her little palms, and then was whirled away shrieking into the
hands of the