Hetty Gray | Page 9

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 negligent maid, who shook her roughly as she carried her off to the miscalled "nursery."
The little girl, who had never been instructed or talked to sensibly by any one, was quite unconscious of the mischief she had done; and only felt that big people were hateful to-day, as she lay kicking and screaming on the floor upstairs.
The end of it all was, however, that, upon reflection, Mrs. Rushton found she did not care so much after all about the destruction of her watch, and that the whole occurrence would make a capital story to tell to her friends; and so she sent for Hetty, who was then making a dismal play for herself in the twilight with two chairs turned upside down and a pinafore hung from one to another for a curtain. The child was seized by Grant, the maid, dressed in one of her prettiest costumes, and taken down to the drawing-room to Mrs. Rushton, who had quite recovered her temper and forgotten both the beating she had given Hetty and the beating Hetty had given her. The culprit was overwhelmed with kisses, and praises of her pretty eyes; and soon found