Hettys Strange History | Page 4

thrived; but there was little chance for the development of
those secret sentimental preferences and susceptibilities out of which

spring love-making and thoughts of marriage.
There probably was not a marriageable young man in Welbury who had
not at one time or another thought to himself, what a good thing it
would be to marry Hetty Gunn. Hetty was pretty, sensible, affectionate,
and rich. Such girls as that were not to be found every day. A man
might look far and long before he could find such a wife as Hetty
would make. But nothing seemed to be farther from Hetty's thoughts
than making a wife of herself for anybody. And the world may say
what it pleases about its being the exclusive province of men to woo:
very few men do woo a woman who does not show herself ready to be
wooed. It is a rare beauty or a rare spell of some sort which can draw a
man past the barrier of a woman's honest, unaffected, and persistent
unconsciousness of any thoughts of love or matrimony. So between
Hetty's unconsciousness and her perpetual comradeship with her father
and mother, the years went on, and on, and no man asked Hetty to
marry him. The odd thing about it was that every man felt sure that he
was the only man who had not asked her; and a general impression had
grown up in the town that Hetty Gunn had refused nearly everybody.
She was so evidently a favorite; "Gunn's" was so much the
headquarters for all the young people; it was so open to everybody's
observation how much all men admired and liked Hetty,--she was never
seen anywhere without one or two or three at her service: it was the
most natural thing in the world for people to think as they did. Yet not a
human being ever accused Hetty of flirting; her manner was always as
open, friendly, and cordial as an honest boy's, and with no more trace
of self-seeking or self-consciousness about it. She was as full of fun
and mischief, too, as any boy could be. She had slid down hill with the
wildest of them, till even her father said sternly,--
"Hetty,--you're too big. It's a shameful sight to see a girl of your size,
out on a sled with boys." And Hetty hung her head, and said
pathetically,--
"I wish I hadn't grown. I'd rather be a dwarf, than not slide down hill."
But after the sliding was forbidden, there remained the chestnuttings in
the autumn, and the trout fishings in the summer, and the Mayflower

parties in the spring, and colts and horses and dogs. Until Hetty was
twenty-two years old, you might have been quite sure that, whenever
you found her in any out-door party, the masculine element was largely
predominant in that party. After this time, however, life gradually
sobered for Hetty: one by one her friends married; the maidens became
matrons, the young men became heads of houses. In wedding after
wedding, Hetty Gunn was the prettiest of the bridesmaids, and people
whispered as they watched her merry, kindly face,--
"Ain't it the queerest thing in life, Hetty Gunn won't marry. There isn't
a fellow in town she mightn't have."
If anybody had said this to Hetty herself, she would probably have
laughed, and said with entire frankness,--
"You're quite mistaken. They don't want me," which would only have
strengthened her hearers' previous impressions that they did.
In process of time, after the weddings came the christenings, and at
these also Hetty Gunn was still the favorite friend, the desired guest.
Presently, there came to be so many little Hetty Gunns in the village,
that no young mother had courage to use the name more, however
much she loved Hetty. Hetty used to say laughingly that it was well she
was an only child, for she had now more nieces and nephews than she
knew what to do with. Very dearly she loved them all; and the little
things all loved her, the instant she put her arms round them: and more
than one young husband, without meaning to be in the least disloyal to
his wife, thought to himself, when he saw his baby's face nestling down
to Hetty Gunn's brown curls,--
"I wonder if she'd have had me, if I'd asked her. But I don't believe
Hetty'll ever marry,--a girl that's had the offers she has."
And so it had come to pass that, at the time our story begins, Hetty was
thirty-five years old, and singularly alone in the world. The death of her
mother, which had occurred first, was a great shock to her, for it had
been a sudden and a painful death. But the loss of her mother was to
Hetty a