Hettys Strange History | Page 5

trivial one, in comparison with the loss of her father. On the

day of her grandfather's death, she had seemed, child as she was, to
have received her father into her hands, as a sacred legacy of trust; and
he, on his part, seemed fully to reciprocate and accept without
comprehending the new relation. He unconsciously leaned upon Hetty
more and more from that hour until the hour when he died, bolstered up
in bed with his head on her shoulder, and gasping out, between difficult
breaths, his words of farewell,--strange farewell to be spoken to a
middle-aged woman, whose hair was already streaked with gray,--
"Poor little girl! I've got to leave you. You've been a good little girl,
Hetty, a good little girl."
Neighbors and friends crowded around Hetty, in the first moments of
her grief. But they all, even those nearest and most intimate, found
themselves bewildered and baffled, nay almost repelled, by Hetty's
manner. Her noble face was so grief-stricken that she looked years
older in a single day. But her voice and her smile were unaltered; and
she would not listen to any words of sympathy. She wished to hear no
allusions to her trouble, except such as were needfully made in the
arranging of practical points. Her eyes filled with tears frequently, but
no one saw a tear fall. At the funeral, her face wore much the same look
it had worn, twenty-three years before, at her grandfather's funeral.
There were some present who remembered that day well, and
remembered the look, and they said musingly,--
"There 's something very queer about Hetty Gunn, after all. Don't you
remember how she acted, when she was a little thing, the day old
Squire Gunn was buried? Anybody'd have thought then a funeral was
Fourth of July, and she looks much the same way now."
Then they fell to discussing the probabilities of her future course. It
was not easy to predict.
"The Squire's left every thing to her, just as if she was a man. She can
sell the property right off, if she wants to, and go and live where she
likes," they said.
"Well, you may set your minds to rest on that," said old Deacon Little,

who had been the young squire's most intimate friend, and who knew
Hetty as well as if she were his own child, and loved her better; for his
own children, poor man, had nearly brought his gray hairs down to the
grave with distress and shame.
"Hetty Gunn'll never sell that farm, not a stick nor a stone on't, any
more than the old Squire himself would. You'll see, she'll keep it a goin',
jest the same's ever. It's a thousand pities, she warn't born a boy."

II.
The funeral took place late in the afternoon of a warm April day. The
roads were very muddy, and the long procession wound back to the
village about as slowly as it had gone out. One by one, wagon after
wagon fell out of the line, and turned off to the right or left, until there
were left only the Gunns' big carryall, in which sat Hetty, with her two
house-servants,--an old black man and his wife, who had been in her
father's house so long, that their original patronymic had fallen entirely
out of use, and they were known as "Cæsar Gunn" and "Nan Gunn" the
town over. Behind this followed their farm wagon, in which sat the
farmer and his wife with their babies, and the two farm laborers,--all
Irish, and all crying audibly after the fashion of their race. As they
turned into the long avenue of pines which led up to the house, their
grief broke out louder and louder; and, when the wagon stopped in
front of the western piazza, their sobs and cries became howls and
shrieks. Hetty, who was just entering the front-door, turned suddenly,
and walking swiftly toward them, said, in a clear firm tone,--
"Look here! Mike, Dan, Norah, I'm ashamed of you. Don't you see
you're frightening the poor little children? Be quiet. The one who loved
my father most will be the first one to go about his work as if nothing
had happened. Mike, saddle the pony for me at six. I am going to ride
over to Deacon Little's."
The men were too astonished to reply, but gazed at her dumbly. Mike
muttered sullenly, as he drove on,--

"An' it's a quare way to be showin' our love, I'm thinkin'."
"An' it's Miss Hetty's own way thin, by Jasus!" answered Dan; "an' I'd
jist loike to see the man 'ud say, she didn't fairly worship the very
futsteps of 'im."
When Deacon Little heard Hetty Gunn's voice at his door that night, the
old man sprang to