n, 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 min