t up her little face for a caress, Mrs. Enderby
would have been very well pleased to lay her own cool cheek against the
child's scarlet lips; but Hetty's was one of those natures that desire
tokens of love and are yet too proud to seek for them. She flushed to
her hair, therefore, with mortification as Mrs. Enderby dropped her hand
and turned away once more to her sister-in-law.

"How tired you are! you look quite faint. Allow me to take your bonnet;
and do lie down on this couch while I make you a cup of tea. Hetty must
amuse herself with a piece of cake till my little girls come in from
their walk. I have got such a nice governess for them, Amy. Mark, you
know, is gone to Eton."

The ladies continued to converse, and Hetty sat forgotten for the
moment, eating her cake. She ate it very slowly, anxious to make it last
as long as possible, for she felt that when it was finished she should
not know what to do with herself. When even the crumbs were gone she
folded her hands and counted the flowers on the wall-paper, and
discovered among them a grinning face which certainly had been no
acquaintance of the designer's, but had started suddenly out of the
pattern merely to make cruel fun of Hetty's uneasiness.

At last, after some time which seemed to the little girl quite a year at
least, Mrs. Enderby rang the bell and asked if the young ladies had come
in from walking. The servant said they were just going to tea in the
school-room, and Mrs Enderby turned to Hetty, saying:

"Go, my dear, with Peter, and he will show you the school-room. Tell
Phyllis and Nell that I sent you to play with them."

Hetty followed the servant; but as she went across the hall and up the
staircase she felt with a swelling heart that had she been the real
cousin of these children, and not an "upstart" (Grant's favourite word),
they would perhaps have been sent for to the drawing-room to be
presented to her.

Accustomed as she was to be alternately petted and snubbed, she had
acquired the habit of watching the movements of her elders with
suspicion, and now concluded that because no fuss was made about her she
must therefore be despised. A hard proud spirit entered into her on the
moment, and she resolved that though she had been humble in her
demeanour towards Mrs. Enderby she would hold her head high with girls
who were not very much older than herself.

Peter was a young footman who had been brought up in the village and
trained by the bu