. 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, w