MRS. KANE IN TROUBLE.
"Now, tell me all about it, for as I am going to be her mother in future I must know everything that concerns my child."
Mrs. Rushton was talking to Mrs. Kane, having come to the cottage to announce her intention of adopting Hetty. Mrs. Kane was crying bitterly.
"You'll excuse me, ma'am. I would not stand in the way of my darling's good fortune, not for ever so, I'm sure. And yet it's hard to give her up."
"I should not have thought it could make much difference to you. I believe she was generally running about the roads when not at school."
"Well, you see, ma'am, that is true; but at night and in the mornings she would kneel on my lap to say her prayers, and put her little soft arms round my neck. And those are the times I'll mostly miss her."
Mrs. Rushton coughed slightly. She herself liked the sight of Hetty's pretty face, and was amused by her prattle; but she was not a woman to think much about the feel of a child's arms around her neck. Mrs. Kane, perceiving that she was not understood, sprang up from her seat and went to fetch a parcel from an inner room.
"This is the little shift she wore when I first set eyes on her. It is the only rag she brought with her; though not much of a rag, I'm bound to say; for so pretty an article of the kind I never saw," said the good woman, spreading out on the table an infant's garment of the finest cambric embroidered delicately round the neck and sleeves.
In the corner was a richly wrought monogram of the initials H.G.
"And that's why we called her Hetty Gray," said Mrs. Kane. "John and I made up the name to suit the letters. If ever her friends turn up they'll know the difference, but in the meantime we had to have something to call her by."
"Why, this is most interesting!" said Mrs. Rushton, examining the monogram; "she probably belonged to people of position. It is quite satisfactory that she should prove to be a gentlewoman by birth."
"And that is why I feel bound to give her up, ma'am," said Mrs. Kane, wiping her overflowing eyes. "I've always put it before me that some day or other her folks would come wanting her, and I've said to myself that it would be terrible if she had grown up in the meantime with no better education than if she was born a village lass. And yet what better could I have done for her than I could have done for a daughter of my own if I had had one?"
"Just so," said Mrs. Rushton; "and now you may be sure that she will be educated, trained, dressed, and everything else, just as if she had been in her mother's house. As for her own people coming for her, I am not sure that I shall give her up if they do. Not unless I have grown tired of her in the meantime."
"Tired of her!" echoed Mrs. Kane, looking at her visitor in great surprise; "surely, madam, you do not think you will get tired of our little Hetty!"
"I hope not, my good woman; but even if I do you cannot complain, as in that case I shall give her back to you; that is, if it happens before her friends come to fetch her. Unless you are pretending to grieve now, you cannot be sorry at the prospect of having her again."
"That's true," said the poor woman in a puzzled tone, and she still looked wistfully at the handsome visitor sitting before her. She did not know how to express herself, and she was afraid of offending the lady who was going to be Hetty's mother; yet she felt eager to make some remonstrance against the injustice of the proceeding which Mrs. Rushton spoke of as within the bounds of possibility. She believed in her heart that a great wrong would be done if the child, having been educated and accustomed to luxury for years, were to be carelessly thrown back into a life of lowly poverty. However, the trouble that was in her heart could not find its way through her lips, and she tried to think that Mrs. Rushton spoke only in jest.
"It is altogether like a romance," that lady was saying as she folded up the baby garment and put it away in a pretty scented satchel which she wore at her side. "I have not met with anything so interesting for years, and I promise myself a great deal of pleasure in the matter."
"May Hetty come to see me sometimes?" asked Mrs. Kane, humbly curtseying her good-bye, when her visitor was seated in her pony phaeton and gathering up the reins for flight.
"Oh, certainly, as often as you please," answered Mrs. Rushton gaily, and touching the ponies with her whip she was soon out of sight; while poor Mrs. Kane retreated into her cottage to have a good motherly cry over the tiny broken shoes and the little washed-out faded frocks which were now all that remained to her of her foster-daughter.