They were very happy together.
CHAPTER IX
HETTY MORFEE
IN the meanwhile, a single incident. An incident concerning itself with Hetty Morfee, Mrs. Chase’s newly acquired handmaiden.
Hetty was a girl Wint’s own age. She had been born in Hardiston, had lived in Hardiston all her life. She and Wint had gone to school together; they had played together; they had been friends all their lives.
Such things happen in a small town. Wint was the son of Hardiston’s big man; Hetty was the daughter of a man whom nobody remembered. He had come to town, married Hetty’s mother, and gone away. Thereafter, Hetty had been born.
Hetty’s mother was the fifth daughter of a coal miner. She was an honest woman, a woman of sense and sensibility; and Hetty received from her a worthy heritage. But most of Hetty was not mother but father; and all Hardiston knew about Hetty’s father was that he had come and had gone. It was assumed, fairly enough, that he had a roving, rascally, and irresponsible disposition. Hetty, it had been predicted, would not turn out well.
This prediction had not wholly justified itself. Hetty, in the first place, was unnaturally acute of mind. In school, she had mastered the lessons given her with careless ease. The effect was to give her an unwholesome amount of leisure. She occupied this leisure in bedeviling her teachers and inciting to riot the hardier spirits in the school—among whom number Wint.
She was, in those days, a wiry little thing, as hard as nails, as active as a boy, and fully as daring. She had whipped one or two boys in fair, stand-up fight, for Hetty had a temper that went with her hair. Her hair, as has been said, was a pleasant and interesting red.
As a child, she had been freckled. When she approached womanhood, these freckles disappeared and left her with a skin creamy and delicious. Her eyes were large, and warm, and merry. They were probably brown; it was hard to be sure. All in all, she was—give her a chance—a beauty.
Some men of science assert that all healthy children start life with an equal heritage. They attribute to environment the developing differences between men and between women. Hetty might have served them as an illuminating example. In school, she had mastered her lessons quickly, had led her classes as of right; while her schoolmates—including Wint, who was not good at books—lagged woefully behind.