WHAT TO DO WITH HER?
After Mrs. Rushton had been laid to rest in her grave her worldly affairs had to be looked into. She had died possessed of a great deal of property, and her relations were well aware that she had never made a will. Her brother had lately urged her to make a will, but she had always put off the unpleasant task. Now there was nothing to be done but to divide the property among the relatives to whom it reverted by law.
After the funeral her late husband's relations and Mr. Enderby met at Amber Hill and discussed these matters of business.
In the meantime Hetty had been left at Amber Hill in the care of the housekeeper, for Mr. Enderby would not allow his wife to carry her off to Wavertree.
"It would be a mistake," he said, "to begin what we may not think proper to go on with afterwards. If the child comes home with us now she may feel herself aggrieved, later, at being sent away. To act with prudence is our first duty towards her."
So Hetty had been left with the housekeeper, who, being a kind woman in her way, tried to comfort her with cakes and jam. Her only real comfort was her darling Scamp, and with her arms round his shaggy neck she shed many a tear of loneliness and terror. Her heart was full of anxious fears as to what was going to become of her.
She had stolen into the room where the dead woman lay to take her last farewell of her benefactress. Nobody watched there, and Hetty easily found an opportunity for paying her tearful visit. Scamp, who never left her side, accompanied her with a sad solemnity in his countenance, and these were perhaps the two most real mourners whom the wealthy lady had left behind her.
Now all was over, and Mrs. Rushton's room looked vacant and with as little sign of her presence as if she had never inhabited it. The wintry sunshine smiled in at all the windows of her handsome house, and made it cheerful even though the blinds were drawn down. The robins twittered in the evergreens outside, and the maids had their little jokes as usual over their sewing, though they spoke in lowered tones. No great and terrible change seemed to have happened to any one but Hetty, except indeed to Scamp, and it was plain that he suffered only for Hetty's sake.
On the day when Mrs. Rushton's relations met at Amber Hill Hetty sat in the housekeeper's room in a little straw chair at the fire, with Scamp clasped in her arms and her head resting against his. She felt instinctively that her fate was being sealed upstairs. Indeed a few words which had passed between Grant and the housekeeper, and which she had accidentally overheard, assured her that such would be the case.