Hetty, being only four years old, was supremely unconscious of all that was being said, and meant, and thought over her curly head.  She gazed at the three other children, and, repelled by Phyllis’s cold gaze, turned to Mark and Nell, and stretched out a little fat hand to each of them.

“Come and see the beautiful flowers!” she said gleefully; “you never saw such lovely ones!”

CHAPTER IV.

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?”