Hetty was delighted.

“I chose them myself,” she said with some pride; and then she took the desk in her arms and asked Nell to show her the way to Phyllis’s room.

“It is down at the end of this passage.  I will show you.  And you must not mind Phyllis if she does not go into raptures like me.  She is always so well-behaved, and takes everything so quietly.”

Phyllis looked greatly surprised, and not quite pleased, when, having heard a knock at her door and said “Come in,” she saw Hetty invade her room.  Her first thought was, “This foundling girl is going to be forward and troublesome”; and Hetty was not slow to read her glance.

“I have brought you a present,” she said, in quite a different tone from that in which she had made her little speech to Nell.

Phyllis took the desk slowly, and looked at it as if she wished it had not been offered.

“It is very handsome,” she said, “and my aunt was very good to think of it.  Please give her my best thanks.”

And then Phyllis deposited the present on a table, and turned away and began to change her shoes.

Nell looked at Hetty, but could not see the expression of her face; for she had turned as quickly as Phyllis and was already vanishing through the door.

CHAPTER VII.

Hetty’s first lessons.

Hetty’s bed-room being over the school-room, she was wakened the next morning by somebody practising on the piano, the sound from which ascended through the floor.

“How well they play, and how early they rise!” thought Hetty.  “I wonder whether it is Nell or Phyllis who is at the piano?  Oh, dear!  I do not know even a note.”

She longed to ask Polly at what hour the Miss Enderbys had got up, and which of them was practising on the piano, but as she had begun by snubbing Polly she could not now descend from her dignity so far as to ask her questions.  Polly on her side was always silent when attending on Miss Gray, and never ventured upon the least freedom with the haughty little foundling.

When Hetty descended to the breakfast-room she found only Mr. and Mrs. Enderby at the table.  Mrs. Rushton was still in her room, and was having her breakfast there.

“This is little Hetty,” said Mrs. Enderby, presenting her to her husband.

Mr. Enderby put down his paper and looked at Hetty gravely and critically, Hetty thought pityingly.

“How do you do, my dear?” he said, patting her shoulder.  “I see you have not been accustomed to early hours.”

Hetty hung her head and sat down at the table.  Mrs. Enderby supplied her wants and then went on reading her letters; and Hetty ate in silence, wondering why she was not called on to talk and amuse these people as she had been accustomed to amuse Mrs. Rushton’s fashionable friends.  This quiet wise-looking lady and gentleman seemed to look on her with quite different eyes from those with which the rest of the world regarded her.  They neither snubbed nor petted her, only seemed satisfied to allow her to be comfortable beside them.