“Then I must go back to the Hall?” said Hetty.

“I am sorry you look on it as a hardship, Hetty.  Mr. Enderby and I think it will be more for your good than staying here.”

“I am only afraid of being bad,” said Hetty simply.

“Oh! come, you will say your prayers and learn to be a good child,” said Mrs. Enderby cheerfully; and then she went away, having settled the matter.  She was more than ever convinced that Hetty’s was a curious and troublesome nature; but she had not sounded the depths of feeling in the child, nor did she guess how ardently she desired to be good and worthy of love, how painfully she dreaded a relapse into the old state of pride and wilfulness which seemed to shut her out from the sympathies of others.

After Mrs. Enderby was gone, Hetty sat for a long time with her chin in her little hand looking out of the cottage door, and seeing nothing but her own trouble.  How was she to try and be like other children?  Could she ever learn to be like Phyllis, always cold and well-behaved, and never the least hot about anything; or could she grow quiet and sweet and so easily silenced as Nell?  How was she to hinder her tongue from saying out things just in the words that came to her?  She wished she could say things differently, for people so seldom seemed to understand what she meant.  Tears began to drip down her cheeks as she thought of returning to her corner in the stately Hall, where she felt so chilled and lonely, of sitting no more at the snug homely hearth where there was always a spark of love burning for her.

As she wiped her eyes a gleam of early spring sunshine struck upon an old beech-tree at the lower end of the garden, and turned all its young green into gold.  The glorified bough waved like a banner in the breeze, and seemed to bring some beautiful message to Hetty which she could not quite catch.  The charm of colour fascinated her eye, the graceful movement had a meaning for her.  Springing up from her despondent attitude she leaned from the doorway, and felt a flush of joy glow in her heavy little heart.  The same thrill of delight that had enraptured her when, as a babe not higher than the flag leaves, she stretched her hands towards the yellow lilies, pierced her now, but with a stronger, more conscious joy.

When Mrs. Kane returned she found her ready to take a more hopeful view of the future that was at hand.

“I have got to go,” she said; “and I am going.  But I may come to you when I like.  And when the pride gets bad I will always come.”

Mrs. Kane promised to keep Scamp for her own, and so Hetty could see all her friends at once when she visited the cottage.

CHAPTER XIII.

A trick on the governess.