"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