"Going home!" Patty faced about now, and with a scared face.

"Yes." Hetty put her feet out of bed and sat for a moment on the
edge of it. "Mrs. Grantham paid me my wages yesterday, and now I
have three pounds in my pocket. I am going home--to tell them."

"You mean to tell them!"

"Not a doubt of it. But why look as if you had seen a ghost?"

"And what do you suppose will happen?"

"Mother and Molly will cry, and Emmy will make an oration which I
shall interrupt, and Kezzy will open her eyes at such a monster, and
father will want to horsewhip me, but restrain himself and turn me
from the door. Or perhaps he will lock me up--oh Patty, cannot you
see that I'm weeping, not joking? But it has to be done, and I am
going to be brave and do it."

"Very well, then. Now listen to me.--You cannot."

"Cannot? Why?"

"There's no room, to begin with--not a bed in the house. Sam and his
wife are there, and the child, on a visit."

"Sam there! And you never told me.--Oh, Pat, Pat, and I might have
missed him!" She sprang up from the bed and began her dressing in a
fever of haste.