Marty, the
eldest, was a baby when she first came to the farm, for the children
born before him had died, and so Hetty had had them all three, one after
the other, toddling by her side in the meadow, or playing about her on
wet days in the half-empty rooms of the large old house. The boys were
out of hand now, but Totty was still a day-long plague, worse than
either of the others had been, because there was more fuss made about
her. And there was no end to the making and mending of clothes. Hetty
would have been glad to hear that she should never see a child again;
they were worse than the nasty little lambs that the shepherd was always
bringing in to be taken special care of in lambing time; for the lambs
WERE got rid of sooner or later. As for the young chickens and turkeys,
Hetty would have hated the very word "hatching," if her aunt had not
bribed her to attend to the young poultry by promising her the proceeds
of one out of every brood. The round downy chicks peeping out from under
their mother's wing never touched Hetty with any pleasure; that was
not the sort of prettiness she cared about, but she did care about the
prettiness of the new things she would buy for herself at Treddleston
Fair with the money they fetched.
Pages:
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259