curate’s house, when Hetty, the eldest girl, the best child that ever was born, reached her sixteenth birthday: a day which was celebrated by a proposal at once exciting, fortunate, and painful, as shall be now set forth. [Illustration] CHAPTER XII. THE ELDEST CHILD. Hetty was sixteen that day. There were nine younger than she was. When these words are said, coupled with the fact already told that Hetty was the best child that ever was born, they may not throw much light upon her character--and yet they will show with tolerable distinctness what her external position was. She was the best little nurse, the best housemaid, the most handy needle-woman, the most careful little housekeeper in all Summerfield, which, as everybody knows, is a suburb of the great town of Rollinstock, in the middle of England. She could make beef-tea and a number of little invalid dishes, better, and more quickly and more neatly, than any one else that ever was known, for, naturally, her mother was often in a condition to want a little care; and the children had every childish malady under the sun, all of them together, in the most friendly, comfortable way, and never were any the worse. Something defended them which does not defend little groups of two or three in richer nurseries. They sickened and got well again, as a matter of course, whenever there was any youthful epidemic about. They were altogether quite an old-fashioned family, having all the complaints that children ought to have, but remaining impervious to all the imperfections of drainage and all the dangers of brain exhaustion. Their blood was never poisoned, nor their nerves shattered. They got ill and got well again, as children used to do in old days. And Hetty, without ever setting foot in a hospital or having any instruction, was one of those heaven-born little nurses who used to flourish in novels and poetry, and who, as a matter of fact, were found in many families in those days when it was the fashion to believe that it was a woman’s first duty to serve and care for those who were her own. Hetty was not aware of any individual existence of hers apart from her family. They were all one, and she was the eldest, which is a fact confusing, perhaps, to the arithmetical faculties, but quite easy to the heart.