Only for a year! While it was a month off, Hetty thought a year nothing at all. She was even conscious of a thrill of eagerness to meet it, a desire to hurry on the time. A year in a romantic old house, in a sort of mediæval retirement, shut in like a princess in a fairy tale! She almost longed to feel the solitude encircle her, the wind blowing among the trees, which was the only sound she should hear. But as the time of her departure approached, Hetty began to change her mind, and the time of her absence to draw out and become larger and larger, till it took the proportions of a century. “They will be quite grown up before I come home,” she said to Mary, bending over the curly heads of the two youngest, as they lay in their little cribs side by side: and it took all Hetty’s power of self-control to prevent her from bedewing the pillows with her tears. Janey said all she could to comfort the exile. “I wish it was me,” Janey cried, whose eyes were dancing with eagerness. “Oh, I wish it was me!” The one dreadful thing, however, which made even Janey acknowledge a pang, was that in four months it would be Christmas, and Hetty would not be able to come home. What kind of Christmas could be possible without Hetty? and oh, what would Hetty do alone, with nobody but a strange little girl of ten and a governess, all by herself on Christmas Day? [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XIV. GOING AWAY. “You will be sure to write regularly, Hetty, twice a week at the least? You must not forget; you must never forget.” “Oh, never, mamma!” cried poor Hetty, with a quiver in her voice. “And try if you can hear something about Cousin John. The clergyman is sure to know. Don’t ask right out, but try what you can discover. You can say that your mother knew that part of the country, and that you had heard of the Prescotts. Oh, how careless it was of me not to keep on writing! You must be very regular, Hetty--twice a week, at the very least.” “I shall not forget, mamma.” Hetty’s poor little face was very pale; her lips were trembling. The family had come, all but the very little ones, to the railway to see her off. But the boys were amused with the locomotive, and the girls with looking at the people; and Hetty felt herself forgotten already. What would it be when she was really away?