“Oh, I don’t like it so dark. I like to see the sky. I can’t breathe when the curtains are drawn. I am not accustomed to curtains,” said Hetty, feeling that she was making a confession of poverty. Miss Hofland gave an approving nod. “It is a great deal better for the health,” she said; “still I can’t sleep unless it is dark, and they keep out the cold in this big house. I hope you always see that your window is well fastened. I must speak to Mrs. Mills about it. To live in this queer way, with a regiment of servants and not to be attended to, would be too absurd. Good-night, my dear,” Miss Hofland said. Her room was on the other side of the little passage, which also had a window looking out across the flower-beds of the parterre to the ghostly depths of the park. It was a moonlight night, and they both lingered looking out upon the strange, silent scene. The flower-beds were full of winterly chrysanthemums--for it was by this time November--which drooped their tall heads in the frosty air. The trees beyond stood up half stripped, showing here and there their great branches, with a leaf or two fluttering in the wind against the sky. Miss Hofland opened her own door with a shudder. “How cold it looks,” she said--“how still and deserted! I am glad everything is snug and shut up in my room. If I were to look out much longer I should see ghosts, I know I should. Run away, my dear, and get to bed.” Hetty heard the little click of the key which Miss Hofland always turned at night, a precaution which had amused the girl on her first coming. “Fancy mamma locking her door!” she had said to herself. But it was eerie standing by that passage window by herself. She went back to her room and put down her candle, and took down her hair. Her mother had always been proud of Hetty’s hair. It was brown and silky, and very abundant, and, indeed, it was not so very long since it was first twisted up in that grown-up way which had made Hetty feel so dignified. Now that she had attained to that privilege she liked to shake it down, and feel it about her, rippling over her shoulders. But she had no leisure for any play that night. Her mind was overwhelmed with her new thoughts. An entire revelation had been made to her of her duty, of what girls were born for. To think she should have been so stupid, to suppose that all that was wanted was helping mamma with the children, mending, making, overlooking the housework! No, indeed, that was not all. It would be years before even Harry, the eldest boy, could earn anything; while Hetty was the eldest of all, and the first claim of duty naturally came to her. She strayed towards the window, half-undressed, to look out as people naturally do when they are full of thought, without any regard even to the moonlight, not thinking of anything outside, absorbed in those meditations which were not cheerful. The long pale distance between the trees, the masses of distant shadow, the chrysanthemums