Hetty was wearing her starched print-dress, ready to begin her morning’s work. She wasn’t a bit scornful or solemn, but was laughing and wriggling and tossing her head. She seemed quite a different person from the stern, moral housemaid, God’s intimate friend, who told me everything that God had thought about me through the day when at night she was putting me to bed. Up to that moment it had never occurred to me that she was pretty, but now her cheeks were flushed and the sun was in her rumpled hair. While I watched, our gardener drew her close and kissed her. She squeaked like a little mouse, and pretended to struggle to free herself. I never dreamt that grown people ever behaved like that. I hadn’t the faintest notion what she was doing or why she was doing it; but I knew that it was something secret, and silly, and beautiful. I also had the feeling that it was something pleasant and wrong, just like the things I most enjoyed doing, for which I was punished. I wanted to withdraw and tried to; but tripped over the sunflowers and fell. Hetty and the gardener sprang apart. I knew what was going to happen next; I had caught them being natural--they were going to commence shamming. The gardener became very busy, piling his tools into the barrow. Hetty, talking in her cold and distant manner, said to him, “And don’t forget the lettuce for breakfast, John. Master’s very partic’lar about it.” I came from my hiding, thrusting my hands deep in my pockets, as though I kept my courage there and was frightened of its dropping out. The gardener’s back was towards me, but he caught sight of me from between his legs. He just stopped like that with his face growing redder, his mouth wide-open, and stared. Hetty didn’t look as pretty as she had been looking, but before she could say anything I said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I came to see my fowl---- but I won’t tell.” “Bless ’is little ’eart,” cried John; “I thought it were ’is Pa, I wuz that scared.” Hetty knelt down beside me and rocked me to and fro half-hysterically, making me promise again and again that I would never tell. “Was you doin’ somethin’ wrong?” I asked. “What was you doin’?” They looked foolishly at one another. All that day they kept me near them on one pretext or another, afraid to let me get away from them. I had never known them so sensible and obliging; they did all kinds of things for me that they had never done before. After breakfast, while Hetty was dusting, John built me a little fowl-run. In the afternoon, while he was cutting the grass, Hetty sat with me beneath the apple-tree and told me what life meant. She spoke in whispers like a conspirator, and all the time that she was talking, I could hear Ruthita humming just the other side of the wall.