Everything that could be done was done to make her vain, wilful,
ill-tempered; and the little creature came to know that she might have
anything she pleased if only she could make Mrs. Rushton laugh.
Four or five years passed in this way, during which time Mrs. Rushton
had very little intercourse with her brother's family at Wavertree. Her
country house had been shut up and her time had been spent between
London, Brighton, and fashionable resorts on the Continent. In the
meantime the education which she had promised Mrs. Kane should be given
to her nursling had not been even begun. Mrs. Rushton had had no leisure
to think of it. She looked upon Hetty as still only a babe, a marmoset
born to amuse her own hours of ennui. In her brother's occasional
letters he sometimes devoted a line to Hetty. "I hope you are not
spoiling the little girl," he would add as a postscript; or, "I hope the
child is learning something besides monkey-tricks." These insinuations
always annoyed Mrs. Rushton, and she never condescended to answer them.
The suggestion that she had incurred a great responsibility by adopting
Hetty was highly disagreeable to her.
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