"
And then Mrs. Miller asked Mrs. Jernam to walk into her little bedroom,
and showed her, lying on a neat humble bed, carefully covered with a
white coverlet, and in the deep sleep of childhood, the infant heiress
of Raynham! If either of the women had only known at whom she was
looking, as they scrutinized the child's fair face and talked of her
beauty and her innocence in tearful whispers, looking away from the
sleeping form, pitifully, at a little heap of black clothes on a chair
by the bed!
"I suppose she's the child of one of my brother's old shipmates, as
rose to be better off," said Mrs. Miller, "for she's fretted about a
captain, and cried bitter to go to him when I put her to bed." Then the
two returned to the little parlour, and talked long and earnestly about
the child, about the necessity for Mrs. Miller's now employing the
services of "a girl," and about Rosamond Jernam.
Rosamond was greatly delighted with the child left in Mrs. Miller's
care. The little girl interested her deeply, and every day she passed
many hours with her, either at Mrs. Miller's house or her own. The
grace and beauty of the child were remarkable; and as, with the happy
facility of childhood, she began to recover from the first feeling of
strangeness and fear, the little creature was soon happy in her new,
humble home. She was too young to appreciate and lament the change in
her lot; and, as she was well fed, well cared for, and treated with the
most caressing affection, she was perfectly happy.
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