“On my word, Grizel, you seem to have omitted nothing!”

“Ah, but I did,” she cried.  “I never told her how much I wanted you to be admirable; I pretended that I despised you merely, and in reality I was wringing my hands with woe every time you did not behave like a god.”

“They will be worn away, Grizel, if you go on doing that.”

“I don’t think so,” she replied, “nor can she think so if she believes half of what I have told her about you since.  She knows how you saved the boy’s life.  I told her that in the old Lair because she had some harsh memories of you there; and it was at the Cuttle Well that I told her about the glove.”

“And where,” asked Tommy, severely, “did you tell her that you had been mistaken in thinking me jealous of a baby and anxious to be considered a wonder?”

She hid her face for a moment, and then looked up roguishly into his.  “I have not told her that yet!” she replied.  It was so audacious of her that he took her by the ears.

“If I were vain,” Tommy said reflectively, “I would certainly shake you now.  You show a painful want of tact, Grizel, in implying that I am not perfect.  Nothing annoys men so much.  We can stand anything except that.”

His merriness gladdened her.  “They are only little things,” she said, “and I have grown to love them.  I know they are flaws; but I love them because——­”

“Say because they are mine.  You owe me that.”

“No; but because they are weaknesses I don’t have.  I have others, but not those, and it is sweet to me to know that you are weak in some matters in which I am strong.  It makes me feel that I can be of use to you.”

“Are you insinuating that there are more of them?” Tommy demanded, sitting up.

“You are not very practical,” she responded, “and I am.”

“Go on.”

“And you are—­just a little—­inclined to be senti——­”

“Hush!  I don’t allow that word; but you may say, if you choose, that I am sometimes carried away by a too generous impulse.”

“And that it will be my part,” said she, “to seize you by the arm and hold you back.  Oh, you will give me a great deal to do!  That is one of the things I love you for.  It was one of the things I loved my dear Dr. McQueen for.”  She looked up suddenly.  “I have told him also about you.”

“Lately, Grizel?”

“Yes, in my parlour.  It was his parlour, you know, and I had kept nothing from him while he was alive; that is to say, he always knew what I was thinking of, and I like to fancy that he knows still.  In the evenings he used to sit in the arm-chair by the fire, and I sat talking or knitting at his feet, and if I ceased to do anything except sit still, looking straight before me, he knew I was thinking the morbid thoughts that had troubled me in the old days at Double Dykes.  Without knowing it I sometimes shuddered at those times, and he was distressed.  It reminded him of my mamma.”