Grizel remembered well her finding of it.  She had been in his pockets.  She loved to rifle them; to pull out his watch herself, instead of asking him for the time; to exclaim “Oh!” at the many things she found there, when they should have been neatly docketed or in the fire, and from his waistcoat pocket she drew the ring.  She seemed to understand all about it at once.  She was far ahead while he was explaining.  It seemed quite strange to her that there had ever been a time when she did not know of her garnet ring.

How her arms rocked!  It was delicious to her to remember now with what agony her arms had rocked.  She kissed it; she had not been the first to kiss it.

It was “Oh, how I wish I could have saved you this pain!”

“But I love it,” she cried, “and I love the pain.”

It was “Am I not to see it on your finger once?”

“No, no; we must not.”

“Let me, Grizel!”

“Is it right, oh, is it right?”

“Only this once!”

“Very well!”

“I dare not, Grizel, I can’t!  What are we to do with it now?”

“Give it to me.  It is mine.  I will keep it, beside my glove.”

“Let me keep it, Grizel.”

“No; it is mine.”

“Shall I fling it away?”

“How can you be so cruel?  It is mine.”

“Let me bury it.”

“It is mine.”

And of course she had got her way.  Could he resist her in anything?  They had never spoken of it since, it was such a sad little ring.  Sad!  It was not in the least little bit sad.  Grizel wondered as she looked at it now how she could ever have thought it sad.

The object with which she put on her hat was to go to Aaron’s cottage, to congratulate Elspeth.  So she said to herself.  Oh, Grizel!

But first she opened two drawers.  They were in a great press and full of beautiful linen woven in Thrums, that had come to Dr. McQueen as a “bad debt.”  “Your marriage portion, young lady,” he had said to Grizel, then but a slip of a girl, whereupon, without waiting to lengthen her frock, she rushed rapturously at her work-basket.  “Not at all, miss,” he cried ferociously; “you are here to look after this house, not to be preparing for another, and until you are respectably bespoken by some rash crittur of a man, into the drawers with your linen and down with those murderous shears.”  And she had obeyed; no scissors, the most relentless things in nature when in Grizel’s hand, had ever cleaved their way through that snowy expanse; never a stitch had she put into her linen except with her eyes, which became horribly like needles as she looked at it.

And now at last she could begin!  Oh, but she was anxious to begin; it is almost a fact that, as she looked at those drawers, she grudged the time that must be given to-day to Tommy and his ring.