Elspeth, still astounded, took the gift.  It was a little garnet ring.

“It will have to be cut,” Grizel said.  “It was meant, I think, for a larger finger.  I have had it some time, but I never wore it.”

Elspeth said she would always treasure her ring, and that it was beautiful.

“I used to think it—­rather sweet,” Grizel admitted, and then she said good-bye to them both and went away.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE MONSTER

Tommy’s new character was that of a monster.  He always liked the big parts.

Concealed, as usual, in the garments that clung so oddly to him, modesty, generosity, indifference to applause and all the nobler impulses, he could not strip himself of them, try as he would, and so he found, to his scornful amusement, that he still escaped the public fury.  In the two months that preceded Elspeth’s marriage there was positively scarce a soul in Thrums who did not think rather well of him.  “If they knew what I really am,” he cried with splendid bitterness, “how they would run from me!”

Even David could no longer withhold the hand of fellowship, for Grizel would tell him nothing, except that, after all, and for reasons sufficient to herself, she had declined to become Mrs. Sandys.  He sought in vain to discover how Tommy could be to blame.  “And now,” Tommy said grimly to Grizel, “our doctor thinks you have used me badly, and that I am a fine fellow to bear no resentment!  Elspeth told me that he admires the gentle and manly dignity with which I submit to the blow, and I have no doubt that, as soon as I heard that, I made it more gentle and manly than ever!

“I have forbidden Elspeth,” he told her, “to upbraid you for not accepting me, with the result that she thinks me too good to live!  Ha, ha! what do you think, Grizel?”

It became known in the town that she had refused him.  Everybody was on Tommy’s side.  They said she had treated him badly.  Even Aaron was staggered at the sight of Tommy accepting his double defeat in such good part.  “And all the time I am the greatest cur unhung,” says Tommy.  “Why don’t you laugh, Grizel?”

Never, they said, had there been such a generous brother.  The town was astir about this poor man’s gifts to the lucky bride.  There were rumours that among the articles was a silver coal-scuttle, but it proved to be a sugar-bowl in that pattern.  Three bandboxes came for her to select from; somebody discovered who was on the watch, but may I be struck dead if more than one went back.  Yesterday it was bonnets; to-day she is at Tilliedrum again, trying on her going-away dress.  And she really was to go away in it, a noticeable thing, for in Thrums society, though they usually get a going-away dress, they are too canny to go away in it The local shops were not ignored, but the best of the trousseau came from London.  “That makes the second box this week, as I’m a living sinner,” cries the lady on the watch again.  When boxes arrived at the station Corp wheeled them up to Elspeth without so much as looking at the label.