“Oh, oh!” she cried in rapture, and held out her arms; and he ran into them, for there was still one person in Thrums who had no fear of Grizel.

“It will be a damned shame,” Corp said huskily, “if that woman never has no bairns o’ her ain.”

They watched her crooning over the child, playing with him for a long time.  You could not have believed that she required to be watched.  She told him with hugs that she had come back to him at last; it was her first admission that she knew she had been away and a wild hope came to Tommy that along the road he could not take her she might be drawn by this little child.

She discovered a rent in the child’s pinafore and must mend it at once.  She ran upstairs, as a matter of course, to her work-box, and brought down a needle and thread.  It was quite as if she was at home at last.

“But you don’t live here now, Grizel,” Tommy said, when she drew back at his proposal that they should go away; “you live at the doctor’s house.”

“Do I, Gavinia?” she said beseechingly.

“Is it here you want to bide?” Corp asked, and she nodded her head several times.

“It would be so much more convenient,” she said, looking at the child.

“Would you take her back, Gavinia,” Tommy asked humbly, “if she continues to want it?”

Gavinia did not answer.

“Woman!” cried Corp.

“I’m mortal wae for her,” Gavinia said slowly, “but she needs to be waited on hand and foot.”

“I would come and do the waiting on her hand and foot, Gavinia,” Tommy said.

And so it came about that a week afterwards Grizel was reinstalled in her old rooms.  Every morning when Tommy came to see her she asked him, icily how Alice was.  She seemed to think that Alice, as she called her, was his wife.  He always replied, “You mean Elspeth,” and she assented, but only, it was obvious, because she feared to contradict him.  To Corp and Gavinia she would still say passionately, “I want to go home!” and probably add fearfully, “Don’t tell him.”

Yet though this was not home to her, she seemed to be less unhappy here than in the doctor’s house, and she found a great deal to do.  All her old skill in needlework came back to her, and she sewed for the child such exquisite garments that she clapped her hands over them.

One day Tommy came with a white face and asked Gavinia if she knew whether a small brown parcel had been among the things brought by Grizel from the doctor’s house.

“It was in the box sent after me from Switzerland,” he told her, “and contained papers.”

Gavinia had seen no such package.

“She may have hidden it,” he said, and they searched, but fruitlessly.  He questioned Grizel gently, but questions alarmed her, and he desisted.

“It does not matter, Gavinia,” he said, with a ghastly smile; but on the following Sunday, when Corp called at the doctor’s house, the thought “Have they found it?” leaped in front of all thought of Grizel.  This was only for the time it takes to ask a question with the eyes, however, for Corp was looking very miserable.