then for once that she was troubled she was a hundred times irresponsible with glee, and “Oh, you dearest, darlingest,” she would cry to him, “I must dance,—­I must, I must!—­though it is a fast-day; and you must dance with your mother this instant—­I am so happy, so happy!” “Mother” was his nickname for her, and she delighted in the word.  She lorded it over him as if he were her troublesome boy.

How could she be other than glorious when there was so much to do?  The work inside the house she made for herself, and outside the doctor made it for her.  At last he had found for nurse a woman who could follow his instructions literally, who understood that if he said five o’clock for the medicine the chap of six would not do as well, who did not in her heart despise the thermometer, and who resolutely prevented the patient from skipping out of bed to change her pillow-slips because the minister was expected.  Such tyranny enraged every sufferer who had been ill before and got better; but what they chiefly complained of to the doctor (and he agreed with a humourous sigh) was her masterfulness about fresh air and cold water.  Windows were opened that had never been opened before (they yielded to her pressure with a groan); and as for cold water, it might have been said that a bath followed her wherever she went—­not, mark me, for putting your hands and face in, not even for your feet; but in you must go, the whole of you, “as if,” they said indignantly, “there was something the matter with our skin.”

She could not gossip, not even with the doctor, who liked it of an evening when he had got into his carpet shoes.  There was no use telling her a secret, for she kept it to herself for evermore.  She had ideas about how men should serve a woman, even the humblest, that made the men gaze with wonder, and the women (curiously enough) with irritation.  Her greatest scorn was for girls who made themselves cheap with men; and she could not hide it.  It was a physical pain to Grizel to hide her feelings; they popped out in her face, if not in words, and were always in advance of her self-control.  To the doctor this impulsiveness was pathetic; he loved her for it, but it sometimes made him uneasy.

He died in the scarlet-fever year.  “I’m smitten,” he suddenly said at a bedside; and a week afterwards he was gone.

“We must speak of it now, Grizel,” he said, when he knew that he was dying.

She pressed his hand.  She knew to what he was referring.  “Yes,” she said, “I should love you to speak of it now.”

“You and I have always fought shy of it,” he said, “making a pretence that it had altogether passed away.  I thought that was best for you.”

“Dearest, darlingest,” she said, “I know—­I have always known.”

“And you,” he said, “you pretended because you thought it was best for me.”

She nodded.  “And we saw through each other all the time,” she said.

“Grizel, has it passed away altogether now?”