“Some people like that kind of nose,” replied Elspeth.  “It is not classic,” Tommy said sternly.

CHAPTER VI

GHOSTS THAT HAUNT THE DEN

Looking through the Tommy papers of this period, like a conscientious biographer, I find among them manuscripts that remind me how diligently he set to work at his new book the moment he went North, and also letters which, if printed, would show you what a wise and good man Tommy was.  But while I was fingering those, there floated from them to the floor a loose page, and when I saw that it was a chemist’s bill for oil and liniment I remembered something I had nigh forgotten.  “Eureka!” I cried.  “I shall tell the story of the chemist’s bill, and some other biographer may print the letters.”

Well, well! but to think that this scrap of paper should flutter into view to damn him after all those years!

The date is Saturday, May 28, by which time Tommy had been a week in Thrums without doing anything very reprehensible, so far as Grizel knew.  She watched for telltales as for a mouse to show at its hole, and at the worst, I think, she saw only its little head.  That was when Tommy was talking beautifully to her about her dear doctor.  He would have done wisely to avoid this subject; but he was so notoriously good at condolences that he had to say it.  He had thought it out, you may remember, a year ago, but hesitated to post it; and since then it had lain heavily within him, as if it knew it was a good thing and pined to be up and strutting.

He said it with emotion; evidently Dr. McQueen had been very dear to him, and any other girl would have been touched; but Grizel stiffened, and when he had finished, this is what she said, quite snappily: 

“He never liked you.”

Tommy was taken aback, but replied, with gentle dignity, “Do you think, Grizel, I would let that make any difference in my estimate of him?”

“But you never liked him,” said she; and now that he thought of it, this was true also.  It was useless to say anything about the artistic instinct to her; she did not know what it was, and would have had plain words for it as soon as he told her.  Please to picture Tommy picking up his beautiful speech and ramming it back into his pocket as if it were a rejected manuscript.

“I am sorry you should think so meanly of me, Grizel,” he said with manly forbearance, and when she thought it all out carefully that night she decided that she had been hasty.  She could not help watching Tommy for backslidings, but oh, it was sweet to her to decide that she had not found any.

“It was I who was horrid,” she announced to him frankly, and Tommy forgave her at once.  She offered him a present:  “When the doctor died I gave some of his things to his friends; it is the Scotch custom, you know.  He had a new overcoat; it had been worn but two or three times.  I should be so glad if you would let me give it to you for saying such sweet things about him.  I think it will need very little alteration.”