She was quite a sedate young lady by the time she joined them at the well, and Tommy was the first to feel the change.  “Don’t you think this is all rather silly?” she said, when he addressed her as the Lady Griselda, and it broke the spell.  Two girls shot up into women, a beard grew on Tommy’s chin, and Corp became a father.  Grizel had blown Tommy’s pretty project to dust just when he was most gleeful over it; yet, instead of bearing resentment, he pretended not even to know that she was the culprit.

“Corp,” he said ruefully, “the game is up!” And “Listen,” he said, when they had sat down, crushed, by the old Cuttle Well, “do you hear anything?”

It was a very still evening.  “I hear nocht,” said Corp, “but the trickle o’ the burn.  What did you hear?”

“I thought I heard a baby cry,” replied Tommy, with a groan.  “I think it was your baby, Corp.  Did you hear it, Grizel?”

She understood, and nodded.

“And you, Elspeth?”

“Yes.”

“My bairn!” cried the astounded Corp.

“Yours,” said Tommy, reproachfully; “and he has done for us.  Ladies and gentlemen, the game is up.”

Yes, the game was up, and she was glad, Grizel said to herself, as they made their melancholy pilgrimage of what had once been an enchanted land.  But she felt that Tommy had been very forbearing to her, and that she did not deserve it.  Undoubtedly he had ordered her about, but in so doing had he not been making half-pathetic sport of his old self—­and was it with him that she was annoyed for ordering, or with herself for obeying?  And why should she not obey, when it was all a jest?  It was as if she still had some lingering fear of Tommy.  Oh, she was ashamed of herself.  She must say something nice to him at once.  About what?  About his book, of course.  How base of her not to have done so already! but how good of him to have overlooked her silence on that great topic!

It was not ignorance of its contents that had kept her silent.  To confess the horrid truth, Grizel had read the book suspiciously, looking as through a microscope for something wrong—­hoping not to find it, but peering minutely.  The book, she knew, was beautiful; but it was the writer of the book she was peering for—­the Tommy she had known so well, what had he grown into?  In her heart she had exulted from the first in his success, and she should have been still more glad (should she not?) to learn that his subject was woman; but no, that had irritated her.  What was perhaps even worse, she had been still more irritated on hearing that the work was rich in sublime thoughts.  As a boy, he had maddened her most in his grandest moments.  I can think of no other excuse for her.