A father to be proud of!  They were the words heard by Grizel as she entered.  She also saw Gavinia looking admiringly at her man, and in that doleful moment she thought she understood all.  It was Corp who had done it, and Tommy had been the looker-on.  He had sought to keep the incident secret because, though he was in it, the glory had been won by another (oh, how base!), and now, profiting by the boy’s mistake, he was swaggering in that other’s clothes (oh, baser still!).  Everything was revealed to her in a flash, and she stooped over the baby to hide a sudden tear.  She did not want to hear any more.

The baby cried.  Babies are aware that they can’t do very much; but all of them who knew Grizel were almost contemptuously confident of their power over her, and when this one saw (they are very sharp) that in his presence she could actually think of something else, he was so hurt that he cried.

Was she to be blamed for thinking so meanly of Tommy?  You can blame her with that tear in her eye if you choose; but I can think only of the gladness that came afterwards when she knew she had been unjust to him.  “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” the bird sang to its Creator when the sun came out after rain, and it was Grizel’s song as she listened to Corp’s story of heroic Tommy.  There was no room in her exultant heart for remorse.  It would have shown littleness to be able to think of herself at all when she could think so gloriously of him.  She was more than beautiful now; she was radiant; and it was because Tommy was the man she wanted him to be.  As those who are cold hold out their hands to the fire did she warm her heart at what Corp had to tell, and the great joy that was lit within her made her radiant.  Now the baby was in her lap, smiling back to her.  He thought he had done it all.  “So you thought you could resist me!” the baby crowed.

The glove had not been mentioned yet.  “The sweetest thing of all to me,” Grizel said, “is that he did not want me to hear the story from you, Corp, because he knew you would sing his praise so loudly.”

“I’m thinking,” said Gavinia, archly, “he had another reason for no wanting you to question Corp.  Maybe he didna want you to ken about the London lady and her glove.  Will you tell her, man, or will I?”

They told her together, and what had been conjectures were now put forward as facts.  Tommy had certainly said a London lady, and as certainly he had given her name, but what it was Corp could not remember.  But “Give her this and tell her it never left my heart”—­he could swear to these words.

“And no words could be stronger,” Gavinia said triumphantly.  She produced the glove, and was about to take off its paper wrapping when Grizel stopped her.

“We have no right, Gavinia.”  “I suppose we hinna, and I’m thinking the pocket it came out o’ is feeling gey toom without it.  Will you take it back to him?”