To all appearance, she lived only to scrape and hoard, moidering away her loveless life on the futile energies and sordid aims of a miser’s wretched pleasures.  But every now and then she had risen up out of the slough into which she had gradually sunk, and had done some grand things that marked her name with so many white stones.  While she gloried in her skill in filching from the pig what would serve the chickens, in making Jenny go short to save to-day’s baking of havre-bread, in skimping Tim’s bowl of porridge—­his appetite being a burden on her estate which she often declared would break her—­she had more than once given a hundred pounds at a blow to build a raft for a poor drowning wretch who must otherwise have sunk.  In fact, she was one of those people who are small with the small things of life and great with the great—­who will grudge a daily dole of a few threshed-out stalks of straw, but who sometimes, when rightly touched, will shower down with both hands full sheaves of golden grain.  That is, she had mean aims, a bad temper, no imagination, but the capacity for pity and generosity on occasions.

Above all things, she hated to be put out of the way or intruded on.  When her brother Emmanuel came down on her without a word of warning, bringing a girl with eyes that, as she said, made her feel foolish to look at, and a manner part scared, part stony, and wholly unconformable, telling her to keep this precious-bit madam like a bale of goods till called for, and to do the best with it she could, she was justified, she said, in splurging against his thoughtlessness and want of consideration, taking a body like that all of a heap, without With your leave or By your leave, or giving one a chance of saying Yes I will, or No I won’t.

But though she splurged she gave way; and after she had fumed and fussed, heckled the maid and harried the man, said she didn’t see as how she could, and she didn’t think as how she would, sworn there was no bedding fit to use, and that she had no place for the things—­apples and onions chiefly—­that were in the spare room if she gave it up for the young lass’s use, she seemed to quiet down, and going over to Leam, standing mutely by the black-boarded fireplace, put on her spectacles, peered up into her face, and said in shrill tones, rasping as a saw, though she meant to be kind, “Ah, well!  I suppose it must be; so go your ways up stairs with Jenny, bairn, and make yourself at home.  It’s little I have for a fine young miss like you to play with, but what I have you’re welcome to; so make no bones about it:  d’ye hear?”

“But I am in your way,” said Leam, not moving.  “You do not want me?”

Miss Gryce laughed.  “Want ye?” she shouted.  “Want ye, do you say?  Nay, nay, honey, it was no wanting of you or your marras that would ever have given me a headache, I’ll ensure ye.  But now that you are here you can bide as long as you’ve a mind; and you’re welcome kindly.  And Emmanuel there knows that my word is as good as my bond, and what I say I mean.”