“But wha is she?”

“That girl.”  To his amazement she pointed to her own reflection in the famous mirror the size of which had scandalized Thrums.  Tommy thought this affection for herself barely respectable, but he dared not say so lest he should be put to the door.  “I love her ever so much,” Grizel went on, “and she is so fond of me, she hates to see me unhappy.  Don’t look so sad, dearest, darlingest,” she cried vehemently; “I love you, you know, oh, you sweet!” and with each epithet she kissed her reflection and looked defiantly at the boy.

“But you canna put your arms round her and hug her,” he pointed out triumphantly, and so he had the last word after all.  Unfortunately Grizel kept this side of her, new even to Tommy, hidden from all others, and her unresponsiveness lost her many possible friends.  Even Miss Ailie, who now had a dressmaker in the blue-and-white room, sitting on a bedroom chair and sewing for her life (oh, the agony—­or is it the rapture?—­of having to decide whether to marry in gray with beads or brown plain to the throat), even sympathetic Miss Ailie, having met with several rebuffs, said that Grizel had a most unaffectionate nature, and, “Ay, she’s hardy,” agreed the town, “but it’s better, maybe, for hersel’.”  There are none so unpopular as the silent ones.

If only Miss Ailie, or others like her, could have slipped noiselessly into Double Dykes at night, they would have found Grizel’s pillow wet.  But she would have heard them long before they reached the door, and jumped to the floor in terror, thinking it was her father’s step at last.  For, unknown to anyone, his coming, which the town so anxiously desired, was her one dread.  She had told Tommy what she should say to him if he came, and Tommy had been awed and delighted, they were such scathing things; probably, had the necessity arisen, she would have found courage to say them, but they were made up in the daytime, and at night they brought less comfort.  Then she listened fearfully and longed for the morning, wild ideas coursing through her head of flying before he could seize her; but when morning came it brought other thoughts, as of the strange remarks she had heard about her mamma and herself during the past few days.  To brood over these was the most unhealthy occupation she could find, but it was her only birthright.  Many of the remarks came unguardedly from lips that had no desire to pain her, others fell in a rage because she would not tell what were the names in her letter to God.  The words that troubled her most, perhaps, were the doctor’s, “She is a brave lass, but it must be in her blood.”  They were not intended for her ears, but she heard.  “What did he mean?” she asked Miss Ailie, Mrs. Dishart, and others who came to see her, and they replied awkwardly, that it had only been a doctor’s remark, of no importance to people who were well.  “Then why are you crying?” she demanded, looking them full in the face with eyes there was no deceiving.