Grizel was not at the wedding; she was invited, but could not go because she was in mourning.  But only her parramatty frock was in mourning, for already she had been the doctor’s housekeeper for two full months, and her father had not appeared to plague her (he never did appear, it may be told at once), and so how could her face be woeful when her heart leapt with gladness?  Never had prisoner pined for the fields more than this reticent girl to be frank, and she poured out her inmost self to the doctor, so that daily he discovered something beautiful (and exasperating) about womanhood.  And it was his love for her that had changed her.  “You do love me, don’t you?” she would say, and his answer might be “I have told you that fifty times already;” to which she would reply, gleefully, “That is not often, I say it all day to myself.”

Exasperating?  Yes, that was the word.  Long before summer came, the doctor knew that he had given himself into the hands of a tyrant.  It was idle his saying that this irregularity and that carelessness were habits that had become part of him; she only rocked her arms impatiently, and if he would not stand still to be put to rights, then she would follow him along the street, brushing him as he walked, a sight that was witnessed several times while he was in the mutinous stage.

“Talk about masterfulness,” he would say, when she whipped off his coat or made a dart at the mud on his trousers; “you are the most masterful little besom I ever clapped eyes on.”

But as he said it he perhaps crossed his legs, and she immediately cried, “You have missed two holes in lacing your boots!”

Of a morning he would ask her sarcastically to examine him from top to toe and see if he would do, and examine him she did, turning him round, pointing out that he had been sitting “again” on his tails, that oh, oh, he must have cut that buttonhole with his knife.  He became most artful in hiding deficiencies from her, but her suspicions once roused would not sleep, and all subterfuge was vain.  “Why have you buttoned your coat up tight to the throat to-day?” she would demand sternly.

“It is such a cold morning,” he said.

“That is not the reason,” she replied at once (she could see through broadcloth at a glance), “I believe you have on the old necktie again, and you promised to buy a new one.”

“I always forget about it when I’m out,” he said humbly, and next evening he found on his table a new tie, made by Grizel herself out of her mamma’s rokelay.

It was related by one who had dropped in at the doctor’s house unexpectedly, that he found Grizel making a new shirt, and forcing the doctor to try on the sleeves while they were still in the pin stage.

She soon knew his every want, and just as he was beginning to want it, there it was at his elbow.  He realized what a study she had made of him when he heard her talking of his favorite dishes and his favorite seat, and his way of biting his underlip when in thought, and how hard he was on his left cuff.  It had been one of his boasts that he had no favorite dishes, etc., but he saw now that he had been a slave to them for years without knowing it.