“What will Grizel do now?” Tommy whispered, and he would have returned to his watching place, but Elspeth pointed to the window.  Grizel was there closing it, and next moment the lamp was extinguished.  They heard a key turn in the lock, and presently Grizel, carrying warm wraps, passed very near them and proceeded along the double dykes, not anxious apparently to keep her mother in view, but slowly, as if she knew where to find her.  She went into the Den, where Tommy dared not follow her, but he listened at the stile and in the awful silence he fancied he heard the neighing of a horse.

The next time he met Grizel he was yearning to ask her how she spent that night, but he knew she would not answer; it would be a long time before she gave him her confidence again.  He offered her his piece of cold iron, however, and explained why he carried it, whereupon she flung it across the road, crying, “You horrid boy, do you think I am frightened at my mamma!” But when he was out of sight she came back and slipped the cold iron into her pocket.

CHAPTER XVII

IN WHICH TOMMY SOLVES THE WOMAN PROBLEM

Pity made Elspeth want to like the Painted Lady’s child now, but her own rules of life were all from a book never opened by Grizel, who made her religion for herself and thought God a swear; she also despised Elspeth for being so dependent on Tommy, and Elspeth knew it.  The two great subjects being barred thus, it was not likely that either girl, despite some attempts on Elspeth’s part, should find out the best that was in the other, without which friendship has no meaning, and they would have gone different ways had not Tommy given an arm to each.  He, indeed, had as little in common with Grizel, for most conspicuous of his traits was the faculty of stepping into other people’s shoes and remaining there until he became someone else; his individuality consisted in having none, while she could only be herself and was without tolerance for those who were different; he had at no time in his life the least desire to make other persons like himself, but if they were not like Grizel she rocked her arms and cried, “Why, why, why?” which is the mark of the “womanly” woman.  But his tendency to be anyone he was interested in implied enormous sympathy (for the time being), and though Grizel spurned his overtures, this only fired his pride of conquest.  We can all get whatever we want if we are quite determined to have it (though it be a king’s daughter), and in the end Tommy vanquished Grizel.  How?  By offering to let her come into Aaron’s house and wash it and dust it and ca’m it, “just as if you were our mother,” an invitation she could not resist.  To you this may seem an easy way, but consider the penetration he showed in thinking of it.  It came to him one day when he saw her lift the smith’s baby out of the gutter, and hug it with a passionate delight in babies.