Part 47 (1/2)

”Oh, would you do that?” she asked, brightening.

”I would do a good deal to get the chance,” he said.

”I should just love it!” she cried. ”I shall come now,” and she stepped light-heartedly into the gig, where the doctor joined her. Tommy, who had been in the background all this time, was about to jump up beside them, but McQueen waved him back, saying maliciously, ”There's just room for two, my man, so I won't interfere with your walk.”

Tommy, in danger of being left, very hot and stout and sulky, whimpered, ”What have I done to anger you?”

”You were going with her, you blackguard,” replied McQueen, not yet in full possession of the facts, for whether Tommy was or was not going with her no one can ever know.

”If I was,” cried the injured boy, ”it wasna because I wanted to go, it was because it wouldna have been respectable for her to go by hersel'.”

The doctor had already started his shalt, but at these astonis.h.i.+ng words he drew up sharply. ”Say that again,” ha said, as if thinking that his ears must have deceived him, and Tommy repeated his remark, wondering at its effect.

”And you tell me that you were going with her,” the doctor repeated, ”to make her enterprise more respectable?” and he looked from one to the other.

”Of course I was,” replied Tommy, resenting his surprise at a thing so obvious; and ”That's why I wanted him to come,” chimed in Grizel.

Still McQueen's glance wandered from the boy to the girl and from the girl to the boy. ”You are a pair!” he said at last, and he signed in silence to Tommy to mount the gig. But his manner had alarmed Grizel, ever watching herself lest she should stray into the ways of bad ones, and she asked anxiously, ”There was nothing wrong in it, was there?”

”No,” the doctor answered gravely, laying his hand on hers, ”no, it was just sweet.”

What McQueen had to say to her was not for Tommy's ears, and the conversation was but a makes.h.i.+ft until they reached Thrums, where he sent the boy home, recommending him to hold his tongue about the escapade (and Tommy of course saw the advisability of keeping it from Elspeth); but he took Grizel into his parlor and set her down on the buffet stool by the fire, where he surveyed her in silence at his leisure. Then he tried her in his old armchair, then on his sofa; then he put the _Mentor_ into her hand and told her to hold it as if it were a duster, then he sent her into the pa.s.sage, with instructions to open the door presently and announce ”Dinner is ready;” then he told her to put some coals on the fire; then he told her to sit at the window, first with an open book in her hand, secondly as if she was busy knitting; and all these things she did wondering exceedingly, for he gave no explanation except the incomprehensible one, ”I want to see what it would be like.”

She had told him in the gig why she had changed the position of the mirror at Double d.y.k.es, it was to let ”that darling” wave good-by to her from the window; and now having experimented with her in his parlor he drew her toward his chair, so that she stood between his knees. And he asked her if she understood why he had gone to Double d.y.k.es.

”Was it to get me to tell you what were the names in the letter?” she said, wistfully. ”That is what everyone asks me, but I won't tell, no, I won't;” and she closed her mouth hard.

He, too, would have liked to hear the names, and he sighed, it must be admitted, at sight of that determined mouth, but he could say truthfully, ”Your refusal to break your promise is one of the things that I admire in you.”

Admire! Grizel could scarce believe that this gift was for her. ”You don't mean that you really like me?” she faltered, but she felt sure all the time that he did, and she cried, ”Oh, but why, oh, how can you!”

”For one reason,” he said, ”because you are so good.”

”Good! Oh! oh! oh!” She clapped her hands joyously.

”And for another--because you are so brave.”

”But I am not really brave,” she said anxiously, yet resolved to hide nothing, ”I only pretend to be brave, I am often frightened, but I just don't let on.”

That, he told her, is the highest form of bravery, but Grizel was very, very tired of being brave, and she insisted impetuously, ”I don't want to be brave, I want to be afraid, like other girls.”

”Ay, it's your right, you little woman,” he answered, tenderly, and then again he became mysterious. He kicked off his shoes to show her that he was wearing socks that did not match. ”I just pull on the first that come to hand,” he said recklessly.

”Oh!” cried Grizel.

On his dusty book-shelves he wrote, with his finger, ”Not dusted since the year One.”

”Oh! oh!” she cried.