ve money for them, which was one
reason why the people thought her daft. She was tending her flowers now
with experienced eye, smelling them daintily, and every time she touched
them it was a caress.

The watchers retired into the field to compare impressions, and Elspeth
said emphatically, "I like her, Tommy, I'm not none fleid at her."

Tommy had liked her also, but being a man he said, "You forget that
she's an ill one."

"She looks as if she didna ken that hersel'," answered Elspeth, and
these words of a child are the best picture we can hope to get of the
Painted Lady.

On their return to the window, they saw that Grizel had finished her
ca'ming and was now sitting on the floor nursing a doll. Tommy had not
thought her the kind to shut her eyes to the truth about dolls, but she
was hugging this one passionately. Without its clothes it was of the
nine-pin formation, and the painted eyes and mouth had been incorporated
long since in loving Grizel's system; but it became just sweet as she
swaddled it in a long yellow frock and slipped its bullet head into a
duck of a pink bonnet. These articles of attire and the others that you
begin with had all been made by Grizel herself out of the colored
tissue-paper that shopkeepers wrap round brandy bottles. The doll's name
was Griselda, and it was exactly six months old, and Grizel had found
it, two years ago, lying near the Coffin Brig, naked and almost dead.

It was making the usual fuss at having its clothes put on, and Grizel
had to tell it frequently that of all the babies--which shamed it now
and again, but kept her so occupied that she forgot her mother. The
Painted Lady had sunk into the rocking-chair, and for a time she amused
herself with it, but by and by it ceased to rock, and as she sat looking
straight before her a change came over her face. Elspeth's hand
tightened its clutch on Tommy's; the Painted Lady had begun to talk to
herself.

She was not speaking aloud, for evidently Grizel, whose back was toward
her, heard nothing, but her lips moved and she nodded her head and
smiled and beckoned, apparently to the wall, and the childish face
rapidly became vacant and foolish. This mood passed, and now she was
sitting very still, only her head moving, as she looked in apprehension
and perplexity this way and that, like one who no longer knew where she
was, nor who was the child by the fire. When at last Grizel turned and
observed the change, she may have sighed