, but there was no fear in her
face; the fear was on the face of her mother, who shrank from her in
unmistakable terror and would have screamed at a harsh word or a hasty
movement. Grizel seemed to know this, for she remained where she was,
and first she nodded and smiled reassuringly to her mother, and then,
leaning forward, took her hand and stroked it softly and began to talk.
She had laid aside her doll, and with the act become a woman again.

The Painted Lady was soothed, but her bewildered look came and went, as
if she only caught at some explanation Grizel was making, to lose it in
a moment. Yet she seemed most eager to be persuaded. The little watchers
at this queer play saw that Grizel was saying things to her which she
repeated docilely and clung to and lost hold of. Often Grizel
illustrated her words by a sort of pantomime, as when she sat down on a
chair and placed the doll in her lap, then sat down on her mother's lap;
and when she had done this several times Tommy took Elspeth into the
field to say to her:

"Do you no see? She means as she is the Painted Lady's bairn, just the
same as the doll is her bairn."

If the Painted Lady needed to be told this every minute she was daft
indeed, and Elspeth could peer no longer at the eerie spectacle. To
leave Tommy, however, was equally difficult, so she crouched at his feet
when he returned to the window, drawn there hastily by the sound of
music.

The Painted Lady could play on the spinet beautifully, but Grizel could
not play, though it was she who was trying to play now. She was running
her fingers over the notes, producing noises from them, while she swayed
grotesquely on her seat and made comic faces. Her object was to capture
her mother's mind, and she succeeded for a short time, but soon it
floated away from all control, and the Painted Lady fell a-shaking
violently. Then Grizel seemed to be alarmed, and her arms rocked
despairingly, but she went to her mother and took loving hold of her,
and the woman clung to her child in a way pitiful to see. She was on
Grizel's knee now, but she still shivered as if in a deadly chill, and
her feet rattled on the floor, and her arms against the sides of the
chair. Grizel pinned the trembling arms with her own and twisted her
legs round her mother's, and still the Painted Lady's tremors shook
them both, so that to Tommy they were as two people wrestling.

The shivering slowly lessened and at last ceased, but this seem