pleased assent to
them, or pouted at them, and terrified Elspeth knew that she was talking
to the man who never came.

When she saw Elspeth she stopped irresolutely, and the two stood looking
in fear at each other. "You are not my brat, are you?" the Painted Lady
asked.

"N-no," the child gasped.

"Then why don't you call me nasty names?"

"I dinna never call you names," Elspeth replied, but the woman still
looked puzzled.

"Perhaps you are naughty also?" she said doubtfully, and then, as if
making up her mind that it must be so, she came closer and said, with a
voice full of pity: "I am so sorry."

Elspeth did not understand half of it, but the pitying voice, which was
of the rarest sweetness, drove away much of her fear, and she said: "Do
you no mind me? I was wi' Tommy when he gave you the gold packet on
Muckley night."

Then the Painted Lady remembered. "He took such a fancy to me," she
said, with a pleased simper, and then she looked serious again.

"Do you love him?" she asked, and Elspeth nodded.

"But is he all the world to you?"

"Yes," Elspeth said.

The Painted Lady took her by the arm and said impressively, "Don't let
him know."

"But he does know," said Elspeth.

"I am so sorry," the Painted Lady said again. "When they know too well,
then they have no pity."

"But I want Tommy to know," Elspeth insisted.

"That is the woeful thing," the Painted Lady said, rocking her arms in a
way that reminded the child of Grizel. "We want them to know, we cannot
help liking them to know!"

Suddenly she became confidential. "Do you think I showed my love too
openly?" she asked eagerly. "I tried to hide it, you know. I covered my
face with my hands, but he pulled them away, and then, of course, he
knew."

She went on, "I kissed his horse's nose, and he said I did that because
it was his horse. How could he know? When I asked him how he knew, he
kissed me, and I pretended to be angry and ran away. But I was not
angry, and I said to myself, 'I am glad, I am glad, I am glad!'

"I wanted so to be good, but--It is so difficult to refuse when you
love him very much, don't you think?"

The pathos of that was lost on the girl, and the Painted Lady continued
sadly: "It would be so nice, would it not, if they liked us to be good?
I think it would be sweet." She bent forward and whispered emphatically,
"But they don't, you know--it bores them.

"Never bore them--and they are so easily bored! It bores them