ible friends. Even Miss
Ailie, who now had a dressmaker in the blue-and-white room, sitting on a
bedroom chair and sewing for her life (oh, the agony--or is it the
rapture?--of having to decide whether to marry in gray with beads or
brown plain to the throat), even sympathetic Miss Ailie, having met with
several rebuffs, said that Grizel had a most unaffectionate nature, and,
"Ay, she's hardy," agreed the town, "but it's better, maybe, for
hersel'." There are none so unpopular as the silent ones.

If only Miss Ailie, or others like her, could have slipped noiselessly
into Double Dykes at night, they would have found Grizel's pillow wet.
But she would have heard them long before they reached the door, and
jumped to the floor in terror, thinking it was her father's step at
last. For, unknown to anyone, his coming, which the town so anxiously
desired, was her one dread. She had told Tommy what she should say to
him if he came, and Tommy had been awed and delighted, they were such
scathing things; probably, had the necessity arisen, she would have
found courage to say them, but they were made up in the daytime, and at
night they brought less comfort. Then she listened fearfully and longed
for the morning, wild ideas coursing through her head of flying before
he could seize her; but when morning came it brought other thoughts, as
of the strange remarks she had heard about her mamma and herself during
the past few days. To brood over these was the most unhealthy occupation
she could find, but it was her only birthright. Many of the remarks came
unguardedly from lips that had no desire to pain her, others fell in a
rage because she would not tell what were the names in her letter to
God. The words that troubled her most, perhaps, were the doctor's, "She
is a brave lass, but it must be in her blood." They were not intended
for her ears, but she heard. "What did he mean?" she asked Miss Ailie,
Mrs. Dishart, and others who came to see her, and they replied
awkwardly, that it had only been a doctor's remark, of no importance to
people who were well. "Then why are you crying?" she demanded, looking
them full in the face with eyes there was no deceiving.

"Oh, why is everyone afraid to tell me the truth!" she would cry,
beating her palms in anguish.

She walked into McQueen's surgery and said, "Could you not cut it out?"
so abruptly that he wondered what she was speaking about.

"The bad thing that is in my blood," she explained.