, 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.

He put his fingers through his gray, untidy hair. "That's the only comb
I have that is at hand when I want it," he went on, regardless of her
agony.

"All the stud-holes in my shirts," he said, "are now so frayed and
large that the studs fall out, and I find them in my socks at night."

Oh! oh! he was killing her, he was, but what cared he? "Look at my
clothes," said the cruel man, "I read when I'm eating, and I spill so
much gravy that--that we boil my waistcoat once a month, and make soup
of it!"

To Grizel this was the most tragic picture ever drawn by man, and he saw
that it was time to desist. "And it's all," he said, looking at her
sadly, "it's all because I am a lonely old bachelor with no womankind to
look after him, no little girl to brighten him when he comes home
dog-tired, no one to care whether his socks are in holes and his comb
behind the wash-stand, no soft hand to soothe his brow when it aches, no
one to work for, no one to love, many a one to close the old bachelor's
eyes when he dies, but none to drop a tear for him, no one to--"

"Oh! oh! oh! That is just like me. Oh! oh!" cried Grizel, and he pulled
her closer to him, saying, "The more reason we should join thegither;
Grizel, if you don't take pity on me, and come and bide with me and be
my little housekeeper, the Lord Almighty only knows what is to become of
the old doctor."

At this she broke away from him, and stood far back pressing her arms to
her sides, and she cried, "It is not out of charity you ask me, is it?"
and then she went a little nearer. "You would not say it if it wasn't
true, would you?"

"No, my dawtie, it's true," he told her, and if he had been pitying
himself a little, there was an end of that now.

She remembered something and cried joyously, "And you knew what was in
my blood before you asked me, so I don't need t