m properly! She could not help liking to be a
mother to men; she wanted them to be the most noble characters, but
completely dependent on her.

Tommy walked home with her, and it seemed at first as if Elspeth's
absence was to be no help to him. He could not even plagiarize from
"Sandys on Woman." No one knew so well the kind of thing he should be
saying, and no one could have been more anxious to say it, but a
weight of shyness sat on the lid of Tommy. Having for half an hour
raged internally at his misfortune, he now sullenly embraced it. "If I
am this sort of an ass, let me be it in the superlative degree," he
may be conceived saying bitterly to himself. He addressed Grizel
coldly as "Miss McQueen," a name she had taken by the doctor's wish
soon after she went to live with him.

"There is no reason why you should call me that," she said. "Call me
Grizel, as you used to do."

"May I?" replied Tommy, idiotically. He knew it was idiotic, but that
mood now had grip of him.

"But I mean to call you Mr. Sandys," she said decisively.

He was really glad to hear it, for to be called Tommy by anyone was
now detestable to him (which is why I always call him Tommy in these
pages). So it was like him to say, with a sigh, "I had hoped to hear
you use the old name."

That sigh made her look at him sharply. He knew that he must be
careful with Grizel, and that she was irritated, but he had to go on.

"It is strange to me," said Sentimental Tommy, "to be back here after
all those years, walking this familiar road once more with you. I
thought it would make me feel myself a boy again, but, heigh-ho, it
has just the opposite effect: I never felt so old as I do to-day."

His voice trembled a little, I don't know why. Grizel frowned.

"But you never were as old as you are to-day, were you?" she inquired
politely. It whisked Tommy out of dangerous waters and laid him at her
feet. He laughed, not perceptibly or audibly, of course, but somewhere
inside him the bell rang. No one could laugh more heartily at himself
than Tommy, and none bore less malice to those who brought him to
land.

"That, at any rate, makes me feel younger," he said candidly; and now
the shyness was in full flight.

"Why?" asked Grizel, still watchful.

"It is so like the kind of thing you used to say to me when we were
boy and girl. I used to enrage you very much, I fear," he said, half
gleefully.

"Yes," she admitted, with a smile, "you did."

"And