to tell it. What she
loves to hear most is that you really do want to marry me. She is so
fond of hearing that because it is what my father would never say to
her."

Tommy was so much moved that he could not speak, but in his heart he
gave thanks that what Grizel said of him to her mamma was true at
last.

"It makes her so happy," Grizel said, "that when I seem to see her now
she looks as sweet and pure as she must have been in the days when she
was an innocent girl. I think she can enter into my feelings more than
any other person could ever do. Is that because she was my mother? She
understands how I feel just as I can understand how in the end she was
willing to be bad because he wanted it so much."

"No, no, Grizel," Tommy cried passionately, "you don't understand
that!"

She rocked her arms. "Yes, I do," she said; "I do. I could never have
cared for such a man; but I can understand how mamma yielded to him,
and I have no feeling for her except pity, and I have told her so, and
it is what she loves to hear her daughter tell her best of all."

They put the subject from them, and she told him what it was that she
had come to rub out in Caddam. If you have read of Tommy's boyhood you
may remember the day it ended with his departure for the farm, and
that he and Elspeth walked through Caddam to the cart that was to take
him from her, and how, to comfort her, he swore that he loved her with
his whole heart, and Grizel not at all, and that Grizel was in the
wood and heard. And how Elspeth had promised to wave to Tommy in the
cart as long as it was visible, but broke down and went home sobbing,
and how Grizel took her place and waved, pretending to be Elspeth, so
that he might think she was bearing up bravely. Tommy had not known
what Grizel did for him that day, and when he heard it now for the
first time from her own lips, he realized afresh what a glorious girl
she was and had always been.

"You may try to rub that memory out of little Grizel's head," he
declared, looking very proudly at her, "but you shall never rub it out
of mine."

It was by his wish that they went together to the spot where she had
heard him say that he loved Elspeth only--"if you can find it," Tommy
said, "after all these years"; and she smiled at his mannish
words--she had found it so often since! There was the very clump of
whin.

And here was the boy to match. Oh, who by striving could make himself
a boy again as Tommy could! I tell