ly dignity with which I submit to
the blow, and I have no doubt that, as soon as I heard that, I made it
more gentle and manly than ever!

"I have forbidden Elspeth," he told her, "to upbraid you for not
accepting me, with the result that she thinks me too good to live! Ha,
ha! what do you think, Grizel?"

It became known in the town that she had refused him. Everybody was on
Tommy's side. They said she had treated him badly. Even Aaron was
staggered at the sight of Tommy accepting his double defeat in such
good part. "And all the time I am the greatest cur unhung," says
Tommy. "Why don't you laugh, Grizel?"

Never, they said, had there been such a generous brother. The town was
astir about this poor man's gifts to the lucky bride. There were
rumours that among the articles was a silver coal-scuttle, but it
proved to be a sugar-bowl in that pattern. Three bandboxes came for
her to select from; somebody discovered who was on the watch, but may
I be struck dead if more than one went back. Yesterday it was bonnets;
to-day she is at Tilliedrum again, trying on her going-away dress. And
she really was to go away in it, a noticeable thing, for in Thrums
society, though they usually get a going-away dress, they are too
canny to go away in it The local shops were not ignored, but the best
of the trousseau came from London. "That makes the second box this
week, as I'm a living sinner," cries the lady on the watch again. When
boxes arrived at the station Corp wheeled them up to Elspeth without
so much as looking at the label.

Ah, what a brother! They said it openly to their own brothers, and to
Tommy in the way they looked at him.

"There has been nothing like it," he assured Grizel, "since Red
Riding-hood and the wolf. Why can't I fling off my disguise and cry,
'The better to eat you with!'"

He always spoke to her now in this vein of magnificent bitterness, but
Grizel seldom rewarded him by crying, "Oh, oh!" She might, however,
give him a patient, reproachful glance instead, and it had the
irritating effect of making him feel that perhaps he was under
life-size, instead of over it.

"I daresay you are right," says Tommy, savagely.

"I said nothing."

"You don't need to say it. What a grand capacity you have for knocking
me off my horse, Grizel!"

"Are you angry with me for that?"

"No; it is delicious to pick one's self out of the mud, especially
when you find it is a baby you are picking up, instead of a brute.