n quietly. "I gave it to you. You know I am a man of sentiment
only; but you are without a scrap of it yourself, and so you will
never quite know what it is. It has its good points. We are a kindly
people. I was perhaps pluming myself on having made an heroic
proposal, and though you have made me see it just now as you see it,
as you see it I shall probably soon be putting on the same grand airs
again. Lately I discovered that the children who see me with Grizel
call me 'the Man with the Greetin' Eyes.' If I have greetin' eyes it
was real grief that gave them to me; but when I heard what I was
called it made me self-conscious, and I have tried to look still more
lugubrious ever since. It seems monstrous to you, but that, I believe,
is the kind of thing I shall always be doing. But it does not mean
that I feel no real remorse. They were greetin' eyes before I knew it,
and though I may pose grotesquely as a fine fellow for finding Grizel
a home where there is no child and can never be a child, I shall not
cease, night nor day, from tending her. It will be a grim business,
Gemmell, as you know, and if I am Sentimental Tommy through it all,
why grudge me my comic little strut?"

David said, "You can't take her to London."

"I shall take her to wherever she wants to go."

"There is one place only she wants to go to, and that is Double
Dykes."

"I am prepared to take her there."

"And your work?"

"It must take second place now. I must write; it is the only thing I
can do. If I could make a living at anything else I would give up
writing altogether."

"Why?"

"She would be pleased if she could understand, and writing is the joy
of my life--two reasons."

But the doctor smiled.

"You are right," said Tommy. "I see I was really thinking what a fine
picture of self-sacrifice I should make sitting in Double Dykes at a
loom!"

They talked of ways and means, and he had to admit that he had little
money. But the new book would bring in a good deal, David supposed.

"The manuscript is lost," Tommy replied, crushing down his agitation.

"Lost! When? Where?"

"I don't know. It was in the bag I left behind at St. Gian, and I
supposed it was still in it when the bag was forwarded to me here. I
did not look for more than a month. I took credit to myself for
neglecting my manuscript, and when at last I looked it was not there.
I telegraphed and wrote to the innkeeper at St. Gian, and he replied
that my things had been p