her about the unborn
she had the pretty idea that they should live with beautiful thoughts,
so that these might become part of the child.

When Gavinia told this to Corp, he gulped and said, "I wonder God
could hae haen the heart."

"Life's a queerer thing," Gavinia replied, sadly enough, "than we used
to think it when we was bairns in the Den."

He spoke of it to Grizel. She let Corp speak of anything to her
because he was so loyal to Tommy.

"You've given away a' your bonny things, Grizel," he said, "one by
one, and this notion is the bonniest o' them a'. I'm thinking that
when it cam' into your head you meant it for yoursel'."

Grizel smiled at him.

"I mind," Corp went on, "how when you was little you couldna see a
bairn without rocking your arms in a waeful kind o' a way, and we
could never thole the meaning o't. It just comes over me this minute
as it meant that when you was a woman you would like terrible to hae
bairns o' your ain, and you doubted you never should."

She raised her hand to stop him. "You see, I was not meant to have
them, Corp," she said. "I think that when women are too fond of other
people's babies they never have any of their own."

But Corp shook his head. "I dinna understand it," he told her, "but
I'm sure you was meant to hae them. Something's gane wrang."

She was still smiling at him, but her eyes were wet now, and she drew
him on to talk of the days when Tommy was a boy. It was sweet to
Grizel to listen while Elspeth and David told her of the thousand
things Tommy had done for her when she was ill, but she loved best to
talk with Corp of the time when they were all children in the Den. The
days of childhood are the best.

She lived so long after Tommy that she was almost a middle-aged woman
when she died.

And so the Painted Lady's daughter has found a way of making Tommy's
life the story of a perfect lover, after all. The little girl she had
been comes stealing back into the book and rocks her arms joyfully,
and we see Grizel's crooked smile for the last time.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Tommy and Grizel, by J.M. Barrie

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