ns. When she
had much to say it gurgled like a stream in a hurry; but its cooing
note was best worth remembering at the end of the day. There were
times when she looked like a boy. Her almost gallant bearing, the
poise of her head, her noble frankness--they all had something in them
of a princely boy who had never known fear.

I have no wish to hide her defects; I would rather linger over them,
because they were part of Grizel, and I am sorry to see them go one by
one. Thrums had not taken her to its heart. She was a proud-purse,
they said, meaning that she had a haughty walk. Her sense of justice
was too great. She scorned frailties that she should have pitied. (How
strange to think that there was a time when pity was not the feeling
that leaped to Grizel's bosom first!) She did not care for study. She
learned French and the pianoforte to please the doctor; but she
preferred to be sewing or dusting. When she might have been reading,
she was perhaps making for herself one of those costumes that annoyed
every lady of Thrums who employed a dressmaker; or, more probably, it
was a delicious garment for a baby; for as soon as Grizel heard that
there was a new baby anywhere, all her intellect deserted her, and she
became a slave. Books often irritated her because she disagreed with
the author; and it was a torment to her to find other people holding
to their views when she was so certain that hers were right. In church
she sometimes rocked her arms; and the old doctor by her side knew
that it was because she could not get up and contradict the minister.
She was, I presume, the only young lady who ever dared to say that she
hated Sunday because there was so much sitting still in it.

Sitting still did not suit Grizel. At all other times she was happy;
but then her mind wandered back to the thoughts that had lived too
closely with her in the old days, and she was troubled. What woke her
from these reveries was probably the doctor's hand placed very
tenderly on her shoulder, and then she would start, and wonder how
long he had been watching her, and what were the grave thoughts
behind his cheerful face; for the doctor never looked more cheerful
than when he was drawing Grizel away from the ugly past, and he talked
to her as if he had noticed nothing; but after he went upstairs he
would pace his bedroom for a long time; and Grizel listened, and knew
that he was thinking about her. Then, perhaps, she would run up to
him, and put