her arms around his neck. These scenes brought the doctor
and Grizel very close together; but they became rarer as she grew up,
and then for once that she was troubled she was a hundred times
irresponsible with glee, and "Oh, you dearest, darlingest," she would
cry to him, "I must dance,--I must, I must!--though it is a fast-day;
and you must dance with your mother this instant--I am so happy, so
happy!" "Mother" was his nickname for her, and she delighted in the
word. She lorded it over him as if he were her troublesome boy.

How could she be other than glorious when there was so much to do? The
work inside the house she made for herself, and outside the doctor
made it for her. At last he had found for nurse a woman who could
follow his instructions literally, who understood that if he said five
o'clock for the medicine the chap of six would not do as well, who did
not in her heart despise the thermometer, and who resolutely prevented
the patient from skipping out of bed to change her pillow-slips
because the minister was expected. Such tyranny enraged every sufferer
who had been ill before and got better; but what they chiefly
complained of to the doctor (and he agreed with a humourous sigh) was
her masterfulness about fresh air and cold water. Windows were opened
that had never been opened before (they yielded to her pressure with a
groan); and as for cold water, it might have been said that a bath
followed her wherever she went--not, mark me, for putting your hands
and face in, not even for your feet; but in you must go, the whole of
you, "as if," they said indignantly, "there was something the matter
with our skin."

She could not gossip, not even with the doctor, who liked it of an
evening when he had got into his carpet shoes. There was no use
telling her a secret, for she kept it to herself for evermore. She had
ideas about how men should serve a woman, even the humblest, that made
the men gaze with wonder, and the women (curiously enough) with
irritation. Her greatest scorn was for girls who made themselves cheap
with men; and she could not hide it. It was a physical pain to Grizel
to hide her feelings; they popped out in her face, if not in words,
and were always in advance of her self-control. To the doctor this
impulsiveness was pathetic; he loved her for it, but it sometimes
made him uneasy.

He died in the scarlet-fever year. "I'm smitten," he suddenly said at
a bedside; and a week afterwards he was go