her work so well. But he was not doubting her; he knew already that this
girl was clothed in truthfulness.

"Was it you that kept this house so clean?" he asked, almost irritably,
for he himself was the one undusted, neglected-looking thing in it, and
he was suddenly conscious of his frayed wristband and of buttons hanging
by a thread.

"Yes."

"What age are you?"

"I think I am thirteen."

He looked long at her, vindictively she thought, but he was only
picturing the probable future of a painted lady's child, and he said
mournfully to himself, "Ay, it does not even end here; and that's the
crowning pity of it." But Grizel only heard him say, "Poor thing!" and
she bridled immediately.

"I won't let you pity me," she cried.

"You dour brat!" he retorted. "But you need not think you are to have
everything your own way still. I must get some Monypenny woman to take
you till the funeral is over, and after that--"

"I won't go," said Grizel, determinedly, "I shall stay with mamma till
she is buried."

He was not accustomed to contradiction, and he stamped his foot. "You
shall do as you are told," he said.

"I won't!" replied Grizel, and she also stamped her foot.

"Very well, then, you thrawn tid, but at any rate I'll send in a woman
to sleep with you."

"I want no one. Do you think I am afraid?"

"I think you will be afraid when you wake up in the darkness, and find
yourself alone with--with it."

"I sha'n't, I shall remember at once that she is to be buried nicely in
the cemetery, and that will make me happy."

"You unnatural--"

"Besides, I sha'n't sleep, I have something to do."

His curiosity again got the better of the doctor. "What can you have to
do at such a time?" he demanded, and her reply surprised him:

"I am to make a dress."

"You!"

"I have made them before now," she said indignantly.

"But at such a time!"

"It is a black dress," she cried, "I don't have one, I am to make it
out of mamma's."

He said nothing for some time, then "When did you think of this?"

"I thought of it weeks ago, I bought crape at the corner shop to be
ready, and--"

She thought he was looking at her in horror, and stopped abruptly. "I
don't care what you think," she said.

"What I do think," he retorted, taking up his hat, "is, that you are a
most exasperating lassie. If I bide here another minute I believe you'll
get round me."

"I don't want to get round you."

"Then what makes you say such t