se two
courting like a born match-maker. Aaron has several reasons for hoping
that Elspeth will get our friend (as he would express it): one, that
this would keep her in Thrums; another, that to be the wife of a
doctor is second only in worldly grandeur to marrying the manse; and
thirdly and lastly, because he is convinced that it would be such a
staggerer to me. For he thinks I have not a notion of what is going
on, and that, if I had, I would whisk her away to London."

He gave Grizel the most graphic, solemn pictures of those evenings in
the cottage. "Conceive the four of us gathered round the kitchen
fire--three men and a maid; the three men yearning to know what is in
the maid's mind, and each concealing his anxiety from the others.
Elspeth gives the doctor a look which may mean much or nothing, and he
glares at me as if I were in the way, and I glance at Aaron, and he is
on tenterhooks lest I have noticed anything. Next minute, perhaps,
David gives utterance to a plaintive sigh, and Aaron and I pounce upon
Elspeth (with our eyes) to observe its effect on her, and Elspeth
wonders why Aaron is staring, and he looks apprehensively at me, and I
am gazing absent-mindedly at the fender.

"You may smile, Grizel," Tommy would say, "and now that I think of it,
I can smile myself, but we are an eerie quartet at the time. When the
strain becomes unendurable, one of us rises and mends the fire with
his foot, and then I think the rest of us could say 'Thank you.' We
talk desperately for a little after that, but soon again the awful
pall creeps down."

"If I were there," cried Grizel, "I would not have the parlour
standing empty all this time."

"We are coming to the parlour," Tommy replies impressively. "The
parlour, Grizel, now begins to stir. Elspeth has disappeared from the
kitchen, we three men know not whither. We did not notice her go; we
don't even observe that she has gone--we are too busy looking at the
fire. By and by the tremulous tinkling of an aged piano reaches us
from an adjoining chamber, and Aaron looks at me through his fingers,
and I take a lightning glance at Mr. David, and he uncrosses his legs
and rises, and sits down again. Aaron, in the most unconcerned way,
proceeds to cut tobacco and rub it between his fingers, and I stretch
out my legs and contemplate them with passionate approval. While we
are thus occupied David has risen, and he is so thoroughly at his ease
that he has begun to hum. He stroll