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.
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