I think she
thanked God for that most of all.
And then she caught sight of her face--oh, oh! Her first practical act
as an engaged woman was to wash her face.
Engaged! But was she? Grizel laughed. It is not usually a laughing
matter, but she could not help that. Consider her predicament. She
could be engaged at once, if she liked, even before she wiped the
water from her face, or she might postpone it, to let Tommy share. The
careful reader will have noticed that this problem presented itself to
her at an awkward moment. She laughed, in short, while her face was
still in the basin, with the very proper result that she had to grope
for the towel with her eyes shut.
It was still a cold, damp face (Grizel was always in such a hurry)
when she opened her most precious drawer and took from it a certain
glove which was wrapped in silk paper, but was not perhaps quite so
conceited as it had been, for, alas and alack! it was now used as a
wrapper itself. The ring was inside it. If Grizel wanted to be
engaged, absolutely and at once, all she had to do was to slip that
ring upon her finger.
It had been hers for a week or more. Tommy had bought it in a certain
Scottish town whose merchant princes are so many, and have risen
splendidly from such small beginnings, that after you have been there
a short time you beg to be introduced to someone who has not got on.
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