But sometimes it seemed best to let her go to the Den, she was in such a quiver of desire to go.  She hurried to it, so that he had to stride to keep up with her; and he said little until they got there, for she was too excited to listen.  She was very like her mother again; but it was not the man who never came that she went in search of—­it was a lost child.  I have not the heart to tell of the pitiful scenes in the Den while Grizel searched for her child.  They always ended in those two walking silently home, and for a day or two Grizel would be ill, and Tommy tended her, so that she was soon able to hasten to the Den again, holding out her arms as she ran.

“She makes no progress,” David said.

“I can keep her from slipping back,” Tommy still replied.  The doctor marvelled, but even he did not know the half of all her husband did for Grizel.  None could know half who was not there by night.  Here, at least, was one day ending placidly, they might say when she was in a tractable mood,—­so tractable that she seemed to be one of themselves,—­and Tommy assented brightly, though he knew, and he alone, that you could never be sure the long day had ended till the next began.

Often the happiest beginning had the most painful ending.  The greatest pleasure he could give her was to take her to see Elspeth’s baby girl, or that sturdy rogue, young Shiach, who could now count with ease up to seven, but swayed at eight, and toppled over on his way to ten; or their mothers brought them to her, and Grizel understood quite well who her visitors were, sometimes even called Elspeth by her right name, and did the honours of her house irreproachably, and presided at the tea-table, and was rapture personified when she held the baby Jean (called after Tommy’s mother), and sat gaily on the floor, ready to catch little Corp when he would not stop at seven.  But Tommy, whom nothing escaped, knew with what depression she might pay for her joy when they had gone.  Despite all his efforts, she might sit talking to herself, at first of pleasant things and then of things less pleasant.  Or she stared at her reflection in the long mirror and said:  “Isn’t she sweet!” or “She is not really sweet, and she did so want to be good!” Or instead of that she would suddenly go upon her knees and say, with clasped hands, the childish prayer, “Save me from masterful men,” which Jean Myles had told Tommy to teach Elspeth.  No one could have looked less masterful at those times than Tommy, but Grizel did not seem to think so.  And probably they had that night once more to search the Den.

“The children do her harm; she must not see them again,” he decided.

“They give her pleasure at the time,” David said.  “It lightens your task now and then.”

“It is the future I am thinking of, Gemmell.  If she cannot progress, she shall not fall back.  As for me, never mind me.”

“Elspeth is in a sad state about you, though!  And you can get through so little work.”