Elspeth shuddered. "Do you think she's here often, Tommy?" she asked.
"Just when she has a daft fit on, and they say she's wise sax days in seven."
This made the Jacobite meetings eerie events for Elspeth, but Tommy liked them the better; and what were they not to Grizel, who ran to them with passionate fondness every Saturday night? Sometimes she even outdistanced her haunting dreads, for she knew that her mother did not think herself seriously ill; and had not the three gentlemen made light of that curious cough? So there were nights when the lair saw Grizel go riotous with glee, laughing, dancing, and shouting over-much, like one trying to make up for a lost childhood. But it was also noticed that when the time came to leave the Den she was very loath, and kissed her hands to the places where she had been happiest, saying, wistfully, and with pretty gestures that were foreign to Thrums, "Good-night, dear Cuttle Well! Good-by, sweet, sweet Lair!" as if she knew it could not last. These weekly risings in the Den were most real to Tommy, but it was Grizel who loved them best.
CHAPTER XXIV — A ROMANCE OF TWO OLD MAIDS AND A STOUT BACHELOR
Came Gavinia, a burgess of the besieged city, along the south shore of the Silent Pool. She was but a maid seeking to know what love might be, and as she wandered on, she nibbled dreamily at a hot sweet-smelling bridie, whose gravy oozed deliciously through a bursting paper-bag.
It was a fit night for dark deeds.
"Methinks she cometh to her damn!"
The speaker was a masked man who had followed her—he was sniffing ecstatically—since she left the city walls.