"I don't know," she said, "no one will tell me, but it is something you can't love."
"You have a terrible wish to be loved," he said in wonder, and she nodded her head wistfully. "That is not what I wish for most of all, though," she told him, and when he asked what she wished for most of all, she said, "To love somebody; oh, it would be sweet!"
To Tommy, most sympathetic of mortals, she seemed a very pathetic little figure, and tears came to his eyes as he surveyed her; he could always cry very easily.
"If it wasna for Elspeth," he began, stammering, "I could love you, but you winna let a body do onything on the sly."
It was a vague offer, but she understood, and became the old Grizel at once. "I don't want you to love me," she said indignantly; "I don't think you know how to love."
"Neither can you know, then," retorted Tommy, huffily, "for there's nobody for you to love."
"Yes, there is," she said, "and I do love her and she loves me."
"But wha is she?"
"That girl." To his amazement she pointed to her own reflection in the famous mirror the size of which had scandalized Thrums. Tommy thought this affection for herself barely respectable, but he dared not say so lest he should be put to the door. "I love her ever so much," Grizel went on, "and she is so fond of me, she hates to see me unhappy. Don't look so sad, dearest, darlingest," she cried vehemently; "I love you, you know, oh, you sweet!" and with each epithet she kissed her reflection and looked defiantly at the boy.
"But you canna put your arms round her and hug her," he pointed out triumphantly, and so he had the last word after all. Unfortunately Grizel kept this side of her, new even to Tommy, hidden from all others, and her unresponsiveness lost her many possible friends. Even Miss Ailie, who now had a dressmaker in the blue-and-white room, sitting on a bedroom chair and sewing for her life (oh, the agony—or is it the rapture?—of having to decide whether to marry in gray with beads or brown plain to the throat), even sympathetic Miss Ailie, having met with several rebuffs, said that Grizel had a most unaffectionate nature, and, "Ay, she's hardy," agreed the town, "but it's better, maybe, for hersel'." There are none so unpopular as the silent ones.