He thought Tom had simply come to laugh at him until he assured him that he had only come to help. Suddenly Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid appeared. She reminded Grimes that he was only suffering now what he had inflicted on Tom. She told him, too, how his mother had gone to heaven, and would no more weep for him. Gradually Grimes's heart softened, and when Tom described her kindness to him at Vendale, Grimes wept. Then his tears did for him what his mother's could not do, for as they fell they washed the soot off his face and his clothes, and loosened the mortar from the bricks of the chimney.
"Will you obey me if I give you a chance?" said Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid.
"As you please, ma'am. For I'm beat, and that's the truth," said he.
"Be it so, then--you may come out. But remember, disobey me again, and into a worse place still you will go."
"I beg your pardon, ma'am, but I never disobeyed you that I know of. I never set eyes upon you until I came to these ugly quarters."
"Never saw me? Who said 'Those that will be foul, foul they will be'?"
Grimes looked up, and Tom looked up, too; for the voice was that of the Irishwoman who met them the day they went out together to Harthover. She ordered Grimes to march off in the custody of the truncheon, who was to see that he devoted himself to the considerable task of sweeping out the crater of Etna.
Tom went back to St. Brandan's Isle, and there found Ellie--grown into a beautiful woman. And he looked at her, and she looked at him; and they liked the employment so much that they stood and looked for seven years more, and neither spoke nor stirred.
At last they heard the fairy say, "Attention, children! Are you never going to look at me again?"
They looked, and both of them cried out at once: "You are our dear Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby! No, you are good Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid; but you are grown quite beautiful now."