Chapter 33

THERE IS SOME ONE TO LOVE GRIZEL AT LAST

Corp was sitting on the Monypenny dyke, spitting on a candlestick and
then rubbing it briskly against his orange-colored trousers. The doctor
passing in his gig, both of them streaked, till they blended, with the
mud of Look-about-you road (through which you should drive winking
rapidly all the way), saw him and drew up.

"Well, how is Grizel?" he asked. He had avoided Double Dykes since the
funeral, but vain had been his attempts to turn its little inmate out of
his mind; there she was, against his will, and there, he now admitted to
himself angrily or with a rueful sigh, she seemed likely to remain until
someone gave her a home. It was an almost ludicrous distrust of himself
that kept him away from her; he feared that if he went to Double Dykes
her lonely face would complete his conquest. For oh, he was reluctant to
be got the better of, as he expressed it to himself. Maggy Ann, his
maid, was the ideal woman for a bachelor's house. When she saw him
coming she fled, guiltily concealing the hated duster; when he roared
at her for announcing that dinner was ready, she left him to eat it half
cold; when he spilled matches on the floor and then stepped upon them
and set the rug on fire, she let him tell her that she should be more
careful; she did not carry off his favorite boots to the cobbler because
they were down at heel; she did not fling up her arms in horror and cry
that she had brushed that coat just five minutes ago; nor did she count
the treasured "dottels" on the mantelpiece to discover how many pipes he
had smoked since morning; nor point out that he had stepped over the
door-mat; nor line her shelves with the new _Mentor_; nor give him up
his foot for sitting half the night with patients who could not pay--in
short, he knew the ways of the limmers, and Maggy Ann was a jewel. But
it had taken him a dozen years to bring her to this perfection, and well
he knew that the curse of Eve, as he called the rage for the duster,
slumbered in her rather than was extinguished. With the volcanic Grizel
in the house, Maggy Ann would once more burst into flame, and the
horrified doctor looked to right of him, to left of him, before him and
behind him, and everywhere he seemed to see two new brooms bearing down.
No, the brat, he would not have her; the besom, why did she bother him;
the witches take her, for putting the idea into his head, nailing it
into his head indeed. But nevertheless he was forever urging other
people to adopt her, assuring them that they would find her a treasure,
and even shaking his staff at them when they refused; and he was so
uneasy if he did not hear of her several times a day that he made
Monypenny the way to and from