She helped Tommy by her helplessness. There is reason to believe that once in London, when she had need of a new hat, but money there was none, Tommy, looking very defiant, studied ladies' hats in the shop-windows, brought all his intellect to bear on them, with the result that he did concoct out of Elspeth's old hat a new one which was the admired of O.P. Pym and friends, who never knew the name of the artist. But obviously he could not take proper care of himself, and there is a kind of woman, of whom Grizel was one, to whose breasts this helplessness makes an unfair appeal. Oh, to dress him properly! She could not help liking to be a mother to men; she wanted them to be the most noble characters, but completely dependent on her.
Tommy walked home with her, and it seemed at first as if Elspeth's absence was to be no help to him. He could not even plagiarize from "Sandys on Woman." No one knew so well the kind of thing he should be saying, and no one could have been more anxious to say it, but a weight of shyness sat on the lid of Tommy. Having for half an hour raged internally at his misfortune, he now sullenly embraced it. "If I am this sort of an ass, let me be it in the superlative degree," he may be conceived saying bitterly to himself. He addressed Grizel coldly as "Miss McQueen," a name she had taken by the doctor's wish soon after she went to live with him.
"There is no reason why you should call me that," she said. "Call me Grizel, as you used to do."
"May I?" replied Tommy, idiotically. He knew it was idiotic, but that mood now had grip of him.
"But I mean to call you Mr. Sandys," she said decisively.
He was really glad to hear it, for to be called Tommy by anyone was now detestable to him (which is why I always call him Tommy in these pages). So it was like him to say, with a sigh, "I had hoped to hear you use the old name."
That sigh made her look at him sharply. He knew that he must be careful with Grizel, and that she was irritated, but he had to go on.
"It is strange to me," said Sentimental Tommy, "to be back here after all those years, walking this familiar road once more with you. I thought it would make me feel myself a boy again, but, heigh-ho, it has just the opposite effect: I never felt so old as I do to-day."
His voice trembled a little, I don't know why. Grizel frowned.
"But you never were as old as you are to-day, were you?" she inquired politely. It whisked Tommy out of dangerous waters and laid him at her feet. He laughed, not perceptibly or audibly, of course, but somewhere inside him the bell rang. No one could laugh more heartily at himself than Tommy, and none bore less malice to those who brought him to land.
"That, at any rate, makes me feel younger," he said candidly; and now the shyness was in full flight.
"Why?" asked Grizel, still watchful.
"It is so like the kind of thing you used to say to me when we were boy and girl. I used to enrage you very much, I fear," he said, half gleefully.
"Yes," she admitted, with a smile, "you did."
"And then how you rocked your arms at me, Grizel! Do you remember?"
She remembered it all so well! This rocking of the arms, as they called it, was a trick of hers that signified sudden joy or pain. They hung rigid by her side, and then shook violently with emotion.
"Do you ever rock them now when people annoy you?" he asked.
"There has been no one to annoy me," she replied demurely, "since you went away."
"But I have come back," Tommy said, looking hopefully at her arms.
"You see they take no notice of you."
"They don't remember me yet. As soon as they do they will cry out."
Grizel shook her head confidently, and in this she was pitting herself against Tommy, always a bold thing to do.
"I have been to see Corp's baby," he said suddenly; and this was so important that she stopped in the middle of the road.
"What do you think of him?" she asked, quite anxiously.
"I thought," replied Tommy, gravely, and making use of one of Grizel's pet phrases, "I thought he was just sweet."
"Isn't he!" she cried; and then she knew that he was making fun of her.