but often it screwed up provokingly at one side, as when she smiled,
or was sorry, or for no particular reason; for she seemed unable to
control this vagary, which was perhaps a little bit of babyhood that
had forgotten to grow up with the rest of her. At those moments the
essence of all that was characteristic and delicious about her seemed
to have run to her mouth; so that to kiss Grizel on her crooked smile
would have been to kiss the whole of her at once. She had a quaint way
of nodding her head at you when she was talking. It made you forget
what she was saying, though it was really meant to have precisely the
opposite effect. Her voice was rich, with many inflections. When she
had much to say it gurgled like a stream in a hurry; but its cooing
note was best worth remembering at the end of the day. There were
times when she looked like a boy. Her almost gallant bearing, the
poise of her head, her noble frankness--they all had something in them
of a princely boy who had never known fear.

I have no wish to hide her defects; I would rather linger over them,
because they were part of Grizel, and I am sorry to see them go one by
one. Thrums had not taken her to its heart. She was a proud-purse,
they said, meaning that she had a haughty walk. Her sense of justice
was too great. She scorned frailties that she should have pitied. (How
strange to think that there was a time when pity was not the feeling
that leaped to Grizel's bosom first!) She did not care for study. She
learned French and the pianoforte to please the doctor; but she
preferred to be sewing or dusting. When she might have been reading,
she was perhaps making for herself one of those costumes that annoyed
every lady of Thrums who employed a dressmaker; or, more probably, it
was a delicious garment for a baby; for as soon as Grizel heard that
there was a new baby anywhere, all her intellect deserted her, and she
became a slave. Books often irritated her because she disagreed with