She had known him intimately for nearly six years now, ever since he
became the old doctor's assistant on the day when, in the tail of some
others, he came to Thrums, aged twenty-one, to apply for the post.
Grizel had even helped to choose him; she had a quaint recollection of
his being submitted to her by McQueen, who told her to look him over
and say whether he would do--an odd position in which to place a
fourteen-year-old girl, but Grizel had taken it most seriously, and,
indeed, of the two men only Gemmell dared to laugh.

"You should not laugh when it is so important," she said gravely; and
he stood abashed, although I believe he chuckled again when he retired
to his room for the night. She was in that room next morning as soon
as he had left it, to smell the curtains (he smoked), and see whether
he folded his things up neatly and used both the brush and the comb,
but did not use pomade, and slept with his window open, and really
took a bath instead of merely pouring the water into it and laying the
sponge on top (oh, she knew them!)--and her decision, after some days,
was that, though far from perfect, he would do, if he loved her dear
darling doctor sufficiently. By this time David was openly afraid of
her, which Grizel noticed, and took to be, in the circumstances, a
satisfactory sign.

She watched him narrowly for the next year, and after that she ceased
to watch him at all. She was like a congregation become so sure of its
minister's soundness that it can risk going to sleep. To begin with,
he was quite incapable of pretending to be anything he was not. Oh,
how unlike a boy she had once known! His manner, like his voice, was
quiet. Being himself the son of a doctor, he did not dodder through
life amazed at the splendid eminence he had climbed to, which is the
weakness of Scottish students when they graduate, and often for fifty