CHAPTER VII.
THE BEGINNING OF THE DUEL It was among old Dr.McQueen's sayings that when he met a man who was certified to be in no way remarkable he wanted to give three cheers.
There are few of them, even in a little place like Thrums; but David Gemmell was one.
So McQueen had always said, but Grizel was not so sure.

"He is very good-looking, and he does not know it," she would point out.

"Oh, what a remarkable man!" 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.