But when Anne had gone Diana dried her tears and went to a beach picnic at White Sands with some of her Carmody cousins, where she contrived to enjoy herself tolerably well; while Marilla plunged fiercely into unnecessary work and kept at it all day long with the bitterest kind of heartache—the ache that burns and gnaws and cannot wash itself away in ready tears.
A rat who gnaws at a cat's tail invites destruction.
A mouse is gnawing at the root - if they killed it they would have golden apples again, but if it gnaws much longer the tree will wither altogether.
