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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sentimental Tommy, by J. M. Barrie
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Sentimental Tommy
+       The Story of His Boyhood
+
+Author: J. M. Barrie
+
+Release Date: February 7, 2005 [EBook #14961]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SENTIMENTAL TOMMY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           SENTIMENTAL TOMMY
+
+                        THE STORY OF HIS BOYHOOD
+
+                            BY J. M. BARRIE
+
+        AUTHOR OF "THE LITTLE MINISTER," "A WINDOW IN THRUMS," ETC.
+
+                                  1896
+
+
+
+
+SENTIMENTAL TOMMY
+
+THE STORY OF HIS BOYHOOD
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+TOMMY CONTRIVES TO KEEP ONE OUT
+
+
+The celebrated Tommy first comes into view on a dirty London stair, and
+he was in sexless garments, which were all he had, and he was five, and
+so though we are looking at him, we must do it sideways, lest he sit
+down hurriedly to hide them. That inscrutable face, which made the
+clubmen of his later days uneasy and even puzzled the ladies while he
+was making love to them, was already his, except when he smiled at one
+of his pretty thoughts or stopped at an open door to sniff a potful. On
+his way up and down the stair he often paused to sniff, but he never
+asked for anything; his mother had warned him against it, and he carried
+out her injunction with almost unnecessary spirit, declining offers
+before they were made, as when passing a room, whence came the smell of
+fried fish, he might call in, "I don't not want none of your fish," or
+"My mother says I don't not want the littlest bit," or wistfully, "I
+ain't hungry," or more wistfully still, "My mother says I ain't
+hungry." His mother heard of this and was angry, crying that he had let
+the neighbors know something she was anxious to conceal, but what he had
+revealed to them Tommy could not make out, and when he questioned her
+artlessly, she took him with sudden passion to her flat breast, and
+often after that she looked at him long and woefully and wrung her
+hands.
+
+The only other pleasant smell known to Tommy was when the water-carts
+passed the mouth of his little street. His street, which ended in a dead
+wall, was near the river, but on the doleful south side of it, opening
+off a longer street where the cabs of Waterloo station sometimes found
+themselves when they took the wrong turning; his home was at the top of
+a house of four floors, each with accommodation for at least two
+families, and here he had lived with his mother since his father's
+death six months ago. There was oil-cloth on the stair as far as the
+second floor; there had been oil-cloth between the second floor and the
+third--Tommy could point out pieces of it still adhering to the wood like
+remnants of a plaster.
+
+This stair was nursery to all the children whose homes opened on it, not
+so safe as nurseries in the part of London that is chiefly inhabited by
+boys in sailor suits, but preferable as a centre of adventure, and here
+on an afternoon sat two. They were very busy boasting, but only the
+smaller had imagination, and as he used it recklessly, their positions
+soon changed; sexless garments was now prone on a step, breeches sitting
+on him.
+
+Shovel, a man of seven, had said, "None on your lip. You weren't never
+at Thrums yourself."
+
+Tommy's reply was, "Ain't my mother a Thrums woman?"
+
+Shovel, who had but one eye, and that bloodshot, fixed it on him
+threateningly.
+
+"The Thames is in London," he said.
+
+"'Cos they wouldn't not have it in Thrums," replied Tommy.
+
+"'Amstead 'Eath's in London, I tell yer," Shovel said.
+
+"The cemetery is in Thrums," said Tommy.
+
+"There ain't no queens in Thrums, anyhow."
+
+"There's the auld licht minister."
+
+"Well, then, if you jest seed Trafalgar Square!"
+
+"If you jest seed the Thrums town-house!"
+
+"St. Paul's ain't in Thrums."
+
+"It would like to be."
+
+After reflecting, Shovel said in desperation, "Well, then, my father
+were once at a hanging."
+
+Tommy replied instantly, "It were my father what was hanged."
+
+There was no possible answer to this save a knock-down blow, but though
+Tommy was vanquished in body, his spirit remained stanch; he raised his
+head and gasped, "You should see how they knock down in Thrums!" It was
+then that Shovel sat on him.
+
+Such was their position when an odd figure in that house, a gentleman,
+passed them without a word, so desirous was he to make a breath taken at
+the foot of the close stair last him to the top. Tommy merely gaped
+after this fine sight, but Shovel had experience, and "It's a kid or a
+coffin." he said sharply, knowing that only birth or death brought a
+doctor here.
+
+Watching the doctor's ascent, the two boys strained their necks over the
+rickety banisters, which had been polished black by trousers of the
+past, and sometimes they lost him, and then they saw his legs again.
+
+"Hello, it's your old woman!" cried Shovel. "Is she a deader?" he asked,
+brightening, for funerals made a pleasant stir on the stair.
+
+The question had no meaning for bewildered Tommy, but he saw that if his
+mother was a deader, whatever that might be, he had grown great in his
+companion's eye. So he hoped she was a deader.
+
+"If it's only a kid," Shovel began, with such scorn that Tommy at once
+screamed, "It ain't!" and, cross-examined, he swore eagerly that his
+mother was in bed when he left her in the morning, that she was still in
+bed at dinner-time, also that the sheet was over her face, also that she
+was cold.
+
+Then she was a deader and had attained distinction in the only way
+possible in that street. Shovel did not shake Tommy's hand warmly, the
+forms of congratulation varying in different parts of London, but he
+looked his admiration so plainly that Tommy's head waggled proudly.
+Evidently, whatever his mother had done redounded to his glory as well
+as to hers, and somehow he had become a boy of mark. He said from his
+elevation that he hoped Shovel would believe his tales about Thrums now,
+and Shovel, who had often cuffed Tommy for sticking to him so closely,
+cringed in the most snobbish manner, craving permission to be seen in
+his company for the next three days. Tommy, the upstart, did not see his
+way to grant this favor for nothing, and Shovel offered a knife, but did
+not have it with him; it was his sister Ameliar's knife, and he would
+take it from her, help his davy. Tommy would wait there till Shovel
+fetched it. Shovel, baffled, wanted to know what Tommy was putting on
+hairs for. Tommy smiled, and asked whose mother was a deader. Then
+Shovel collapsed, and his wind passed into Tommy.
+
+The reign of Thomas Sandys, nevertheless, was among the shortest, for
+with this question was he overthrown: "How did yer know she were cold?"
+
+"Because," replied Tommy, triumphantly, "she tell me herself."
+
+Shovel only looked at him, but one eye can be so much more terrible than
+two, that plop, plop, plop came the balloon softly down the steps of the
+throne and at the foot shrank pitifully, as if with Ameliar's knife in
+it.
+
+"It's only a kid arter all!" screamed Shovel, furiously. Disappointment
+gave him eloquence, and Tommy cowered under his sneers, not
+understanding them, but they seemed to amount to this, that in
+having a baby he had disgraced the house.
+
+"But I think," he said, with diffidence, "I think I were once one."
+
+Then all Shovel could say was that he had better keep it dark on that
+stair.
+
+Tommy squeezed his fist into one eye, and the tears came out at the
+other. A good-natured impulse was about to make Shovel say that though
+kids are undoubtedly humiliations, mothers and boys get used to them in
+time, and go on as brazenly as before, but it was checked by Tommy's
+unfortunate question, "Shovel, when will it come?"
+
+Shovel, speaking from local experience, replied truthfully that they
+usually came very soon after the doctor, and at times before him.
+
+"It ain't come before him," Tommy said, confidently.
+
+"How do yer know?"
+
+"'Cos it weren't there at dinner-time, and I been here since
+dinner-time."
+
+The words meant that Tommy thought it could only enter by way of the
+stair, and Shovel quivered with delight. "H'st!" he cried, dramatically,
+and to his joy Tommy looked anxiously down the stair, instead of up it.
+
+"Did you hear it?" Tommy whispered.
+
+Before he could control himself Shovel blurted out: "Do you think as
+they come on their feet?"
+
+"How then?" demanded Tommy; but Shovel had exhausted his knowledge of
+the subject. Tommy, who had begun to descend to hold the door, turned
+and climbed upwards, and his tears were now but the drop left in a cup
+too hurriedly dried. Where was he off to? Shovel called after him; and
+he answered, in a determined whisper: "To shove of it out if it tries to
+come in at the winder."
+
+This was enough for the more knowing urchin, now so full of good things
+that with another added he must spill, and away he ran for an audience,
+which could also help him to bait Tommy, that being a game most sportive
+when there are several to fling at once. At the door he knocked over,
+and was done with, a laughing little girl who had strayed from a more
+fashionable street. She rose solemnly, and kissing her muff, to reassure
+it if it had got a fright, toddled in at the first open door to be out
+of the way of unmannerly boys.
+
+Tommy, climbing courageously, heard the door slam, and looking down he
+saw--a strange child. He climbed no higher. It had come.
+
+After a long time he was one flight of stairs nearer it. It was making
+itself at home on the bottom step; resting, doubtless, before it came
+hopping up. Another dozen steps, and--It was beautifully dressed in one
+piece of yellow and brown that reached almost to its feet, with a bit
+left at the top to form a hood, out of which its pert face peeped
+impudently; oho, so they came in their Sunday clothes. He drew so near
+that he could hear it cooing: thought itself as good as upstairs, did
+it!
+
+He bounced upon her sharply, thinking to carry all with a high hand.
+"Out you go!" he cried, with the action of one heaving coals.
+
+She whisked round, and, "Oo boy or oo girl?" she inquired, puzzled by
+his dress.
+
+"None of your cheek!" roared insulted manhood.
+
+"Oo boy," she said, decisively.
+
+With the effrontery of them when they are young, she made room for him
+on her step, but he declined the invitation, knowing that her design was
+to skip up the stair the moment he was off his guard.
+
+"You don't needn't think as we'll have you," he announced, firmly. "You
+had best go away to--go to--" His imagination failed him. "You had best
+go back," he said.
+
+She did not budge, however, and his next attempt was craftier. "My
+mother," he assured her, "ain't living here now;" but mother was a new
+word to the girl, and she asked gleefully, "Oo have mother?" expecting
+him to produce it from his pocket. To coax him to give her a sight of it
+she said, plaintively, "Me no have mother."
+
+"You won't not get mine," replied Tommy doggedly.
+
+She pretended not to understand what was troubling him, and it passed
+through his head that she had to wait there till the doctor came down
+for her. He might come at any moment.
+
+A boy does not put his hand into his pocket until every other means of
+gaining his end has failed, but to that extremity had Tommy now come.
+For months his only splendid possession had been a penny despised by
+trade because of a large round hole in it, as if (to quote Shovel) some
+previous owner had cut a farthing out of it. To tell the escapades of
+this penny (there are no adventurers like coin of the realm) would be
+one way of exhibiting Tommy to the curious, but it would be a
+hard-hearted way. At present the penny was doubly dear to him, having
+been long lost and lately found. In a noble moment he had dropped it
+into a charity box hanging forlorn against the wall of a shop, where it
+lay very lonely by itself, so that when Tommy was that way he could hear
+it respond if he shook the box, as acquaintances give each other the
+time of day in passing. Thus at comparatively small outlay did he spread
+his benevolence over weeks and feel a glow therefrom, until the glow
+went, when he and Shovel recaptured the penny with a thread and a bent
+pin.
+
+This treasure he sadly presented to the girl, and she accepted it with
+glee, putting it on her finger, as if it were a ring, but instead of
+saying that she would go now she asked him, coolly,
+
+"Oo know tories?"
+
+"Stories!" he exclaimed, "I'll--I'll tell you about Thrums," and was
+about to do it for love, but stopped in time. "This ain't a good stair
+for stories," he said, cunningly. "I can't not tell stories on this
+stair, but I--I know a good stair for stories."
+
+The ninny of a girl was completely hoodwinked; and see, there they go,
+each with a hand in the muff, the one leering, oh, so triumphantly; the
+other trusting and gleeful. There was an exuberance of vitality about
+her as if she lived too quickly in her gladness, which you may remember
+in some child who visited the earth for but a little while.
+
+How superbly Tommy had done it! It had been another keen brain pitted
+against his, and at first he was not winning. Then up came Thrums,
+and--But the thing has happened before; in a word, Blücher. Nevertheless,
+Tommy just managed it, for he got the girl out of the street and on to
+another stair no more than in time to escape a ragged rabble, headed by
+Shovel, who, finding their quarry gone, turned on their leader
+viciously, and had gloomy views of life till his cap was kicked down a
+sewer, which made the world bright again.
+
+Of the tales told by Tommy that day in words Scotch and cockney, of
+Thrums, home of heroes and the arts, where the lamps are lit by a
+magician called Leerie-leerie-licht-the-lamps (but he is also friendly,
+and you can fling stones at him), and the merest children are allowed
+to set the spinning-wheels a-whirling, and dagont is the swear, and the
+stairs are so fine that the houses wear them outside for show, and you
+drop a pail at the end of a rope down a hole, and sometimes it comes up
+full of water, and sometimes full of fairies--of these and other
+wonders, if you would know, ask not a dull historian, nor even go to
+Thrums, but to those rather who have been boys and girls there and now
+are exiles. Such a one Tommy knows, an unhappy woman, foolish, not very
+lovable, flung like a stone out of the red quarry upon a land where it
+cannot grip, and tearing her heart for a sight of the home she shall see
+no more. From her Tommy had his pictures, and he colored them rarely.
+
+Never before had he such a listener. "Oh, dagont, dagont!" he would cry
+in ecstasy over these fair scenes, and she, awed or gurgling with mirth
+according to the nature of the last, demanded "'Nother, 'nother!"
+whereat he remembered who and what she was, and showing her a morsel of
+the new one, drew her to more distant parts, until they were so far from
+his street that he thought she would never be able to find the way back.
+
+His intention had been, on reaching such a spot, to desert her promptly,
+but she gave him her hand in the muff so confidingly that against his
+judgment he fell a-pitying the trustful mite who was wandering the
+world in search of a mother, and so easily diddled on the whole that
+the chances were against her finding one before morning. Almost
+unconsciously he began to look about him for a suitable one.
+
+They were now in a street much nearer to his own home than the spurts
+from spot to spot had led him to suppose. It was new to him, but he
+recognized it as the acme of fashion by those two sure signs; railings
+with most of their spikes in place, and cards scored with, the word
+"Apartments." He had discovered such streets as this before when in
+Shovel's company, and they had watched the toffs go out and in, and it
+was a lordly sight, for first the toff waggled a rail that was loose at
+the top and then a girl, called the servant, peeped at him from below,
+and then he pulled the rail again, and then the door opened from the
+inside, and you had a glimpse of wonder-land with a place for hanging
+hats on. He had not contemplated doing anything so handsome for the girl
+as this, but why should he not establish her here? There were many
+possible mothers in view, and thrilling with a sense of his generosity
+he had almost fixed on one but mistrusted the glint in her eye and on
+another when she saved herself by tripping and showing an undarned heel.
+
+He was still of an open mind when the girl of a sudden cried, gleefully,
+"Ma-ma, ma-ma!" and pointed, with her muff, across the street. The word
+was as meaningless to Tommy as mother had been to her, but he saw that
+she was drawing his attention to a woman some thirty yards away.
+
+"Man--man!" he echoed, chiding her ignorance; "no, no, you blether, that
+ain't a man, that's a woman; that's woman--woman."
+
+"Ooman--ooman," the girl repeated, docilely, but when she looked again,
+"Ma-ma, ma-ma," she insisted, and this was Tommy's first lesson that
+however young you catch them they will never listen to reason.
+
+She seemed of a mind to trip off to this woman, and as long as his own
+mother was safe, it did not greatly matter to Tommy whom she chose, but
+if it was this one, she was going the wrong way about it. You cannot
+snap them up in the street.
+
+The proper course was to track her to her house, which he proceeded to
+do, and his quarry, who was looking about her anxiously, as if she had
+lost something, gave him but a short chase. In the next street to the
+one in which they had first seen her, a street so like it that Tommy
+might have admired her for knowing the difference, she opened the door
+with a key and entered, shutting the door behind her. Odd to tell, the
+child had pointed to this door as the one she would stop at, which
+surprised Tommy very much.
+
+On the steps he gave her his final instructions, and she dimpled and
+gurgled, obviously full of admiration for him, which was a thing he
+approved of, but he would have liked to see her a little more serious.
+
+"That is the door. Well, then, I'll waggle the rail as makes the bell
+ring, and then I'll run."
+
+That was all, and he wished she had not giggled most of the time. She
+was sniggering, as if she thought him a very funny boy, even when he
+rang the bell and bolted.
+
+From a safe place he watched the opening of the door, and saw the
+frivolous thing lose a valuable second in waving the muff to him. "In
+you go!" he screamed beneath his breath. Then she entered and the door
+closed. He waited an hour, or two minutes, or thereabout, and she had
+not been ejected. Triumph!
+
+With a drum beating inside him Tommy strutted home, where, alas, a boy
+was waiting to put his foot through it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+BUT THE OTHER GETS IN
+
+
+To Tommy, a swaggerer, came Shovel sour-visaged; having now no cap of
+his own, he exchanged with Tommy, would also have bled the blooming
+mouth of him, but knew of a revenge that saves the knuckles: announced,
+with jeers and offensive finger exercise, that "it" had come.
+
+Shovel was a liar. If he only knowed what Tommy knowed!
+
+If Tommy only heard what Shovel had heard!
+
+Tommy was of opinion that Shovel hadn't not heard anything.
+
+Shovel believed as Tommy didn't know nuthin.
+
+Tommy wouldn't listen to what Shovel had heard.
+
+Neither would Shovel listen to what Tommy knew.
+
+If Shovel would tell what he had heard, Tommy would tell what he knew.
+
+Well, then, Shovel had listened at the door, and heard it mewling.
+
+Tommy knowed it well, and it never mewled.
+
+How could Tommy know it?
+
+'Cos he had been with it a long time.
+
+Gosh! Why, it had only comed a minute ago.
+
+This made Tommy uneasy, and he asked a leading question cunningly. A
+boy, wasn't it?
+
+No, Shovel's old woman had been up helping to hold it, and she said it
+were a girl.
+
+Shutting his mouth tightly; which was never natural to him, the startled
+Tommy mounted the stair, listened and was convinced. He did not enter
+his dishonored home. He had no intention of ever entering it again. With
+one salt tear he renounced--a child, a mother.
+
+On his way downstairs he was received by Shovel and party, who planted
+their arrows neatly. Kids cried steadily, he was told, for the first
+year. A boy one was bad enough, but a girl one was oh lawks. He must
+never again expect to get playing with blokes like what they was.
+Already she had got round his old gal who would care for him no more.
+What would they say about this in Thrums?
+
+Shovel even insisted on returning him his cap, and for some queer
+reason, this cut deepest. Tommy about to charge, with his head down, now
+walked away so quietly that Shovel, who could not help liking the funny
+little cuss, felt a twinge of remorse, and nearly followed him with a
+magnanimous offer: to treat him as if he were still respectable.
+
+Tommy lay down on a distant stair, one of the very stairs where _she_
+had sat with him. Ladies, don't you dare to pity him now, for he won't
+stand it. Rage was what he felt, and a man in a rage (as you may know if
+you are married) is only to be soothed by the sight of all womankind in
+terror of him. But you may look upon your handiwork, and gloat, an you
+will, on the wreck you have made. A young gentleman trusted one of you;
+behold the result. O! O! O! O! now do you understand why we men cannot
+abide you?
+
+If she had told him flat that his mother, and his alone, she would have,
+and so there was an end of it. Ah, catch them taking a straight road.
+But to put on those airs of helplessness, to wave him that gay good-by,
+and then the moment his back was turned, to be off through the air
+on--perhaps on her muff, to the home he had thought to lure her from. In
+a word, to be diddled by a girl when one flatters himself he is
+diddling! S'death, a dashing fellow finds it hard to bear. Nevertheless,
+he has to bear it, for oh, Tommy, Tommy, 'tis the common lot of man.
+
+His hand sought his pocket for the penny that had brought him comfort in
+dark hours before now; but, alack, she had deprived him even of it.
+Never again should his pinkie finger go through that warm hole, and at
+the thought a sense of his forlornness choked him and he cried. You may
+pity him a little now.
+
+Darkness came and hid him even from himself. He is not found again until
+a time of the night that is not marked on ornamental clocks, but has an
+hour to itself on the watch which a hundred thousand or so of London
+women carry in their breasts; the hour when men steal homewards
+trickling at the mouth and drawing back from their own shadows to the
+wives they once went a-maying with, or the mothers who had such travail
+at the bearing of them, as if for great ends. Out of this, the
+drunkard's hour, rose the wan face of Tommy, who had waked up somewhere
+clammy cold and quaking, and he was a very little boy, so he ran to his
+mother.
+
+Such a shabby dark room it was, but it was home, such a weary worn woman
+in the bed, but he was her son, and she had been wringing her hands
+because he was so long in coming, and do you think he hurt her when he
+pressed his head on her poor breast, and do you think she grudged the
+heat his cold hands drew from her warm face? He squeezed her with a
+violence that put more heat into her blood than he took out of it.
+
+And he was very considerate, too: not a word of reproach in him, though
+he knew very well what that bundle in the back of the bed was.
+
+She guessed that he had heard the news and stayed away through jealousy
+of his sister, and by and by she said, with a faint smile, "I have a
+present for you, laddie." In the great world without, she used few
+Thrums words now; you would have known she was Scotch by her accent
+only, but when she and Tommy were together in that room, with the door
+shut, she always spoke as if her window still looked out on the bonny
+Marywellbrae. It is not really bonny, it is gey an' mean an' bleak, and
+you must not come to see it. It is just a steep wind-swept street, old
+and wrinkled, like your mother's face.
+
+She had a present for him, she said, and Tommy replied, "I knows," with
+averted face.
+
+"Such a bonny thing."
+
+"Bonny enough," he said bitterly.
+
+"Look at her, laddie."
+
+But he shrank from the ordeal, crying, "No, no, keep her covered up!"
+
+The little traitor seemed to be asleep, and so he ventured to say,
+eagerly, "It wouldn't not take long to carry all our things to another
+house, would it? Me and Shovel could near do it ourselves."
+
+"And that's God's truth," the woman said, with a look round the room.
+"But what for should we do that?"
+
+"Do you no see, mother?" he whispered excitedly. "Then you and me could
+slip away, and--and leave her--in the press."
+
+The feeble smile with which his mother received this he interpreted
+thus, "Wherever we go'd to she would be there before us."
+
+"The little besom!" he cried helplessly.
+
+His mother saw that mischievous boys had been mounting him on his
+horse, which needed only one slap to make it go a mile; but she was a
+spiritless woman, and replied indifferently, "You're a funny litlin."
+
+Presently a dry sob broke from her, and thinking the child was the
+cause, soft-hearted Tommy said, "It can't not be helped, mother; don't
+cry, mother, I'm fond on yer yet, mother; I--I took her away. I found
+another woman--but she would come."
+
+"She's God's gift, man," his mother said, but she added, in a different
+tone, "Ay, but he hasna sent her keep."
+
+"God's gift!" Tommy shuddered, but he said sourly, "I wish he would take
+her back. Do you wish that, too, mother?"
+
+The weary woman almost said she did, but her arms--they gripped the baby
+as if frightened that he had sent for it. Jealous Tommy, suddenly
+deprived of his mother's hand, cried, "It's true what Shovel says, you
+don't not love me never again; you jest loves that little limmer!"
+
+"Na, na," the mother answered, passionate at last, "she can never be to
+me what you hae been, my laddie, for you came to me when my hame was in
+hell, and we tholed it thegither, you and me."'
+
+This bewildered though it comforted him. He thought his mother might be
+speaking about the room in which they had lived until six months ago,
+when his father was put into the black box, but when he asked her if
+this were so, she told him to sleep, for she was dog-tired. She always
+evaded him in this way when he questioned her about his past, but at
+times his mind would wander backwards unbidden to those distant days,
+and then he saw flitting dimly through them the elusive form of a child.
+He knew it was himself, and for moments he could see it clearly, but
+when he moved a step nearer it was not there. So does the child we once
+were play hide and seek with us among the mists of infancy, until one
+day he trips and falls into the daylight. Then we seize him, and with
+that touch we two are one. It is the birth of self-consciousness.
+
+Hitherto he had slept at the back of his mother's bed, but to-night she
+could not have him there, the place being occupied, and rather sulkily
+he consented to lie crosswise at her feet, undressing by the feeble fire
+and taking care, as he got into bed, not to look at the usurper. His
+mother watched him furtively, and was relieved to read in his face that
+he had no recollection of ever having slept at the foot of a bed before.
+But soon after he fell asleep he awoke, and was afraid to move lest his
+father should kick him. He opened his eyes stealthily, and this was
+neither the room nor the bed he had expected to see.
+
+The floor was bare save for a sheepskin beside the bed. Tommy always
+stood on the sheepskin while he was dressing because it was warm to the
+feet, though risky, as your toes sometimes caught in knots in it. There
+was a deal table in the middle of the floor with some dirty crockery
+on it and a kettle that would leave a mark, but they had been left there
+by Shovel's old girl, for Mrs. Sandys usually kept her house clean. The
+chairs were of the commonest, and the press door would not remain shut
+unless you stuck a knife between its halves; but there, was a gay blue
+wardrobe, spotted white where Tommy's mother had scraped off the mud
+that had once bespattered it during a lengthy sojourn at the door of a
+shop; and on the mantelpiece was a clock in a little brown and yellow
+house, and on the clock a Bible that had been in Thrums. But what Tommy
+was proudest of was his mother's kist, to which the chests of Londoners
+are not to be compared, though like it in appearance. On the inside of
+the lid of this kist was pasted, after a Thrums custom, something that
+his mother called her marriage lines, which she forced Shovel's mother
+to come up and look at one day, when that lady had made an innuendo
+Tommy did not understand, and Shovel's mother had looked, and though she
+could not read, was convinced, knowing them by the shape.
+
+Tommy lay at the foot of the bed looking at this room, which was his
+home now, and trying to think of the other one, and by and by the fire
+helped him by falling to ashes, when darkness came in, and packing the
+furniture in grotesque cloths, removed it piece by piece, all but the
+clock. Then the room took a new shape. The fireplace was over there
+instead of here, the torn yellow blind gave way to one made of spars of
+green wood, that were bunched up at one side, like a lady out for a
+walk. On a round table there was a beautiful blue cloth, with very few
+gravy marks, and here a man ate beef when a woman and a boy ate bread,
+and near the fire was the man's big soft chair, out of which you could
+pull hairs, just as if it were Shovel's sister.
+
+Of this man who was his father he could get no hold. He could feel his
+presence, but never see him. Yet he had a face. It sometimes pressed
+Tommy's face against it in order to hurt him, which it could do, being
+all short needles at the chin.
+
+Once in those days Tommy and his mother ran away and hid from some one.
+He did not know from whom nor for how long, though it was but for a
+week, and it left only two impressions on his mind, the one that he
+often asked, "Is this starving now, mother?" the other that before
+turning a corner she always peered round it fearfully. Then they went
+back again to the man and he laughed when he saw them, but did not take
+his feet off the mantelpiece. There came a time when the man was always
+in bed, but still Tommy could not see his face. What he did see was the
+man's clothes lying on the large chair just as he had placed them there
+when he undressed for the last time. The black coat and worsted
+waistcoat which he could take off together were on the seat, and the
+light trousers hung over the side, the legs on the hearthrug, with the
+red socks still sticking in them: a man without a body.
+
+But the boy had one vivid recollection of how his mother received the
+news of his father's death. An old man with a white beard and gentle
+ways, who often came to give the invalid physic, was standing at the
+bedside, and Tommy and his mother were sitting on the fender. The old
+man came to her and said, "It is all over," and put her softly into the
+big chair. She covered her face with her hands, and he must have thought
+she was crying, for he tried to comfort her. But as soon as he was gone
+she rose, with such a queer face, and went on tiptoe to the bed, and
+looked intently at her husband, and then she clapped her hands joyously
+three times.
+
+At last Tommy fell asleep with his mouth open, which is the most
+important thing that has been told of him as yet, and while he slept day
+came and restored the furniture that night had stolen. But when the boy
+woke he did not even notice the change; his brain traversed the hours it
+had lost since he lay down as quickly as you may put on a stopped clock,
+and with his first tick he was thinking of nothing but the deceiver in
+the back of the bed. He raised his head, but could only see that she had
+crawled under the coverlet to escape his wrath. His mother was asleep.
+Tommy sat up and peeped over the edge of the bed, then he let his eyes
+wander round the room; he was looking for the girl's clothes, but they
+were nowhere to be seen. It is distressing to have to tell that what was
+in his mind was merely the recovery of his penny. Perhaps as they were
+Sunday clothes she had hung them up in the wardrobe? He slipped on to
+the floor and crossed to the wardrobe, but not even the muff could he
+find. Had she been tired, and gone to bed in them? Very softly he
+crawled over his mother, and pulling the coverlet off the child's face,
+got the great shock of his childhood.
+
+It was another one!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SHOWING HOW TOMMY WAS SUDDENLY TRANSFORMED INTO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN
+
+
+It would have fared ill with Mrs. Sandys now, had her standoffishness to
+her neighbors been repaid in the same coin, but they were full of
+sympathy, especially Shovel's old girl, from whom she had often drawn
+back offensively on the stair, but who nevertheless waddled up several
+times a day with savory messes, explaining, when Mrs. Sandys sniffed,
+that it was not the tapiocar but merely the cup that smelt of gin. When
+Tommy returned the cups she noticed not only that they were suspiciously
+clean, but that minute particles of the mess were adhering to his nose
+and chin (perched there like shipwrecked mariners on a rock, just out of
+reach of the devouring element), and after this discovery she brought
+two cupfuls at a time. She was an Irish, woman who could have led the
+House of Commons, and in walking she seldom raised her carpet shoes from
+the ground, perhaps because of her weight, for she had an expansive
+figure that bulged in all directions, and there were always bits of her
+here and there that she had forgotten to lace. Round the corner was a
+delightful eating-house, through whose window you were allowed to gaze
+at the great sweating dumplings, and Tommy thought Shovel's mother was
+rather like a dumpling that had not been a complete success. If he ever
+knew her name he forgot it. Shovel, who probably had another name also,
+called her his old girl or his old woman or his old lady, and it was a
+sight to see her chasing him across the street when she was in liquor,
+and boastful was Shovel of the way she could lay on, and he was partial
+to her too, and once when she was giving it to him pretty strong with
+the tongs, his father (who followed many professions, among them that of
+finding lost dogs), had struck her and told her to drop it, and then
+Shovel sauced his father for interfering, saying she should lick him as
+long as she blooming well liked, which made his father go for him with a
+dog-collar; and that was how Shovel lost his eye.
+
+For reasons less unselfish than his old girl's Shovel also was willing
+to make up to Tommy at this humiliating time. It might be said of these
+two boys that Shovel knew everything but Tommy knew other things, and as
+the other things are best worth hearing of Shovel liked to listen to
+them, even when they were about Thrums, as they usually were. The very
+first time Tommy told him of the wondrous spot, Shovel had drawn a great
+breath, and said, thoughtfully:
+
+"I allers knowed as there were sich a beauty place, but I didn't jest
+know its name."
+
+"How could yer know?" Tommy asked jealously.
+
+"I ain't sure," said Shovel, "p'raps I dreamed on it."
+
+"That's it," Tommy cried. "I tell yer, everybody dreams on it!" and
+Tommy was right; everybody dreams of it, though not all call it Thrums.
+
+On the whole, then, the coming of the kid, who turned out to be called
+Elspeth, did not ostracize Tommy, but he wished that he had let the
+other girl in, for he never doubted that her admittance would have kept
+this one out. He told neither his mother nor his friend of the other
+girl, fearing that his mother would be angry with him when she learned
+what she had missed, and that Shovel would crow over his blundering, but
+occasionally he took a side glance at the victorious infant, and a
+poorer affair, he thought, he had never set eyes on. Sometimes it was
+she who looked at him, and then her chuckle of triumph was hard to bear.
+As long as his mother was there, however, he endured in silence, but the
+first day she went out in a vain search for work (it is about as
+difficult to get washing as to get into the Cabinet), he gave the infant
+a piece of his mind, poking up her head with a stick so that she was
+bound to listen.
+
+"You thinks as it was clever on you, does yer? Oh, if I had been on the
+stair!
+
+"You needn't not try to get round me. I likes the other one five times
+better; yes, three times better.
+
+"Thievey, thievey, thief, that's her place you is lying in. What?
+
+"If you puts out your tongue at me again--! What do yer say?
+
+"She was twice bigger than you. You ain't got no hair, nor yet no teeth.
+You're the littlest I ever seed. Eh? Don't not speak then, sulks!"
+
+Prudence had kept him away from the other girl, but he was feeling a
+great want: someone to applaud him. When we grow older we call it
+sympathy. How Reddy (as he called her because she had beautiful
+red-brown hair) had appreciated him! She had a way he liked of opening
+her eyes very wide when she looked at him. Oh, what a difference from
+that thing in the back of the bed!
+
+Not the mere selfish desire to see her again, however, would take him in
+quest of Reddy. He was one of those superior characters, was Tommy, who
+got his pleasure in giving it, and therefore gave it. Now, Reddy was a
+worthy girl. In suspecting her of overreaching him he had maligned her:
+she had taken what he offered, and been thankful. It was fitting that he
+should give her a treat: let her see him again.
+
+His mother was at last re-engaged by her old employers, her supplanter
+having proved unsatisfactory, and as the work lay in a distant street,
+she usually took the kid with her, thus leaving no one to spy on Tammy's
+movements. Reddy's reward for not playing him false, however, did not
+reach her as soon as doubtless she would have liked, because the first
+two or three times he saw her she was walking with the lady of his
+choice, and of course he was not such a fool as to show himself. But he
+walked behind them and noted with satisfaction that the lady seemed to
+be reconciled to her lot and inclined to let bygones be bygones; when
+at length Reddy and her patron met, Tommy thought this a good sign too,
+that Ma-ma (as she would call the lady) had told her not to go farther
+away than the lamp-post, lest she should get lost again. So evidently
+she had got lost once already, and the lady had been sorry. He asked
+Reddy many shrewd questions about how Ma-ma treated her, and if she got
+the top of the Sunday egg and had the licking of the pan and wore
+flannel underneath and slept at the back; and the more he inquired, the
+more clearly he saw that he had got her one of the right kind.
+
+Tommy arranged with her that she should always be on the outlook for him
+at the window, and he would come sometimes, and after that they met
+frequently, and she proved a credit to him, gurgling with mirth at his
+tales of Thrums, and pinching him when he had finished, to make sure
+that he was really made just like common human beings. He was a thin,
+pale boy, while she looked like a baby rose full blown in a night
+because her time was short; and his movements were sluggish, but if she
+was not walking she must be dancing, and sometimes when there were few
+people in the street, the little armful of delight that she was jumped
+up and down like a ball, while Tommy kept the time, singing "Thrummy,
+Thrummy, Thrum Thrum Thrummy." They must have seemed a quaint pair to
+the lady as she sat at her window watching them and beckoning to Tommy
+to come in.
+
+One day he went in, but only because she had come up behind and taken
+his hand before he could run. Then did Tommy quake, for he knew from
+Reddy how the day after the mother-making episode, Ma-ma and she had
+sought in vain for his door, and he saw that the object had been to call
+down curses on his head. So that head was hanging limply now.
+
+You think that Tommy is to be worsted at last, but don't be too sure;
+you just wait and see. Ma-ma and Reddy (who was clucking rather
+heartlessly) first took him into a room prettier even than the one he
+had lived in long ago (but there was no bed in it), and then, because
+someone they were in search of was not there, into another room without
+a bed (where on earth did they sleep?) whose walls were lined with
+books. Never having seen rows of books before except on sale in the
+streets, Tommy at once looked about him for the barrow. The table was
+strewn with sheets of paper of the size that they roll a quarter of
+butter in, and it was an amazing thick table, a solid square of wood,
+save for a narrow lane down the centre for the man to put his legs
+in--if he had legs, which unfortunately there was reason to doubt. He
+was a formidable man, whose beard licked the table while he wrote, and
+he wore something like a brown blanket, with a rope tied round it at the
+middle. Even more uncanny than himself were three busts on a shelf,
+which Tommy took to be deaders, and he feared the blanket might blow
+open and show that the man also ended at the waist. But he did not, for
+presently he turned round to see who had come in (the seat of his chair
+turning with him in the most startling way) and then Tommy was relieved
+to notice two big feet far away at the end of him.
+
+"This is the boy, dear," the lady said. "I had to bring him in by
+force."
+
+Tommy raised his arm instinctively to protect his face, this being the
+kind of man who could hit hard. But presently he was confused, and also,
+alas, leering a little. You may remember that Reddy had told him she
+must not go beyond the lamp-post, lest she should be lost again. She had
+given him no details of the adventure, but he learned now from Ma-ma and
+Papa (the man's name was Papa) that she had strayed when Ma-ma was in a
+shop and that some good kind boy had found her and brought her home; and
+what do you say to this, they thought Tommy was that boy! In his
+amazement he very nearly blurted out that he was the other boy, but just
+then the lady asked Papa if he had a shilling, and this abruptly closed
+Tommy's mouth. Ever afterwards he remembered Papa as the man that was
+not sure whether he had a shilling until he felt his pockets--a new kind
+of mortal to Tommy, who grabbed the shilling when it was offered to
+him, and then looked at Reddy imploringly, he was so afraid she would
+tell. But she behaved splendidly, and never even shook her head at him.
+After this, as hardly need be told, his one desire was to get out of the
+house with his shilling before they discovered their mistake, and it was
+well that they were unsuspicious people, for he was making strange
+hissing sounds in his throat, the result of trying hard to keep his
+sniggers under control.
+
+There were many ways in which Tommy could have disposed of his shilling.
+He might have been a good boy and returned it next day to Papa. He might
+have given Reddy half of it for not telling. It could have carried him
+over the winter. He might have stalked with it into the shop where the
+greasy puddings were and come rolling out hours afterwards. Some of
+these schemes did cross his little mind, but he decided to spend the
+whole shilling on a present to his mother, and it was to be something
+useful. He devoted much thought to what she was most in need of, and at
+last he bought her a colored picture of Lord Byron swimming the
+Hellespont.
+
+He told her that he got his shilling from two toffs for playing with a
+little girl, and the explanation satisfied her; but she could have cried
+at the waste of the money, which would have been such a God-send to her.
+He cried altogether, however, at sight of her face, having expected it
+to look so pleased, and then she told him, with caresses, that the
+picture was the one thing she had been longing for ever since she came
+to London. How had he known this, she asked, and he clapped his hands
+gleefully, and said he just knowed when he saw it in the shop window.
+
+"It was noble of you," she said, "to spend all your siller on me."
+
+"Wasn't it, mother?" he crowed "I'm thinking there ain't many as noble
+as I is!"
+
+He did not say why he had been so good to her, but it was because she
+had written no letters to Thrums since the intrusion of Elspeth; a
+strange reason for a boy whose greatest glory at one time had been to
+sit on the fender and exultingly watch his mother write down words that
+would be read aloud in the wonderful place. She was a long time in
+writing a letter, but that only made the whole evening romantic, and he
+found an arduous employment in keeping his tongue wet in preparation for
+the licking of the stamp.
+
+But she could not write to the Thrums folk now without telling them of
+Elspeth, who was at present sleeping the sleep of the shameless in the
+hollow of the bed, and so for his sake, Tommy thought, she meant to
+write no more. For his sake, mark you, not for her own. She had often
+told him that some day he should go to Thrums, but not with her; she
+would be far away from him then in a dark place she was awid to be lying
+in. Thus it seemed, to Tommy that she denied herself the pleasure of
+writing to Thrums lest the sorry news of Elspeth's advent should spoil
+his reception when he went north.
+
+So grateful Tommy gave her the picture, hoping that it would fill the
+void. But it did not. She put it on the mantelpiece so that she might
+just sit and look at it, she said, and he grinned at it from every part
+of the room, but when he returned to her, he saw that she was neither
+looking at it nor thinking of it. She was looking straight before her,
+and sometimes her lips twitched, and then she drew them into her mouth
+to keep them still. It is a kind of dry weeping that sometimes comes to
+miserable ones when their minds stray into the happy past, and Tommy sat
+and watched her silently for a long time, never doubting that the cause
+of all her woe was that she could not write to Thrums.
+
+He had seldom seen tears on his mother's face, but he saw one now. They
+had been reluctant to come for many a day, and this one formed itself
+beneath her eye and sat there like a blob of blood.
+
+His own began to come more freely. But she needn't not expect him to
+tell her to write nor to say that he didn't care what Thrums thought of
+him so long as she was happy.
+
+The tear rolled down his mother's thin cheek and fell on the grey shawl
+that had come from Thrums.
+
+She did not hear her boy as he dragged a chair to the press and standing
+on it got something down from the top shelf. She had forgotten him, and
+she started when presently the pen was slipped into her hand and Tommy
+said, "You can do it, mother, I wants yer to do it, mother, I won't not
+greet, mother!"
+
+When she saw what he wanted her to do she patted his face approvingly,
+but without realizing the extent of his sacrifice. She knew that he had
+some maggot in his head that made him regard Elspeth as a sore on the
+family honor, but ascribing his views to jealousy she had never tried
+seriously to change them. Her main reason for sending no news to Thrums
+of late had been but the cost of the stamp, though she was also a little
+conscience-stricken at the kind of letters she wrote, and the sight of
+the materials lying ready for her proved sufficient to draw her to the
+table.
+
+"Is it to your grandmother you is writing the letter?" Tommy asked, for
+her grandmother had brought Mrs. Sandys up and was her only surviving
+relative. This was all Tommy knew of his mother's life in Thrums, though
+she had told him much about other Thrums folk, and not till long
+afterwards did he see that there must be something queer about herself,
+which she was hiding from him.
+
+This letter was not for her granny, however, and Tommy asked next, "Is
+it to Aaron Latta?" which so startled her that she dropped the pen.
+
+"Whaur heard you that name?" she said sharply. "I never spoke it to
+you."
+
+"I've heard you saying it when you was sleeping, mother."
+
+"Did I say onything but the name? Quick, tell me."
+
+"You said, 'Oh, Aaron Latta, oh, Aaron, little did we think, Aaron,' and
+things like that. Are you angry with me, mother?"
+
+"No," she said, relieved, but it was some time before the desire to
+write came back to her. Then she told him "The letter is to a woman that
+was gey cruel to me," adding, with a complacent pursing of her lips, the
+curious remark, "That's the kind I like to write to best."
+
+The pen went scrape, scrape, but Tommy did not weary, though he often
+sighed, because his mother would never read aloud to him what she wrote.
+The Thrums people never answered her letters, for the reason, she said,
+that those she wrote to could not write, which seemed to simple Tommy to
+be a sufficient explanation. So he had never heard the inside of a
+letter talking, though a postman lived in the house, and even Shovel's
+old girl got letters; once when her uncle died she got a telegram, which
+Shovel proudly wheeled up and down the street in a barrow, other blokes
+keeping guard at the side. To give a letter to a woman who had been
+cruel to you struck Tommy as the height of nobility.
+
+"She'll be uplifted when she gets it!" he cried.
+
+"She'll be mad when she gets it," answered his mother, without looking
+up.
+
+This was the letter:--
+
+"MY DEAR ESTHER,--I send you these few scrapes to let you see I have not
+forgot you, though my way is now grand by yours. A spleet new black
+silk, Esther, being the second in a twelvemonth, as I'm a living woman.
+The other is no none tashed yet, but my gudeman fair insisted on buying
+a new one, for says he 'Rich folk like as can afford to be mislaird, and
+nothing's ower braw for my bonny Jean.' Tell Aaron Latta that. When I'm
+sailing in my silks, Esther, I sometimes picture you turning your wincey
+again, for I'se uphaud that's all the new frock you've ha'en the year. I
+dinna want to give you a scunner of your man, Esther, more by token they
+said if your mither had not took him in hand you would never have kent
+the color of his nightcap, but when you are wraxing ower your kail-pot
+in a plot of heat, just picture me ringing the bell for my servant, and
+saying, with a wave of my hand, 'Servant, lay the dinner.' And ony bonny
+afternoon when your man is cleaning out stables and you're at the tub in
+a short gown, picture my man taking me and the children out a ride in a
+carriage, and I sair doubt your bairns was never in nothing more genteel
+than a coal cart. For bairns is yours, Esther, and children is mine, and
+that's a burn without a brig till't.
+
+"Deary me, Esther, what with one thing and another, namely buying a
+sofa, thirty shillings as I'm a sinner, I have forgot to tell you about
+my second, and it's a girl this time, my man saying he would like a
+change. We have christened her Elspeth after my grandmamma, and if my
+auld granny's aye living, you can tell her that's her. My man is
+terrible windy of his two beautiful children, but he says he would have
+been the happiest gentleman in London though he had just had me, and
+really his fondness for me, it cows, Esther, sitting aside me on the
+bed, two pounds without the blankets, about the time Elspeth was born,
+and feeding me with the fat of the land, namely, tapiocas and sherry
+wine. Tell Aaron Latta that.
+
+"I pity you from the bottom of my heart, Esther, for having to bide in
+Thrums, but you have never seen no better, your man having neither the
+siller nor the desire to take yon jaunts, and I'm thinking that is just
+as well, for if you saw how the like of me lives it might disgust you
+with your own bit house. I often laugh, Esther, to think that I was once
+like you, and looked upon Thrums as a bonny place. How is the old hole?
+My son makes grand sport of the onfortunate bairns as has to bide in
+Thrums, and I see him doing it the now to his favorite companion, which
+is a young gentleman of ladylike manners, as bides in our terrace. So no
+more at present, for my man is sitting ganting for my society, and I
+daresay yours is crying to you to darn his old socks. Mind and tell
+Aaron Latta."
+
+This letter was posted next day by Tommy, with the assistance of Shovel,
+who seems to have been the young gentleman of ladylike manners referred
+to in the text.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE END OF AN IDYLL
+
+
+Tommy never saw Reddy again owing to a fright he got about this time,
+for which she was really to blame, though a woman who lived in his house
+was the instrument.
+
+It is, perhaps, idle to attempt a summary of those who lived in that
+house, as one at least will be off, and another in his place, while we
+are giving them a line apiece. They were usually this kind who lived
+through the wall from Mrs. Sandys, but beneath her were the two rooms of
+Hankey, the postman, and his lodger, the dreariest of middle-aged clerks
+except when telling wistfully of his ambition, which was to get out of
+the tea department into the coffee department, where there is an easier
+way of counting up the figures. Shovel and family were also on this
+floor, and in the rooms under them was a newly married couple. When the
+husband was away at his work, his wife would make some change in the
+furniture, taking the picture from this wall, for instance, and hanging
+it on that wall, or wheeling the funny chair she had lain in before she
+could walk without a crutch, to the other side of the fireplace, or
+putting a skirt of yellow paper round the flower pot, and when he
+returned he always jumped back in wonder and exclaimed: "What an immense
+improvement!" These two were so fond of one another that Tommy asked
+them the reason, and they gave it by pointing to the chair with the
+wheels, which seemed to him to be no reason at all. What was this young
+husband's trade Tommy never knew, but he was the only prettily dressed
+man in the house, and he could be heard roaring in his sleep, "_And_ the
+next article?" The meanest looking man lived next door to him. Every
+morning this man put on a clean white shirt, which sounds like a
+splendid beginning, but his other clothes were of the seediest, and he
+came and went shivering, raising his shoulders to his ears and spreading
+his hands over his chest as if anxious to hide his shirt rather than to
+display it. He and the happy husband were nicknamed Before and After,
+they were so like the pictorial advertisement of Man before and after he
+has tried Someone's lozenges. But it is rash to judge by outsides; Tommy
+and Shovel one day tracked Before to his place of business, and it
+proved to be a palatial eating-house, long, narrow, padded with red
+cushions; through the door they saw the once despised, now in beautiful
+black clothes, the waistcoat a mere nothing, as if to give his shirt a
+chance at last, a towel over his arm, and to and fro he darted,
+saying "Yessirquitesosir" to the toffs on the seats, shouting
+"Twovegonebeef--onebeeronetartinahurry" to someone invisible, and
+pocketing twopences all day long, just like a lord. On the same floor as
+Before and After lived the large family of little Pikes, who quarrelled
+at night for the middle place in the bed, and then chips of ceiling fell
+into the room below, tenant Jim Ricketts and parents, lodger the young
+woman we have been trying all these doors for. Her the police snapped up
+on a charge; that made Tommy want to hide himself--child-desertion.
+
+Shovel was the person best worth listening to on the subject (observe
+him, the centre of half a dozen boys), and at first he was for the
+defence, being a great stickler for the rights of mothers. But when the
+case against the girl leaked out, she need not look to him for help. The
+police had found the child in a basket down an area, and being knowing
+ones they pinched it to make it cry, and then they pretended to go away.
+Soon the mother, who was watching hard by to see if it fell into kind
+hands, stole to her baby to comfort it, "and just as she were a kissing
+on it and blubbering, the perlice copped her."
+
+"The slut!" said disgusted Shovel, "what did she hang about for?" and in
+answer to a trembling question from Tommy he replied, decisively, "Six
+months hard."
+
+"Next case" was probably called immediately, but Tommy vanished, as if
+he had been sentenced and removed to the cells.
+
+Never again, unless he wanted six months hard, must he go near Reddy's
+home, and so he now frequently accompanied his mother to the place where
+she worked. The little room had a funny fireplace called a stove, on
+which his mother made tea and the girls roasted chestnuts, and it had no
+other ordinary furniture except a long form. But the walls were
+mysterious. Three of them were covered with long white cloths, which
+went to the side when you tugged them, and then you could see on rails
+dozens of garments that looked like nightgowns. Beneath the form were
+scores of little shoes, most of them white or brown. In this house
+Tommy's mother spent eight hours daily, but not all of them in this
+room. When she arrived the first thing she did was to put Elspeth on the
+floor, because you cannot fall off a floor; then she went upstairs with
+a bucket and a broom to a large bare room, where she stayed so long that
+Tommy nearly forgot what she was like.
+
+While his mother was upstairs Tommy would give Elspeth two or three
+shoes to eat to keep her quiet, and then he played with the others,
+pretending to be able to count them, arranging them in designs, shooting
+them, swimming among them, saying "bow-wow" at them and then turning
+sharply to see who had said it. Soon Elspeth dropped her shoes and gazed
+in admiration at him, but more often than not she laughed in the wrong
+place, and then he said ironically: "Oh, in course I can't do nothin';
+jest let's see you doing of it, then, cocky!"
+
+By the time the girls began to arrive, singly or in twos and threes, his
+mother was back in the little room, making tea for herself or sewing
+bits of them that had been torn as they stepped out of a cab, or helping
+them to put on the nightgowns, or pretending to listen pleasantly to
+their chatter and hating them all the time. There was every kind of
+them, gorgeous ones and shabby ones, old tired ones and dashing young
+ones, but whether they were the Honorable Mrs. Something or only Jane
+Anything, they all came to that room for the same purpose: to get a
+little gown and a pair of shoes. Then they went upstairs and danced to a
+stout little lady, called the Sylph, who bobbed about like a ball at the
+end of a piece of elastic. What Tommy never forgot was that while they
+danced the Sylph kept saying, "One, two, three, four; one, two, three,
+four," which they did not seem to mind, but when she said "One, two,
+three, four, _picture_!" they all stopped and stood motionless, though
+it might be with one foot as high as their head and their arms stretched
+out toward the floor, as if they had suddenly seen a halfpenny there.
+
+In the waiting-room, how they joked and pirouetted and gossiped, and
+hugged and scorned each other, and what slang they spoke and how pretty
+they often looked next moment, and how they denounced the one that had
+just gone out as a cat with whom you could not get in a word edgeways,
+and oh, how prompt they were to give a slice of their earnings to any
+"cat" who was hard up! But still, they said, she had talent, but no
+genius. How they pitied people without genius.
+
+Have you ever tasted an encore or a reception? Tommy never had his teeth
+in one, but he heard much about them in that room, and concluded that
+they were some sort of cake. It was not the girls who danced in groups,
+but those who danced alone, that spoke of their encores and receptions,
+and sometimes they had got them last night, sometimes years ago. Two
+girls met in the room, one of whom had stolen the other's reception,
+and--but it was too dreadful to write about. Most of them carried
+newspaper cuttings in their purses and read them aloud to the others,
+who would not listen. Tommy listened, however, and as it was all about
+how one house had risen at the girls and they had brought another down,
+he thought they led the most adventurous lives.
+
+Occasionally they sent him out to buy newspapers or chestnuts, and then
+he had to keep a sharp eye on the police lest they knew about Reddy. It
+was a point of honor with all the boys he knew to pretend that the
+policeman was after them. To gull the policeman into thinking all was
+well they blackened their faces and wore their jackets inside out; their
+occupation was a constant state of readiness to fly from him, and when
+he tramped out of sight, unconscious of their existence, they emerged
+from dark places and spoke in exultant whispers. Tommy had been proud to
+join them, but he now resented their going on in this way; he felt that
+he alone had the right to fly from the law. And once at least while he
+was flying something happened to him that he was to remember better, far
+better, than his mother's face.
+
+What set him running on this occasion (he had been sent out to get one
+of the girls' shoes soled) was the grandest sight to be seen in
+London--an endless row of policemen walking in single file, all with the
+right leg in the air at the same time, then the left leg. Seeing at once
+that they were after him, Tommy ran, ran, ran until in turning a corner
+he found himself wedged between two legs. He was of just sufficient size
+to fill the aperture, but after a momentary look he squeezed through,
+and they proved to be the gate into an enchanted land.
+
+The magic began at once. "Dagont, you sacket!" cried some wizard.
+
+A policeman's hand on his shoulder could not have taken the wind out of
+Tommy more quickly. In the act of starting a-running again he brought
+down his hind foot with a thud and stood stock still. Can any one
+wonder? It was the Thrums tongue, and this the first time he had heard
+it except from his mother.
+
+It was a dull day, and all the walls were dripping wet, this being the
+part of London where the fogs are kept. Many men and women were passing
+to and fro, and Tommy, with a wild exultation in his breast, peered up
+at the face of this one and that; but no, they were only ordinary
+people, and he played rub-a-dub with his feet on the pavement, so
+furious was he with them for moving on as if nothing had happened. Draw
+up, ye carters; pedestrians, stand still; London, silence for a moment,
+and let Tommy Sandys listen!
+
+Being but a frail plant in the way of a flood, Tommy was rooted up and
+borne onward, but he did not feel the buffeting. In a passion of grief
+he dug his fists in his eyes, for the glory had been his for but a
+moment. It can be compared to nothing save the parcel (attached to a
+concealed string) which Shovel and he once placed on the stair for Billy
+Hankey to find, and then whipped away from him just as he had got it
+under his arm. But so near the crying, Tommy did not cry, for even while
+the tears were rushing to his aid he tripped on the step of a shop, and
+immediately, as if that had rung the magic bell again, a voice, a
+woman's voice this time, said shrilly, "Threepence ha'penny, and them
+jimply as big as a bantam's! Na, na, but I'll gi'e you five bawbees."
+
+Tommy sat down flop on the step, feeling queer in the head. Was it--was
+it--was it Thrums? He knew he had been running a long time.
+
+The woman, or fairy, or whatever you choose to call her, came out of
+the shop and had to push Tommy aside to get past. Oh, what a sweet foot
+to be kicked by. At the time, he thought she was dressed not unlike the
+women of his own stair, but this defect in his vision he mended
+afterward, as you may hear. Of course, he rose and trotted by her side
+like a dog, looking up at her as if she were a cathedral; but she
+mistook his awe for impudence and sent him sprawling, with the words,
+"Tak that, you glowering partan!"
+
+Do you think Tommy resented this? On the contrary he screamed from where
+he lay, "Say it again! say it again!"
+
+She was gone, however, but only, as it were, to let a window open, from
+which came the cry, "Davit, have you seen my man?"
+
+A male fairy roared back from some invisible place, "He has gone yont to
+Petey's wi' the dambrod."
+
+"I'll dambrod him!" said the female fairy, and the window shut.
+
+Tommy was now staggering like one intoxicated, but he had still some
+sense left him, and he walked up and down in front of this house, as if
+to take care of it. In the middle of the street some boys were very busy
+at a game, carts and lorries passing over them occasionally. They came
+to the pavement to play marbles, and then Tommy noticed that one of them
+wore what was probably a glengarry bonnet. Could he be a Thrums boy?
+
+At first he played in the stupid London way, but by and by he had to
+make a new ring, and he did it by whirling round on one foot. Tommy knew
+from his mother that it is only done in this way in Thrums. Oho! Oho!
+
+By this time he was prancing round his discovery, saying, "I'm one,
+too--so am I--dagont, does yer hear? dagont!" which so alarmed the boy
+that he picked up his marble and fled, Tommy, of course, after him.
+Alas! he must have been some mischievous sprite, for he lured his
+pursuer back into London and then vanished, and Tommy, searching in vain
+for the enchanted street, found his own door instead.
+
+His mother pooh-poohed his tale, though he described the street exactly
+as it struck him on reflection, and it bore a curious resemblance to the
+palace of Aladdin that Reddy had told him about, leaving his imagination
+to fill in the details, which it promptly did, with a square, a
+town-house, some outside stairs, and an auld licht kirk. There was no
+such street, however, his mother assured him; he had been dreaming. But
+if this were so, why was she so anxious to make him promise never to
+look for the place again?
+
+He did go in search of it again, daily for a time, always keeping a
+look-out for bow-legs, and the moment he saw them, he dived recklessly
+between, hoping to come out into fairyland on the other side. For though
+he had lost the street, he knew that this was the way in.
+
+Shovel had never heard of the street, nor had Bob. But Bob gave him
+something that almost made him forget it for a time. Bob was his
+favorite among the dancing girls, and she--or should it be he? The odd
+thing about these girls was that a number of them were really boys--or
+at least were boys at Christmas-time, which seemed to Tommy to be even
+stranger than if they had been boys all the year round. A friend of
+Bob's remarked to her one day, "You are to be a girl next winter, ain't
+you, Bob?" and Bob shook her head scornfully.
+
+"Do you see any green in my eye, my dear?" she inquired.
+
+Her friend did not look, but Tommy looked, and there was none. He
+assured her of this so earnestly that Bob fell in love with him on the
+spot, and chucked him under the chin, first with her thumb and then with
+her toe, which feat was duly reported to Shovel, who could do it by the
+end of the week.
+
+Did Tommy, Bob wanted to know, still think her a mere woman?
+
+No, he withdrew the charge, but--but--She was wearing her outdoor
+garments, and he pointed to them, "Why does yer wear them, then?" he
+demanded.
+
+"For the matter of that," she replied, pointing at his frock, "why do
+you wear them?" Whereupon Tommy began to cry.
+
+"I ain't not got no right ones," he blubbered. Harum-scarum Bob, who
+was a trump, had him in her motherly arms immediately, and the upshot of
+it was that a blue suit she had worn when she was Sam Something changed
+owners. Mrs. Sandys "made it up," and that is how Tommy got into
+trousers.
+
+Many contingencies were considered in the making, but the suit would fit
+Tommy by and by if he grew, or it shrunk, and they did not pass each
+other in the night. When proud Tommy first put on his suit the most
+unexpected shyness overcame him, and having set off vaingloriously he
+stuck on the stair and wanted to hide. Shovel, who had been having an
+argument with his old girl, came, all boastful bumps, to him, and Tommy
+just stood still with a self-conscious simper on his face. And Shovel,
+who could have damped him considerably, behaved in the most honorable
+manner, initiating him gravely into the higher life, much as you show
+the new member round your club.
+
+It was very risky to go back to Reddy, whom he had not seen for many
+weeks; but in trousers! He could not help it. He only meant to walk up
+and down her street, so that she might see him from the window, and know
+that this splendid thing was he; but though he went several times into
+the street, Reddy never came to the window.
+
+The reason he had to wait in vain at Reddy's door was that she was dead;
+she had been dead for quite a long time when Tommy came back to look for
+her. You mothers who have lost your babies, I should be a sorry knave
+were I to ask you to cry now over the death of another woman's child.
+Reddy had been lent to two people for a very little while, just as your
+babies were, and when the time was up she blew a kiss to them and ran
+gleefully back to God, just as your babies did. The gates of heaven are
+so easily found when we are little, and they are always standing open to
+let children wander in.
+
+But though Reddy was gone away forever, mamma still lived in that house,
+and on a day she opened the door to come out, Tommy was standing
+there--she saw him there waiting for Reddy. Dry-eyed this sorrowful
+woman had heard the sentence pronounced, dry eyed she had followed the
+little coffin to its grave; tears had not come even when waking from
+illusive dreams she put out her hand in bed to a child who was not
+there; but when she saw Tommy waiting at the door for Reddy, who had
+been dead for a month, her bosom moved and she could cry again.
+
+Those tears were sweet to her husband, and it was he who took Tommy on
+his knee in the room where the books were, and told him that there was
+no Reddy now. When Tommy knew that Reddy was a deader he cried bitterly,
+and the man said, very gently, "I am glad you were so fond of her."
+
+"'T ain't that," Tommy answered with a knuckle in his eye, "'t ain't
+that as makes me cry." He looked down at his trousers and in a fresh
+outburst of childish grief he wailed, "It's them!"
+
+Papa did not understand, but the boy explained. "She can't not never
+see them now," he sobbed, "and I wants her to see them, and they has
+pockets!"
+
+It had come to the man unexpectedly. He put Tommy down almost roughly,
+and raised his hand to his head as if he felt a sudden pain there.
+
+But Tommy, you know, was only a little boy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE GIRL WITH TWO MOTHERS
+
+
+Elspeth at last did something to win Tommy's respect; she fell ill of an
+ailment called in Thrums the croop. When Tommy first heard his mother
+call it croop, he thought she was merely humoring Elspeth, and that it
+was nothing more distinguished than London whooping-cough, but on
+learning that it was genuine croop, he began to survey the ambitious
+little creature with a new interest.
+
+This was well for Elspeth, as she had now to spend most of the day at
+home with him, their mother, whose health was failing through frequent
+attacks of bronchitis, being no longer able to carry her through the
+streets. Of course Elspeth took to repaying his attentions by loving
+him, and he soon suspected it, and then gloomily admitted it to himself,
+but never to Shovel. Being but an Englishman, Shovel saw no reason why
+relatives should conceal their affection for each other, but he played
+on this Scottish weakness of Tommy's with cruel enjoyment.
+
+"She's fond on yer!" he would say severely.
+
+"You's a liar."
+
+"Gar long! I believe as you're fond on her!"
+
+"You jest take care, Shovel."
+
+"Ain't yer?"
+
+"Na-o!"
+
+"Will yer swear?"
+
+"So I will swear."
+
+"Let's hear yer."
+
+"Dagont!"
+
+So for a time the truth was kept hidden, and Shovel retired, casting
+aspersions, and offering to eat all the hair on Elspeth's head for a
+penny.
+
+This hair was white at present, which made Tommy uneasy about her
+future, but on the whole he thought he might make something of her if
+she was only longer. Sometimes he stretched her on the floor, pulling
+her legs out straight, for she had a silly way of doubling them up, and
+then he measured her carefully with his mother's old boots. Her growth
+proved to be distressingly irregular, as one day she seemed to have
+grown an inch since last night, and then next day she had shrunk two
+inches.
+
+After her day's work Mrs. Sandys was now so listless that, had not Tommy
+interfered, Elspeth would have been a backward child. Reddy had been
+able to walk from the first day, and so of course had he, but this
+little slow-coach's legs wobbled at the joints, like the blade of a
+knife without a spring. The question of questions was How to keep her on
+end?
+
+Tommy sat on the fender revolving this problem, his head resting on his
+hand: that favorite position of mighty intellects when about to be
+photographed, Elspeth lay on her stomach on the floor, gazing earnestly
+at him, as if she knew she was in his thoughts for some stupendous
+purpose. Thus the apple may have looked at Newton before it fell.
+
+Hankey, the postman, compelled the flowers in his window to stand erect
+by tying them to sticks, so Tommy took two sticks from a bundle of
+firewood, and splicing Elspeth's legs to them, held her upright against
+the door with one hand. All he asked of her to-day was to remain in this
+position after he said "One, two, three, four, _picture_!" and withdrew
+his hand, but down she flopped every time, and he said, with scorn,
+
+"You ain't got no genius: you has just talent."
+
+But he had her in bed with the scratches nicely covered up before his
+mother came home.
+
+He tried another plan with more success. Lost dogs, it may be
+remembered, had a habit of following Shovel's father, and he not only
+took the wanderers in, but taught them how to beg and shake hands and
+walk on two legs. Tommy had sometimes been present at these agreeable
+exercises, and being an inventive boy he--But as Elspeth was a nice
+girl, let it suffice to pause here and add shyly, that in time she could
+walk.
+
+He also taught her to speak, and if you need to be told with what
+luscious word he enticed her into language you are sentenced to re-read
+the first pages of his life.
+
+"Thrums," he would say persuasively, "Thrums, Thrums. You opens your
+mouth like this, and shuts it like this, and that's it." Yet when he had
+coaxed her thus for many days, what does she do but break her long
+silence with the word "Tommy!" The recoil knocked her over.
+
+Soon afterward she brought down a bigger bird. No Londoner can say "Auld
+licht," and Tommy had often crowed over Shovel's "Ol likt." When the
+testing of Elspeth could be deferred no longer, he eyed her with the
+look a hen gives the green egg on which she has been sitting twenty
+days, but Elspeth triumphed, saying the words modestly even, as if
+nothing inside her told her she had that day done something which would
+have baffled Shakespeare, not to speak of most of the gentlemen who sit
+for Scotch constituencies.
+
+"Reddy couldn't say it!" Tommy cried exultantly, and from that great
+hour he had no more fears for Elspeth.
+
+Next the alphabet knocked for admission; and entered first _M_ and _P_,
+which had prominence in the only poster visible from the window. Mrs.
+Sandys had taught Tommy his letters, but he had got into words by
+studying posters.
+
+Elspeth being able now to make the perilous descent of the stairs,
+Tommy guided her through the streets (letting go hurriedly if Shovel
+hove in sight), and here she bagged new letters daily. With Catlings
+something, which is the best, she got into capital _C_s; _y_s are found
+easily when you know where to look for them (they hang on behind); _N_s
+are never found singly, but often three at a time; _Q_ is so
+aristocratic that even Tommy had only heard of it, doubtless it was
+there, but indistinguishable among the masses like a celebrity in a
+crowd; on the other hand, big _A_ and little _e_ were so dirt cheap,
+that these two scholars passed them with something very like a sneer.
+
+The printing-press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse
+of modern times, one sometimes forgets which. Elspeth's faith in it was
+absolute, and as it only spoke to her from placards, here was her
+religion, at the age of four:
+
+"PRAY WITHOUT CEASING.
+HAPPY ARE THEY WHO NEEDING KNOW THE
+PAINLESS POROUS PLASTER."
+
+Of religion, Tommy had said many fine things to her, embellishments on
+the simple doctrine taught him by his mother before the miseries of this
+world made her indifferent to the next. But the meaning of "Pray without
+ceasing," Elspeth, who was God's child always, seemed to find out for
+herself, and it cured all her troubles. She prayed promptly for every
+one she saw doing wrong, including Shovel, who occasionally had words
+with Tommy on the subject, and she not only prayed for her mother, but
+proposed to Tommy that they should buy her a porous plaster. Mrs. Sandys
+had been down with bronchitis again.
+
+Tommy raised the monetary difficulty.
+
+Elspeth knew where there was some money, and it was her very own.
+
+Tommy knew where there was money, and it was his very own.
+
+Elspeth would not tell how much she had, and it was twopence halfpenny.
+
+Neither would Tommy tell, and it was twopence.
+
+Tommy would get a surprise on his birthday.
+
+So would Elspeth get a surprise on her birthday.
+
+Elspeth would not tell what the surprise was to be, and it was to be a
+gun.
+
+Tommy also must remain mute, and it was to be a box of dominoes.
+
+Elspeth did not want dominoes.
+
+Tommy knew that, but he wanted them.
+
+Elspeth discovered that guns cost fourpence, and dominoes threepence
+halfpenny; it seemed to her, therefore, that Tommy was defrauding her of
+a halfpenny.
+
+Tommy liked her cheek. You got the dominoes for threepence halfpenny,
+but the price on the box is fivepence, so that Elspeth would really owe
+him a penny.
+
+This led to an agonizing scene in which Elspeth wept while Tommy told
+her sternly about Reddy. It had become his custom to tell the tale of
+Reddy when Elspeth was obstreperous.
+
+Then followed a scene in which Tommy called himself a scoundrel for
+frightening his dear Elspeth, and swore that he loved none but her.
+Result: reconciliation, and agreed, that instead of a gun and dominoes,
+they should buy a porous plaster. You know the shops where the plasters
+are to be obtained by great colored bottles in their windows, and, as it
+was advisable to find the very best shop, Tommy and Elspeth in their
+wanderings came under the influence of the bottles, red, yellow, green,
+and blue, and color entered into their lives, giving them many delicious
+thrills. These bottles are the first poem known to the London child, and
+you chemists who are beginning to do without them in your windows should
+be told that it is a shame.
+
+In the glamour, then, of the romantic battles walked Tommy and Elspeth
+hand in hand, meeting so many novelties that they might have spared a
+tear for the unfortunate children who sit in nurseries surrounded by all
+they ask for, and if the adventures of these two frequently ended in the
+middle, they had probably begun another while the sailor-suit boy was
+still holding up his leg to let the nurse put on his little sock. While
+they wandered, they drew near unwittingly to the enchanted street, to
+which the bottles are a colored way, and at last they were in it, but
+Tommy recognized it not; he did not even feel that he was near it, for
+there were no outside stairs, no fairies strolling about, it was a short
+street as shabby as his own.
+
+But someone had shouted "Dinna haver, lassie; you're blethering!"
+
+Tommy whispered to Elspeth, "Be still; don't speak," and he gripped her
+hand tighter and stared at the speaker. He was a boy of ten, dressed
+like a Londoner, and his companion had disappeared. Tommy never doubting
+but that he was the sprite of long ago, gripped him by the sleeve. All
+the savings of Elspeth and himself were in his pocket, and yielding to
+impulse, as was his way, he thrust the fivepence halfpenny into James
+Gloag's hand. The new millionaire gaped, but not at his patron, for the
+why and wherefore of this gift were trifles to James beside the
+tremendous fact that he had fivepence halfpenny. "Almichty me!" he cried
+and bolted. Presently he returned, having deposited his money in a safe
+place, and his first remark was perhaps the meanest on record. He held
+out his hand and said greedily, "Have you ony mair?"
+
+This, you feel certain, must have been the most important event of that
+evening, but strange to say, it was not. Before Tommy could answer
+James's question, a woman in a shawl had pounced upon him and hurried
+him and Elspeth out of the street. She had been standing at a corner
+looking wistfully at the window blinds behind which folk from Thrums
+passed to and fro, hiding her face from people in the street, but gazing
+eagerly after them. It was Tommy's mother, whose first free act on
+coming to London had been to find out that street, and many a time since
+them site had skulked through it or watched it from dark places, never
+daring to disclose herself, but sometimes recognizing familiar faces,
+sometimes hearing a few words in the old tongue that is harsh and
+ungracious to you, but was so sweet to her, and bearing them away with
+her beneath her shawl as if they were something warm to lay over her
+cold heart.
+
+For a time she upbraided Tommy passionately for not keeping away from
+this street, but soon her hunger for news of Thrums overcame her
+prudence, and she consented to let him go back if he promised never to
+tell that his mother came from Thrums. "And if ony-body wants to ken
+your name, say it's Tommy, but dinna let on that it's Tommy Sandys."
+
+"Elspeth," Tommy whispered that night, "I'm near sure there's something
+queer about my mother and me and you." But he did not trouble himself
+with wondering what the something queer might be, so engrossed was he in
+the new and exciting life that had suddenly opened to him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE ENCHANTED STREET
+
+
+In Thrums Street, as it ought to have been called, herded at least
+one-half of the Thrums folk in London, and they formed a colony, of
+which the grocer at the corner sometimes said wrathfully that not a
+member would give sixpence for anything except Bibles or whiskey. In the
+streets one could only tell they were not Londoners by their walk, the
+flagstones having no grip for their feet, or, if they had come south
+late in life, by their backs, which they carried at the angle on which
+webs are most easily supported. When mixing with the world they talked
+the English tongue, which came out of them as broad as if it had been
+squeezed through a mangle, but when the day's work was done, it was only
+a few of the giddier striplings that remained Londoners. For the
+majority there was no raking the streets after diversion, they spent the
+hour or two before bed-time in reproducing the life of Thrums. Few of
+them knew much of London except the nearest way between this street and
+their work, and their most interesting visitor was a Presbyterian
+minister, most of whose congregation lived in much more fashionable
+parts, but they were almost exclusively servant girls, and when
+descending area-steps to visit them he had been challenged often and
+jocularly by policemen, which perhaps was what gave him a subdued and
+furtive appearance.
+
+The rooms were furnished mainly with articles bought in London, but
+these became as like Thrums dressers and seats as their owners could
+make them, old Petey, for instance, cutting the back off a chair because
+he felt most at home on stools. Drawers were used as baking-boards,
+pails turned into salt-buckets, floors were sanded and hearthstones
+ca'med, and the popular supper consisted of porter, hot water, and
+soaked bread, after every spoonful of which, they groaned pleasantly,
+and stretched their legs. Sometimes they played at the dambrod, but more
+often they pulled down the blinds on London and talked of Thrums in
+their mother tongue. Nevertheless few of them wanted to return to it,
+and their favorite joke was the case of James Gloag's father, who being
+home-sick flung up his situation and took train for Thrums, but he was
+back in London in three weeks.
+
+Tommy soon had the entry to these homes, and his first news of the
+inmates was unexpected. It was that they were always sleeping. In broad
+daylight he had seen Thrums men asleep on beds, and he was somewhat
+ashamed of them until he heard the excuse. A number of the men from
+Thrums were bakers, the first emigrant of this trade having drawn others
+after him, and they slept great part of the day to be able to work all
+night in a cellar, making nice rolls for rich people. Baker Lumsden, who
+became a friend of Tommy, had got his place in the cellar when his
+brother died, and the brother had succeeded Matthew Croall when he died.
+
+They die very soon, Tommy learned from Lumsden, generally when they are
+eight and thirty. Lumsden was thirty-six, and when he died his nephew
+was to get the place. The wages are good.
+
+Then there were several masons, one of whom, like the first baker, had
+found work for all the others, and there were men who had drifted into
+trades strange to their birthplace, and there was usually one at least
+who had come to London to "better himself" and had not done it as yet.
+The family Tommy liked best was the Whamonds, and especially he liked
+old Petey and young Petey Whamond. They were a large family of women and
+men, all of whom earned their living in other streets, except the old
+man, who kept house and was a famous knitter of stockings, as probably
+his father had been before him. He was a great one, too, at telling what
+they would be doing at that moment in Thrums, every corner of which was
+as familiar to him as the ins and outs of the family hose. Young Petey
+got fourteen shillings a week from a hatter, and one of his duties was
+to carry as many as twenty band-boxes at a time through fashionable
+streets; it is a matter for elation that dukes and statesmen had often
+to take the curb-stone, because young Petey was coming. Nevertheless
+young Petey was not satisfied, and never would be (such is the Thrums
+nature) until he became a salesman in the shop to which he acted at
+present as fetch and carry, and he used to tell Tommy that this position
+would be his as soon as he could sneer sufficiently at the old hats.
+When gentlemen come into the shop and buy a new hat, he explained, they
+put it on, meaning to tell you to send the old one to their address, and
+the art of being a fashionable hatter lies in this: you must be able to
+curl your lips so contemptuously at the old hat that they tell you
+guiltily to keep it, as they have no further use for it. Then they
+retire ashamed of their want of moral courage and you have made an extra
+half-guinea.
+
+"But I aye snort," young Petey admitted, "and it should be done without
+a sound." When he graduated, he was to marry Martha Spens, who was
+waiting for him at Tillyloss. There was a London seamstress whom he
+preferred, and she was willing, but it is safest to stick to Thrums.
+
+When Tommy was among his new friends a Scotch word or phrase often
+escaped his lips, but old Petey and the others thought he had picked it
+up from them, and would have been content to accept him as a London waif
+who lived somewhere round the corner. To trick people so simply,
+however, is not agreeable to an artist, and he told them his name was
+Tommy Shovel, and that his old girl walloped him, and his father found
+dogs, all which inventions Thrums Street accepted as true. What is much
+more noteworthy is that, as he gave them birth, Tommy half believed them
+also, being already the best kind of actor.
+
+Not all the talking was done by Tommy when he came home with news, for
+he seldom mentioned a Thrums name, of which his mother could not tell
+him something more. But sometimes she did not choose to tell, as when he
+announced that a certain Elspeth Lindsay, of the Marywellbrae, was dead.
+After this she ceased to listen, for old Elspeth had been her
+grandmother, and she had now no kin in Thrums.
+
+"Tell me about the Painted Lady," Tommy said to her. "Is it true she's a
+witch?" But Mrs. Sandys had never heard of any woman so called: the
+Painted Lady must have gone to Thrums after her time.
+
+"There ain't no witches now," said Elspeth tremulously; Shovel's mother
+had told her so.
+
+"Not in London," replied Tommy, with contempt; and this is all that was
+said of the Painted Lady then. It is the first mention of her in these
+pages.
+
+The people Mrs. Sandys wanted to hear of chiefly were Aaron Latta and
+Jean Myles, and soon Tommy brought news of them, but at the same time he
+had heard of the Den, and he said first:
+
+"Oh, mother, I thought as you had told me about all the beauty places
+in Thrums, and you ain't never told me about the Den."
+
+His mother heaved a quick breath. "It's the only place I hinna telled
+you o'," she said.
+
+"Had you forget, it mother?"
+
+Forget the Den! Ah, no, Tommy, your mother had not forgotten the Den.
+
+"And, listen, Elspeth, in the Den there's a bonny spring of water called
+the Cuttle Well. Had you forgot the Cuttle Well, mother?"
+
+No, no; when Jean Myles forgot the names of her children she would still
+remember the Cuttle Well. Regardless now of the whispering between Tommy
+and Elspeth, she sat long over the fire, and it is not difficult to
+fathom her thoughts. They were of the Den and the Cuttle Well.
+
+Into the life of every man, and no woman, there comes a moment when he
+learns suddenly that he is held eligible for marriage. A girl gives him
+the jag, and it brings out the perspiration. Of the issue elsewhere of
+this stab with a bodkin let others speak; in Thrums its commonest effect
+is to make the callant's body take a right angle to his legs, for he has
+been touched in the fifth button, and he backs away broken-winded. By
+and by, however, he is at his work--among the turnip-shoots,
+say--guffawing and clapping his corduroys, with pauses for uneasy
+meditation, and there he ripens with the swedes, so that by the
+back-end of the year he has discovered, and exults to know, that the
+reward of manhood is neither more nor less than this sensation at the
+ribs. Soon thereafter, or at worst, sooner or later (for by holding out
+he only puts the women's dander up), he is led captive to the Cuttle
+Well. This well has the reputation of being the place where it is most
+easily said.
+
+The wooded ravine called the Den is in Thrums rather than on its western
+edge, but is so craftily hidden away that when within a stone's throw
+you may give up the search for it; it is also so deep that larks rise
+from the bottom and carol overhead, thinking themselves high in the
+heavens before they are on a level with Nether Drumley's farmland. In
+shape it is almost a semicircle, but its size depends on you and the
+maid. If she be with you, the Den is so large that you must rest here
+and there; if you are after her boldly, you can dash to the Cuttle Well,
+which was the trysting-place, in the time a stout man takes to lace his
+boots; if you are of those self-conscious ones who look behind to see
+whether jeering blades are following, you may crouch and wriggle your
+way onward and not be with her in half an hour.
+
+Old Petey had told Tommy that, on the whole, the greatest pleasure in
+life on a Saturday evening is to put your back against a stile that
+leads into the Den and rally the sweethearts as they go by. The lads,
+when they see you, want to go round by the other stile, but the lasses
+like it, and often the sport ends spiritedly with their giving you a
+clout on the head.
+
+Through the Den runs a tiny burn, and by its side is a pink path, dyed
+this pretty color, perhaps, by the blushes the ladies leave behind them.
+The burn as it passes the Cuttle Well, which stands higher and just out
+of sight, leaps in vain to see who is making that cooing noise, and the
+well, taking the spray for kisses, laughs all day at Romeo, who cannot
+get up. Well is a name it must have given itself, for it is only a
+spring in the bottom of a basinful of water, where it makes about as
+much stir in the world as a minnow jumping at a fly. They say that if a
+boy, by making a bowl of his hands, should suddenly carry off all the
+water, a quick girl could thread her needle at the spring. But it is a
+spring that will not wait a moment.
+
+Men who have been lads in Thrums sometimes go back to it from London or
+from across the seas, to look again at some battered little house and
+feel the blasts of their bairnhood playing through the old wynds, and
+they may take with them a foreign wife. They show her everything, except
+the Cuttle Well; they often go there alone. The well is sacred to the
+memory of first love. You may walk from the well to the round cemetery
+in ten minutes. It is a common walk for those who go back.
+
+First love is but a boy and girl playing at the Cuttle Well with a
+bird's egg. They blow it on one summer evening in the long grass, and on
+the next it is borne away on a coarse laugh, or it breaks beneath the
+burden of a tear. And yet--I once saw an aged woman, a widow of many
+years, cry softly at mention of the Cuttle Well. "John was a good man to
+you," I said, for John had been her husband. "He was a leal man to me,"
+she answered with wistful eyes, "ay, he was a leal man to me--but it
+wasna John I was thinking o'. You dinna ken what makes me greet so
+sair," she added, presently, and though I thought I knew now I was
+wrong. "It's because I canna mind his name," she said.
+
+So the Cuttle Well has its sad memories and its bright ones, and many of
+the bright memories have become sad with age, as so often happens to
+beautiful things, but the most mournful of all is the story of Aaron
+Latta and Jean Myles. Beside the well there stood for long a great pink
+stone, called the Shoaging, Stone, because it could be rocked like a
+cradle, and on it lovers used to cut their names. Often Aaron Latta and
+Jean Myles sat together on the Shoaging Stone, and then there came a
+time when it bore these words cut by Aaron Latta:
+
+HERE LIES THE MANHOOD OF AARON LATTA, A FOND SON, A FAITHFUL FRIEND
+AND A TRUE LOVER, WHO VIOLATED THE FEELINGS OF SEX ON THIS SPOT, AND IS
+NOW THE SCUNNER OF GOD AND MAN
+
+Tommy's mother now heard these words for the first time, Aaron having
+cut them on the stone after she left Thrums, and her head sank at each
+line, as if someone had struck four blows at her.
+
+The stone was no longer at the Cuttle Well. As the easiest way of
+obliterating the words, the minister had ordered it to be broken, and of
+the pieces another mason had made stands for watches, one of which was
+now in Thrums Street.
+
+"Aaron Latta ain't a mason now," Tommy rattled on: "he is a warper,
+because he can warp in his own house without looking on mankind or
+speaking to mankind. Auld Petey said he minded the day when Aaron Latta
+was a merry loon, and then Andrew McVittie said, 'God behears, to think
+that Aaron Latta was ever a merry man!' and Baker Lumsden said, 'Curse
+her!'"
+
+His mother shrank in her chair, but said nothing, and Tommy explained:
+"It was Jean Myles he was cursing; did you ken her, mother? she ruined
+Aaron Latta's life."
+
+"Ay, and wha ruined Jean Myles's life?" his mother cried passionately.
+
+Tommy did not know, but he thought that young Petey might know, for
+young Petey had said: "If I had been Jean Myles I would have spat in
+Aaron's face rather than marry him."
+
+Mrs. Sandys seemed pleased to hear this.
+
+"They wouldna tell me what it were she did," Tommy went on; "they said
+it was ower ugly a story, but she were a bad one, for they stoned her
+out of Thrums. I dinna know where she is now, but she were stoned out of
+Thrums!"
+
+"No alane?"
+
+"There was a man with her, and his name was--it was--"
+
+His mother clasped her hands nervously while Tommy tried to remember the
+name. "His name was Magerful Tam," he said at length.
+
+"Ay," said his mother, knitting her teeth, "that was his name."
+
+"I dinna mind any more," Tommy concluded. "Yes, I mind they aye called
+Aaron Latta 'Poor Aaron Latta.'"
+
+"Did they? I warrant, though, there wasna one as said 'Poor Jean
+Myles'?"
+
+She began the question in a hard voice, but as she said "Poor Jean
+Myles" something caught in her throat, and she sobbed, painful dry sobs.
+
+"How could they pity her when she were such a bad one?" Tommy answered
+briskly.
+
+"Is there none to pity bad ones?" said his sorrowful mother.
+
+Elspeth plucked her by the skirt. "There's God, ain't there?" she said,
+inquiringly, and getting no answer she flopped upon her knees, to say a
+babyish prayer that would sound comic to anybody except to Him to whom
+it was addressed.
+
+"You ain't praying for a woman as was a disgrace to Thrums!" Tommy
+cried, jealously, and he was about to raise her by force, when his
+mother stayed his hand.
+
+"Let her alane," she said, with a twitching mouth and filmy eyes. "Let
+her alane. Let my bairn pray for Jean Myles."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+COMIC OVERTURE TO A TRAGEDY
+
+
+"Jean Myles bides in London" was the next remarkable news brought by
+Tommy from Thrums Street. "And that ain't all, Magerful Tam is her man;
+and that ain't all, she has a laddie called Tommy and that ain't all,
+Petey and the rest has never seen her in London, but she writes letters
+to Thrums folks and they writes to Petey and tells him what she said.
+That ain't all neither, they canna find out what street she bides in,
+but it's on the bonny side of London, and it's grand, and she wears silk
+clothes, and her Tommy has velvet trousers, and they have a servant as
+calls him 'sir.' Oh, I would just like to kick him! They often looks for
+her in the grand streets, but they're angry at her getting on so well,
+and Martha Scrymgeour said it were enough to make good women like her
+stop going reg'lar to the kirk."
+
+"Martha said that!" exclaimed his mother, highly pleased. "Heard you
+anything of a woman called Esther Auld? Her man does the orra work at
+the Tappit Hen public in Thrums."
+
+"He's head man at the Tappit Hen public now," answered Tommy; "and she
+wishes she could find out where Jean Myles bides, so as she could write
+and tell her that she is grand too, and has six hair-bottomed chairs."
+
+"She'll never get the satisfaction," said his mother triumphantly. "Tell
+me more about her."
+
+"She has a laddie called Francie, and he has yellow curls, and she
+nearly greets because she canna tell Jean Myles that he goes to a school
+for the children of gentlemen only. She is so mad when she gets a letter
+from Jean Myles that she takes to her bed."
+
+"Yea, yea!" said Mrs. Sandys cheerily.
+
+"But they think Jean Myles has been brought low at last," continued
+Tommy, "because she hasna wrote for a long time to Thrums, and Esther
+Auld said that if she knowed for certain as Jean Myles had been brought
+low, she would put a threepenny bit in the kirk plate."
+
+"I'm glad you've telled me that, laddie," said Mrs. Sandys, and next
+day, unknown to her children, she wrote another letter. She knew she ran
+a risk of discovery, yet it was probable that Tommy would only hear her
+referred to in Thrums Street by her maiden name, which he had never
+heard from her, and as for her husband he had been Magerful Tam to
+everyone. The risk was great, but the pleasure--
+
+Unsuspicious Tommy soon had news of another letter from Jean Myles,
+which had sent Esther Auld to bed again.
+
+"Instead of being brought low," he announced, "Jean Myles is grander
+than ever. Her Tommy has a governess."
+
+"That would be a doush of water in Esther's face?" his mother said,
+smiling.
+
+"She wrote to Martha Scrymgeour," said Tommy, "that it ain't no pleasure
+to her now to boast as her laddie is at a school for gentlemen's
+children only. But what made her maddest was a bit in Jean Myles's
+letter about chairs. Jean Myles has give all her hair-bottomed chairs to
+a poor woman and buyed a new kind, because hair-bottomed ones ain't
+fashionable now. So Esther Auld can't not bear the sight of her chairs
+now, though she were windy of them till the letter went to Thrums."
+
+"Poor Esther!" said Mrs. Sandys gaily.
+
+"Oh, and I forgot this, mother. Jean Myles's reason for not telling
+where she bides in London is that she's so grand that she thinks if auld
+Petey and the rest knowed where the place was they would visit her and
+boast as they was her friends. Auld Petey stamped wi' rage when he heard
+that, and Martha Scrymgeour said, 'Oh, the pridefu' limmer!'"
+
+"Ay, Martha," muttered Mrs. Sandys, "you and Jean Myles is evens now."
+
+But the passage that had made them all wince the most was one giving
+Jean's reasons for making no calls in Thrums Street. "You can break it
+to Martha Scrymgeour's father and mither," the letter said, "and to
+Petey Whamond's sisters and the rest as has friends in London, that I
+have seen no Thrums faces here, the low part where they bide not being
+for the like of me to file my feet in. Forby that, I could not let my
+son mix with their bairns for fear they should teach him the vulgar
+Thrums words and clarty his blue-velvet suit. I'm thinking you have to
+dress your laddie in corduroy, Esther, but you see that would not do for
+mine. So no more at present, and we all join in compliments, and my
+little velvets says he wishes I would send some of his toys to your
+little corduroys. And so maybe I will, Esther, if you'll tell Aaron
+Latta how rich and happy I am, and if you're feared to say it to his
+face, tell it to the roaring farmer of Double Dykes, and he'll pass it
+on."
+
+"Did you ever hear of such a woman?" Tommy said indignantly, when he had
+repeated as much of this insult to Thrums as he could remember.
+
+But it was information his mother wanted.
+
+"What said they to that bit?" she asked.
+
+At first, it appears, they limited their comments to "Losh, losh,"
+"keeps a'," "it cows," "my eertie," "ay, ay," "sal, tal," "dagont" (the
+meaning of which is obvious). But by and by they recovered their breath,
+and then Baker Lamsden said, wonderingly:
+
+"Wha that was at her marriage could have thought it would turn out so
+weel? It was an eerie marriage that, Petey!"
+
+"Ay, man, you may say so," old Petey answered. "I was there; I was one
+o' them as went in ahint Aaron Latta, and I'm no' likely to forget it."
+
+"I wasna there," said the baker, "but I was standing at the door, and I
+saw the hearse drive up."
+
+"What did they mean, mother?" Tommy asked, but she shuddered and
+replied, evasively, "Did Martha Scrymgeour say anything?"
+
+"She said such a lot," he had to confess, "that I dinna mind none on it.
+But I mind what her father in Thrums wrote to her; he wrote to her that
+if she saw a carriage go by, she was to keep her eyes on the ground, for
+likely as not Jean Myles would be in it, and she thought as they was all
+dirt beneath her feet. But Kirsty Ross--who is she?"
+
+"She's Martha's mother. What about her?"
+
+"She wrote at the end of the letter that Martha was to hang on ahint the
+carriage and find out where Jean Myles bides."
+
+"Laddie, that was like Kirsty! Heard you what the roaring farmer o'
+Double Dykes said?"
+
+No, Tommy had not heard him mentioned. And indeed the roaring farmer of
+Double Dykes had said nothing. He was already lying very quiet on the
+south side of the cemetery.
+
+Tommy's mother's next question cost her a painful effort. "Did you
+hear," she asked, "whether they telled Aaron Latta about the letter?"
+
+"Yes, they telled him," Tommy replied, "and he said a queer thing; he
+said, 'Jean Myles is dead, I was at her coffining.' That's what he aye
+says when they tell him there's another letter. I wonder what he means,
+mother?"
+
+"I wonder!" she echoed, faintly. The only pleasure left her was to raise
+the envy of those who had hooted her from Thrums, but she paid a price
+for it. Many a stab she had got from the unwitting Tommy as he repeated
+the gossip of his new friends, and she only won their envy at the cost
+of their increased ill-will. They thought she was lording it in London,
+and so they were merciless; had they known how poor she was and how ill,
+they would have forgotten everything save that she was a Thrummy like
+themselves, and there were few but would have shared their all with her.
+But she did not believe this, and therefore you may pity her, for the
+hour was drawing near, and she knew it, when she must appeal to some one
+for her children's sake, not for her own.
+
+No, not for her own. When Tommy was wandering the pretty parts of London
+with James Gloag and other boys from Thrums Street in search of Jean
+Myles, whom they were to know by her carriage and her silk dress and her
+son in blue velvet, his mother was in bed with bronchitis in the
+wretched room we know of, or creeping to the dancing school, coughing
+all the way.
+
+Some of the fits of coughing were very near being her last, but she
+wrestled with her trouble, seeming at times to stifle it, and then for
+weeks she managed to go to her work, which was still hers, because
+Shovel's old girl did it for her when the bronchitis would not be
+defied. Shovel's old slattern gave this service unasked and without
+payment; if she was thanked it was ungraciously, but she continued to do
+all she could when there was need; she smelled of gin, but she continued
+to do all she could.
+
+The wardrobe had been put upon its back on the floor, and so converted
+into a bed for Tommy and Elspeth, who were sometimes wakened in the
+night by a loud noise, which alarmed them until they learned that it was
+only the man in the next room knocking angrily on the wall because their
+mother's cough kept him from sleeping.
+
+Tommy knew what death was now, and Elspeth knew its name, and both were
+vaguely aware that it was looking for their mother; but if she could
+only hold out till Hogmanay, Tommy said, they would fleg it out of the
+house. Hogmanay is the mighty winter festival of Thrums, and when it
+came round these two were to give their mother a present that would make
+her strong. It was not to be a porous plaster. Tommy knew now of
+something better than that.
+
+"And I knows too!" Elspeth gurgled, "and I has threepence a'ready, I
+has."
+
+"Whisht!" said Tommy, in an agony of dread, "she hears you, and she'll
+guess. We ain't speaking of nothing to give to you at Hogmanay," he said
+to his mother with great cunning. Then he winked at Elspeth and said,
+with his hand over his mouth, "I hinna twopence!" and Elspeth, about to
+cry in fright, "Have you spended it?" saw the joke and crowed instead,
+"Nor yet has I threepence!"
+
+They smirked together, until Tommy saw a change come over Elspeth's
+face, which made him run her outside the door.
+
+"You was a-going to pray!" he said, severely.
+
+"'Cos it was a lie, Tommy. I does have threepence."
+
+"Well, you ain't a-going to get praying about it. She would hear yer."
+
+"I would do it low, Tommy."
+
+"She would see yer."
+
+"Oh, Tommy, let me. God is angry with me."
+
+Tommy looked down the stair, and no one was in sight. "I'll let yer pray
+here," he whispered, "and you can say I have twopence. But be quick, and
+do it standing."
+
+Perhaps Mrs. Sandys had been thinking that when Hogmanay came her
+children might have no mother to bring presents to, for on their return
+to the room her eyes followed them woefully, and a shudder of
+apprehension shook her torn frame. Tommy gave Elspeth a look that meant
+"I'm sure there's something queer about her."
+
+There was also something queer about himself, which at this time had the
+strangest gallop. It began one day with a series of morning calls from
+Shovel, who suddenly popped his head over the top of the door (he was
+standing on the handle), roared "Roastbeef!" in the manner of a railway
+porter announcing the name of a station, and then at once withdrew.
+
+He returned presently to say that vain must be all attempts to wheedle
+his secret from him, and yet again to ask irritably why Tommy was not
+coming out to hear all about it. Then did Tommy desert Elspeth, and on
+the stair Shovel showed him a yellow card with this printed on it:
+"S.R.J.C.--Supper Ticket;" and written beneath, in a lady's hand: "Admit
+Joseph Salt." The letters, Shovel explained, meant Society for the
+somethink of Juvenile Criminals, and the toffs what ran it got hold of
+you when you came out of quod. Then if you was willing to repent they
+wrote down your name and the place what you lived at in a book, and one
+of them came to see yer and give yer a ticket for the blow-out night.
+This was blow-out night, and that were Shovel's ticket. He had bought it
+from Hump Salt for fourpence. What you get at the blow-out was
+roast-beef, plum-duff, and an orange; but when Hump saw the fourpence he
+could not wait.
+
+A favor was asked of Tommy. Shovel had been told by Hump that it was the
+custom of the toffs to sit beside you and question you about your
+crimes, and lacking the imagination that made Tommy such an ornament to
+the house, the chances were that he would flounder in his answers and
+be ejected. Hump had pointed this out to him after pocketing the
+fourpence. Would Tommy, therefore, make up things for him to say;
+reward, the orange.
+
+This was a proud moment for Tommy, as Shovel's knowledge of crime was
+much more extensive than his own, though they had both studied it in the
+pictures of a lively newspaper subscribed to by Shovel, senior. He
+became patronizing at once and rejected the orange as insufficient.
+
+Then suppose, after he got into the hall, Shovel dropped his ticket out
+at the window; Tommy could pick it up, and then it would admit him also.
+
+Tommy liked this, but foresaw a danger: the ticket might be taken from
+Shovel at the door, just as they took them from you at that singing
+thing in the church he had attended with young Petey.
+
+So help Shovel's davy, there was no fear of this. They were superior
+toffs, what trusted to your honor.
+
+Would Shovel swear to this?
+
+He would.
+
+But would he swear dagont?
+
+He swore dagont; and then Tommy had him. As he was so sure of it, he
+could not object to Tommy's being the one who dropped the ticket out at
+the window?
+
+Shovel did object for a time, but after a wrangle he gave up the ticket,
+intending to take it from Tommy when primed with the necessary tale. So
+they parted until evening, and Tommy returned to Elspeth, secretive but
+elated. For the rest of the day he was in thought, now waggling his head
+smugly over some dark, unutterable design and again looking a little
+scared. In growing alarm she watched his face, and at last she slipped
+upon her knees, but he had her up at once and said, reproachfully:
+
+"It were me as teached yer to pray, and now yer prays for me! That's
+fine treatment!"
+
+Nevertheless, after his mother's return, just before he stole out to
+join Shovel, he took Elspeth aside and whispered to her, nervously:
+
+"You can pray for me if you like, for, oh, Elspeth; I'm thinking as I'll
+need it sore!" And sore he needed it before the night was out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE BOY WITH TWO MOTHERS
+
+
+"I love my dear father and my dear mother and all the dear little kids
+at 'ome. You are a kind laidy or gentleman. I love yer. I will never do
+it again, so help me bob. Amen."
+
+This was what Shovel muttered to himself again and again as the two boys
+made their way across the lamp-lit Hungerford Bridge, and Tommy asked
+him what it meant.
+
+"My old gal learned me that; she's deep," Shovel said, wiping the words
+off his mouth with his sleeve.
+
+"But you got no kids at 'ome!" remonstrated Tommy. (Ameliar was now in
+service.)
+
+Shovel turned on him with the fury of a mother protecting her young.
+"Don't you try for to knock none on it out," he cried, and again fell
+a-mumbling.
+
+Said Tommy, scornfully: "If you says it all out at one bang you'll be
+done at the start."
+
+Shovel sighed.
+
+"And you should blubber when yer says it," added Tommy, who could laugh
+or cry merely because other people were laughing or crying, or even with
+less reason, and so naturally that he found it more difficult to stop
+than to begin. Shovel was the taller by half a head, and irresistible
+with his fists, but to-night Tommy was master.
+
+"You jest stick to me, Shovel," he said airily. "Keep a grip on my hand,
+same as if yer was Elspeth."
+
+"But what was we copped for, Tommy?" entreated humble Shovel.
+
+Tommy asked him if he knew what a butler was, and Shovel remembered,
+confusedly, that there had been a portrait of a butler in his father's
+news-sheet.
+
+"Well, then," said Tommy, inspired by this same source, "there's a room
+a butler has, and it is a pantry, so you and me we crawled through the
+winder and we opened the door to the gang. You and me was copped. They
+catched you below the table and me stabbing the butler."
+
+"It was me what stabbed the butler," Shovel interposed, jealously.
+
+"How could you do it, Shovel?"
+
+"With a knife, I tell yer!"
+
+"Why, you didn't have no knife," said Tommy, impatiently.
+
+This crushed Shovel, but he growled sulkily:
+
+"Well, I bit him in the leg."
+
+"Not you," said selfish Tommy. "You forgets about repenting, and if I
+let yer bite him, you would brag about it. It's safer without, Shovel."
+
+Perhaps it was. "How long did I get in quod, then, Tommy?"
+
+"Fourteen days."
+
+"So did you?" Shovel said, with quick anxiety.
+
+"I got a month," replied Tommy, firmly.
+
+Shovel roared a word that would never have admitted him to the hall.
+Then, "I'm as game as you, and gamer," he whined.
+
+"But I'm better at repenting. I tell yer, I'll cry when I'm repenting."
+Tommy's face lit up, and Shovel could not help saying, with a curious
+look at it:
+
+"You--you ain't like any other cove I knows," to which Tommy replied,
+also in an awe-struck voice:
+
+"I'm so queer, Shovel, that when I thinks 'bout myself I'm--I'm
+sometimes near feared."
+
+"What makes your face for to shine like that? Is it thinking about the
+blow-out?"
+
+No, it was hardly that, but Tommy could not tell what it was. He and the
+saying about art for art's sake were in the streets that night, looking
+for each other.
+
+The splendor of the brightly lighted hall, which was situated in one of
+the meanest streets of perhaps the most densely populated quarter in
+London, broke upon the two boys suddenly and hit each in his vital part,
+tapping an invitation on Tommy's brain-pan and taking Shovel
+coquettishly in the stomach. Now was the moment when Shovel meant to
+strip Tommy of the ticket, but the spectacle in front dazed him, and he
+stopped to tell a vegetable barrow how he loved his dear father and his
+dear mother, and all the dear kids at home. Then Tommy darted forward
+and was immediately lost in the crowd surging round the steps of the
+hall.
+
+Several gentlemen in evening dress stood framed in the lighted doorway,
+shouting: "Have your tickets in your hands and give them up as you pass
+in." They were fine fellows, helping in a splendid work, and their
+society did much good, though it was not so well organized as others
+that have followed in its steps; but Shovel, you may believe, was in no
+mood to attend to them. He had but one thought: that the traitor Tommy
+was doubtless at that moment boring his way toward them, underground,
+as it were, and "holding his ticket in his hand." Shovel dived into the
+rabble and was flung back upside down. Falling with his arms round a
+full-grown man, he immediately ran up him as if he had been a lamp-post,
+and was aloft just sufficiently long to see Tommy give up the ticket and
+saunter into the hall.
+
+The crowd tried at intervals to rush the door. It was mainly composed of
+ragged boys, but here and there were men, women, and girls, who came
+into view for a moment under the lights as the mob heaved and went round
+and round like a boiling potful. Two policemen joined the
+ticket-collectors, and though it was a good-humored gathering, the air
+was thick with such cries as these:
+
+"I lorst my ticket, ain't I telling yer? Gar on, guv'nor, lemme in!"
+
+"Oh, crumpets, look at Jimmy! Jimmy never done nothink, your honor;
+he's a himposter"'
+
+"I'm the boy what kicked the peeler. Hie, you toff with the choker,
+ain't I to step up?"
+
+"Tell yer, I'm a genooine criminal, I am. If yer don't lemme in I'll
+have the lawr on you."
+
+"Let a poor cove in as his father drownded hisself for his country."
+
+"What air yer torking about? Warn't I in larst year, and the cuss as
+runs the show, he says to me, 'Allers welcome,' he says. None on your
+sarse, Bobby. I demands to see the cuss what runs--"
+
+"Jest keeping on me out 'cos I ain't done nothin'. Ho, this is a
+encouragement to honesty, I don't think."
+
+Mighty in tongue and knee and elbow was an unknown knight, ever
+conspicuous; it might be but by a leg waving for one brief moment in the
+air. He did not want to go in, would not go in though they went on their
+blooming knees to him; he was after a viper of the name of Tommy. Half
+an hour had not tired him, and he was leading another assault, when a
+magnificent lady, such as you see in wax-works, appeared in the
+vestibule and made some remark to a policeman, who then shouted:
+
+"If so there be hany lad here called Shovel, he can step forrard."
+
+A dozen lads stepped forward at once, but a flail drove them right and
+left, and the unknown knight had mounted the parapet amid a shower of
+execrations. "If you are the real Shovel," the lady said to him, "you
+can tell me how this proceeds, 'I love my dear father and my dear
+mother--' Go on."
+
+Shovel obeyed, tremblingly. "And all the dear little kids at 'ome. You
+are a kind laidy or gentleman. I love yer. I will never do it again, so
+help me bob. Amen."
+
+"Charming!" chirped the lady, and down pleasant-smelling aisles she led
+him, pausing to drop an observation about Tommy to a clergyman: "So glad
+I came; I have discovered the most delightful little monster called
+Tommy." The clergyman looked after her half in sadness, half
+sarcastically; he was thinking that he had discovered a monster also.
+
+At present the body of the hall was empty, but its sides were lively
+with gorging boys, among whom ladies moved, carrying platefuls of good
+things. Most of them were sweet women, fighting bravely for these boys,
+and not at all like Shovel's patroness, who had come for a sensation.
+Tommy falling into her hands, she got it.
+
+Tommy, who had a corner to himself, was lolling in it like a little
+king, and he not only ordered roast-beef for the awe-struck Shovel, but
+sent the lady back for salt. Then he whispered, exultantly: "Quick,
+Shovel, feel my pocket" (it bulged with two oranges), "now the inside
+pocket" (plum-duff), "now my waistcoat pocket" (threepence); "look in my
+mouth" (chocolates).
+
+When Shovel found speech he began excitedly: "I love my dear father and
+my dear--"
+
+"Gach!" said Tommy, interrupting him contemptuously. "Repenting ain't no
+go, Shovel. Look at them other coves; none of them has got no money, nor
+full pockets, and I tell you, it's 'cos they has repented."
+
+"Gar on!"
+
+"It's true, I tells you. That lady as is my one, she's called her
+ladyship, and she don't care a cuss for boys as has repented," which of
+course was a libel, her ladyship being celebrated wherever paragraphs
+penetrate for having knitted a pair of stockings for the deserving poor.
+
+"When I saw that," Tommy continued, brazenly, "I bragged 'stead of
+repenting, and the wuss I says I am, she jest says, 'You little
+monster,' and gives me another orange."
+
+"Then I'm done for," Shovel moaned, "for I rolled off that 'bout loving
+my dear father and my dear mother, blast 'em, soon as I seen her."
+
+He need not let that depress him. Tommy had told her he would say it,
+but that it was all flam.
+
+Shovel thought the ideal arrangement would be for him to eat and leave
+the torking to Tommy. Tommy nodded. "I'm full, at any rate," he said,
+struggling with his waistcoat. "Oh, Shovel, I _am_ full!"
+
+Her ladyship returned, and the boys held by their contract, but of the
+dark character Tommy seems to have been, let not these pages bear the
+record. Do you wonder that her ladyship believed him? On this point we
+must fight for our Tommy. You would have believed him. Even Shovel, who
+knew, between the bites, that it was all whoppers, listened as to his
+father reading aloud. This was because another boy present half believed
+it for the moment also. When he described the eerie darkness of the
+butler's pantry, he shivered involuntarily, and he shut his eyes
+once--ugh!--that was because he saw the blood spouting out of the
+butler. He was turning up his trousers to show the mark of the butler's
+boot on his leg when the lady was called away, and then Shovel shook
+him, saying: "Darn yer, doesn't yer know as it's all your eye?" which
+brought Tommy to his senses with a jerk.
+
+"Sure's death, Shovel," he whispered, in awe, "I was thinking I done it,
+every bit!"
+
+Had her ladyship come back she would have found him a different boy. He
+remembered now that Elspeth, for whom he had filled his pockets, was
+praying for him; he could see her on her knees, saying, "Oh, God, I'se
+praying for Tommy," and remorse took hold of him and shook him on his
+seat. He broke into one hysterical laugh and then immediately began to
+sob. This was the moment when Shovel should have got him quietly out of
+the hall.
+
+Members of the society discussing him afterwards with bated breath said
+that never till they died could they forget her ladyship's face while he
+did it. "But did you notice the boy's own face? It was positively
+angelic." "Angelic, indeed; the little horror was intoxicated." No,
+there was a doctor present, and according to him it was the meal that
+had gone to the boy's head; he looked half starved. As for the
+clergyman, he only said: "We shall lose her subscription; I am glad of
+it."
+
+Yes, Tommy was intoxicated, but with a beverage not recognized by the
+faculty. What happened was this: Supper being finished, the time had
+come for what Shovel called the jawing, and the boys were now mustered
+in the body of the hall. The limited audience had gone to the gallery,
+and unluckily all eyes except Shovel's were turned to the platform.
+Shovel was apprehensive about Tommy, who was not exactly sobbing now;
+but strange, uncontrollable sounds not unlike the winding up of a clock
+proceeded from his throat; his face had flushed; there was a purposeful
+look in his usually unreadable eye; his fingers were fidgeting on the
+board in front of him, and he seemed to keep his seat with difficulty.
+
+The personage who was to address the boys sat on the platform with
+clergymen, members of committee, and some ladies, one of them Tommy's
+patroness. Her ladyship saw Tommy and smiled to him, but obtained no
+response. She had taken a front seat, a choice that she must have
+regretted presently.
+
+The chairman rose and announced that the. Rev. Mr. ----would open the
+proceedings with prayer. The Rev. Mr. ---- rose to pray in a loud voice
+for the waifs in the body of the hall. At the same moment rose Tommy,
+and began to pray in a squeaky voice for the people on the platform.
+
+He had many Biblical phrases, mostly picked up in Thrums Street, and
+what he said was distinctly heard in the stillness, the clergyman being
+suddenly bereft of speech. "Oh," he cried, "look down on them ones
+there, for, oh, they are unworthy of Thy mercy, and, oh, the worst
+sinner is her ladyship, her sitting there so brazen in the black frock
+with yellow stripes, and the worse I said I were the better pleased were
+she. Oh, make her think shame for tempting of a poor boy, for getting
+suffer little children, oh, why cumbereth she the ground, oh--"
+
+He was in full swing before any one could act. Shovel having failed to
+hold him in his seat, had done what was perhaps the next best thing, got
+beneath it himself. The arm of the petrified clergyman was still
+extended, as if blessing his brother's remarks; the chairman seemed to
+be trying to fling his right hand at the culprit; but her ladyship,
+after the first stab, never moved a muscle. Thus for nearly half a
+minute, when the officials woke up, and squeezing past many knees,
+seized Tommy by the neck and ran him out of the building. All down the
+aisle he prayed hysterically, and for some time afterwards, to Shovel,
+who had been cast forth along with him.
+
+At an hour of that night when their mother was asleep, and it is to be
+hoped they were the only two children awake in London, Tommy sat up
+softly in the wardrobe to discover whether Elspeth was still praying for
+him. He knew that she was on the floor in a night-gown some twelve sizes
+too large for her, but the room was as silent and black as the world he
+had just left by taking his fingers from his ears and the blankets off
+his face.
+
+"I see you," he said mendaciously, and in a guarded voice, so as not to
+waken his mother, from whom he had kept his escapade. This had not the
+desired effect of drawing a reply from Elspeth, and he tried bluster.
+
+"You needna think as I'll repent, you brat, so there! What?
+
+"I wish I hadna told you about it!" Indeed, he had endeavored not to do
+so, but pride in his achievement had eventually conquered prudence.
+
+"Reddy would have laughed, she would, and said as I was a wonder. Reddy
+was the kind I like. What?
+
+"You ate up the oranges quick, and the plum-duff too, so you should pray
+for yoursel' as well as for me. It's easy to say as you didna know how I
+got them till after you eated them, but you should have found out. What?
+
+"Do you think it was for my own self as I done it? I jest done it to get
+the oranges and plum-duff to you, I did, and the threepence too. Eh?
+Speak, you little besom.
+
+"I tell you as I did repent in the hall. I was greeting, and I never
+knowed I put up that prayer till Shovel told me on it. We was sitting in
+the street by that time."
+
+This was true. On leaving the hall Tommy had soon dropped to the cold
+ground and squatted there till he came to, when he remembered nothing of
+what had led to his expulsion. Like a stream that has run into a pond
+and only finds itself again when it gets out, he was but a continuation
+of the boy who when last conscious of himself was in the corner crying
+remorsefully over his misdeed; and in this humility he would have
+returned to Elspeth had no one told him of his prayer. Shovel, however,
+was at hand, not only to tell him all about it, but to applaud, and home
+strutted Tommy chuckling.
+
+"I am sleeping," he next said to Elspeth, "so you may as well come to
+your bed."
+
+He imitated the breathing of a sleeper, but it was the only sound to be
+heard in London, and he desisted fearfully. "Come away, Elspeth," he
+said, coaxingly, for he was very fond of her and could not sleep while
+she was cold and miserable.
+
+Still getting no response he pulled his body inch by inch out of the
+bed-clothes, and holding his breath, found the floor with his feet
+stealthily, as if to cheat the wardrobe into thinking that he was still
+in it. But his reason was to discover whether Elspeth had fallen asleep
+on her knees without her learning that he cared to know. Almost
+noiselessly he worked himself along the floor, but when he stopped to
+bring his face nearer hers, there was such a creaking of his joints that
+if Elspeth did not hear it she--she must be dead! His knees played whack
+on the floor.
+
+Elspeth only gasped once, but he heard, and remained beside her for a
+minute, so that she might hug him if such was her desire; and she put
+out her hand in the darkness so that his should not have far to travel
+alone if it chanced to be on the way to her. Thus they sat on their
+knees, each aghast at the hard-heartedness of the other.
+
+Tommy put the blankets over the kneeling figure, and presently announced
+from the wardrobe that if he died of cold before repenting the blame of
+keeping him out of heaven would be Elspeth's. But the last word was
+muffled, for the blankets were tucked about him as he spoke, and two
+motherly little arms gave him the embrace they wanted to withhold.
+Foiled again, he kicked off the bed-clothes and said: "I tell yer I wants
+to die!"
+
+This terrified both of them, and he added, quickly:
+
+"Oh, God, if I was sure I were to die to-night I would repent at once."
+It is the commonest prayer in all languages, but down on her knees
+slipped Elspeth again, and Tommy, who felt that it had done him good,
+said indignantly: "Surely that is religion. What?"
+
+He lay on his face until he was frightened by a noise louder than
+thunder in the daytime--the scraping of his eyelashes on the pillow.
+Then he sat up in the wardrobe and fired his three last shots.
+
+"Elspeth Sandys, I'm done with yer forever, I am. I'll take care on yer,
+but I'll never kiss yer no more.
+
+"When yer boasts as I'm your brother I'll say you ain't. I'll tell my
+mother about Reddy the morn, and syne she'll put you to the door smart.
+
+"When you are a grown woman I'll buy a house to yer, but you'll have
+jest to bide in it by your lonely self, and I'll come once a year to
+speir how you are, but I won't come in, I won't--I'll jest cry up the
+stair."
+
+The effect of this was even greater than he had expected, for now two
+were in tears instead of one, and Tommy's grief was the more
+heartrending, he was so much better at everything than Elspeth. He
+jumped out of the wardrobe and ran to her, calling her name, and he put
+his arms round her cold body, and the dear mite, forgetting how cruelly
+he had used her, cried, "Oh, tighter, Tommy, tighter; you didn't not
+mean it, did yer? Oh, you is terrible fond on me, ain't yer? And you
+won't not tell my mother 'bout Reddy, will yer, and you is no done wi'
+me forever, is yer? and you won't not put me in a house by myself, will
+yer? Oh, Tommy, is that the tightest you can do?"
+
+And Tommy made it tighter, vowing, "I never meant it; I was a bad un to
+say it. If Reddy were to come back wanting for to squeeze you out, I
+would send her packing quick, I would. I tell yer what, I'll kiss you
+with folk looking on, I will, and no be ashamed to do it, and if Shovel
+is one of them what sees me, and he puts his finger to his nose, I'll
+blood the mouth of him, I will, dagont!"
+
+Then he prayed for forgiveness, and he could always pray more
+beautifully than Elspeth. Even she was satisfied with the way he did it,
+and so, alack, was he.
+
+"But you forgot to tell," she said fondly, when once more they were in
+the wardrobe together--"you forgot to tell as you filled your pockets
+wif things to me."
+
+"I didn't forget," Tommy replied modestly. "I missed it out, on purpose,
+I did, 'cos I was sure God knows on it without my telling him, and I
+thought he would be pleased if I didn't let on as I knowed it was good
+of me."
+
+"Oh, Tommy," cried Elspeth, worshipping him, "I couldn't have doned
+that, I couldn't!" She was barely six, and easily taken in, but she
+would save him from himself if she could.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+AULD LANG SYNE
+
+
+What to do with her ladyship's threepence? Tommy finally decided to drop
+it into the charity-box that had once contained his penny. They held it
+over the slit together, Elspeth almost in tears because it was such a
+large sum to give away, but Tommy looking noble he was so proud of
+himself; and when he said "Three!" they let go.
+
+There followed days of excitement centred round their money-box. Shovel
+introduced Tommy to a boy what said as after a bit you forget how much
+money was in your box, and then when you opened it, oh, Lor'! there is
+more than you thought, so he and Elspeth gave this plan a week's trial,
+affecting not to know how much they had gathered, but when they unlocked
+it, the sum was still only eightpence; so then Tommy told the liar to
+come on, and they fought while the horrified Elspeth prayed, and Tommy
+licked him, a result due to one of the famous Thrums left-handers then
+on exhibition in that street for the first time, as taught the victor by
+Petey Whamond the younger, late of Tillyloss.
+
+The money did come in, once in spate (twopence from Bob in twenty-four
+hours), but usually so slowly that they saw it resting on the way, and
+then, when they listened intently, they could hear the thud of Hogmanay.
+The last halfpenny was a special aggravation, strolling about, just out
+of reach, with all the swagger of sixpence, but at last Elspeth had it,
+and after that, the sooner Hogmanay came the better.
+
+They concealed their excitement under too many wrappings, but their
+mother suspected nothing. When she was dressing on the morning of
+Hogmanay, her stockings happened to be at the other side of the room,
+and they were such a long way off that she rested on the way to them. At
+the meagre breakfast she said what a heavy teapot that was, and Tommy
+thought this funny, but the salt had gone from the joke when he
+remembered it afterwards. And when she was ready to go off to her work
+she hesitated at the door, looking at her bed and from it to her
+children as if in two minds, and then went quietly downstairs.
+
+The distance seems greater than ever to-day, poor woman, and you stop
+longer at the corners, where rude men jeer at you. Scarcely can you push
+open the door of the dancing-school or lift the pail; the fire has gone
+out, you must again go on your knees before it, and again the smoke
+makes you cough. Gaunt slattern, fighting to bring up the phlegm, was it
+really you for whom another woman gave her life, and thought it a rich
+reward to get dressing you once in your long clothes, when she called
+you her beautiful, and smiled, and smiling, died? Well, well; but take
+courage, Jean Myles. The long road still lies straight up hill, but your
+climbing is near an end. Shrink from the rude men no more, they are soon
+to forget you, so soon! It is a heavy door, but soon you will have
+pushed it open for the last time. The girls will babble still, but not
+to you, not of you. Cheer up, the work is nearly done. Her beautiful!
+Come, beautiful, strength for a few more days, and then you can leave
+the key of the leaden door behind you, and on your way home you may kiss
+your hand joyously to the weary streets, for you are going to die.
+
+Tommy and Elspeth had been to the foot of the stair many times to look
+for her before their mother came back that evening, yet when she
+re-entered her home, behold, they were sitting calmly on the fender as
+if this were a day like yesterday or to-morrow, as if Tommy had not been
+on a business visit to Thrums Street, as if the hump on the bed did not
+mean that a glorious something was hidden under the coverlet. True,
+Elspeth would look at Tommy imploringly every few minutes, meaning that
+she could not keep it in much longer, and then Tommy would mutter the
+one word "Bell" to remind her that it was against the rules to begin
+before the Thrums eight-o'clock bell rang. They also wiled away the time
+of waiting by inviting each other to conferences at the window where
+these whispers passed--
+
+"She ain't got a notion, Tommy."
+
+"Dinna look so often at the bed."
+
+"If I could jest get one more peep at it!"
+
+"No, no; but you can put your hand on the top of it as you go by."
+
+The artfulness of Tommy lured his unsuspecting mother into telling how
+they would be holding Hogmanay in Thrums to-night, how cartloads of
+kebbock cheeses had been rolling into the town all the livelong day ("Do
+you hear them, Elspeth?"), and in dark closes the children were already
+gathering, with smeared faces and in eccentric dress, to sally forth as
+guisers at the clap of eight, when the ringing of a bell lets Hogmanay
+loose. ("You see, Elspeth?") Inside the houses men and women were
+preparing (though not by fasting, which would have been such a good way
+that it is surprising no one ever thought of it) for a series of visits,
+at every one of which they would be offered a dram and kebbock and
+bannock, and in the grander houses "bridies," which are a sublime kind
+of pie.
+
+Tommy had the audacity to ask what bridies were like. And he could not
+dress up and be a guiser, could he, mother, for the guisers sang a song,
+and he did not know the words? What a pity they could not get bridies to
+buy in London, and learn the song and sing it. But of course they could
+not! ("Elspeth, if you tumble off the fender again, she'll guess.")
+
+Such is a sample of Tommy, but Elspeth was sly also, if in a smaller
+way, and it was she who said: "There ain't nothin' in the bed, is there,
+Tommy!" This duplicity made her uneasy, and she added, behind her teeth,
+"Maybe there is," and then, "O God, I knows as there is."
+
+But as the great moment drew near there were no more questions; two
+children were staring at the clock and listening intently for the peal
+of a bell nearly five hundred miles away.
+
+The clock struck. "Whisht! It's time, Elspeth! They've begun! Come on!"
+
+A few minutes afterwards Mrs. Sandys was roused by a knock at the door,
+followed by the entrance of two mysterious figures. The female wore a
+boy's jacket turned outside in, the male a woman's bonnet and a shawl,
+and to make his disguise the more impenetrable he carried a poker in his
+right hand. They stopped in the middle of the floor and began to recite,
+rather tremulously,
+
+Get up, good wife, and binna sweir,
+And deal your bread to them that's here.
+For the time will come when you'll be dead,
+And then you'll need neither ale nor bread.
+
+Mrs. Sandys had started, and then turned piteously from them; but when
+they were done she tried to smile, and said, with forced gayety, that
+she saw they were guisers, and it was a fine night, and would they take
+a chair. The male stranger did so at once, but the female said, rather
+anxiously: "You are sure as you don't know who we is?" Their hostess
+shook her head, and then he of the poker offered her three guesses, a
+daring thing to do, but all went well, for her first guess was Shovel
+and his old girl; second guess, Before and After; third guess, Napoleon
+Buonaparte and the Auld Licht minister. At each guess the smaller of the
+intruders clapped her hands gleefully, but when, with the third, she was
+unmuzzled, she putted with her head at Mrs. Sandys and hugged her,
+screaming, "It ain't none on them; it's jest me, mother, it's Elspeth!"
+and even while their astounded hostess was asking could it be true, the
+male conspirator dropped his poker noisily (to draw attention to
+himself) and stood revealed as Thomas Sandys.
+
+Wasn't it just like Thrums, wasn't it just the very, very same? Ah, it
+was wonderful, their mother said, but, alas, there was one thing
+wanting: she had no Hogmanay to give the guisers.
+
+Had she not? What a pity, Elspeth! What a pity, Tommy! What might that
+be in the bed, Elspeth? It couldn't not be their Hogmanay, could it,
+Tommy? If Tommy was his mother he would look and see. If Elspeth was her
+mother she would look and see.
+
+Her curiosity thus cunningly aroused, Mrs. Sandys raised the coverlet
+of the bed and--there were three bridies, an oatmeal cake, and a hunk of
+kebbock. "And they comed from Thrums!" cried Elspeth, while Tommy cried,
+"Petey and the others got a lot sent from Thrums, and I bought the
+bridies from them, and they gave me the bannock and the kebbock for
+nuthin'!" Their mother did not utter the cry of rapture which Tommy
+expected so confidently that he could have done it for her; instead, she
+pulled her two children toward her, and the great moment was like to be
+a tearful rather than an ecstatic one, for Elspeth had begun to whimper,
+and even Tommy--but by a supreme effort he shouldered reality to the
+door.
+
+"Is this my Hogmanay, guidwife?" he asked in the nick of time, and the
+situation thus being saved, the luscious feast was partaken of, the
+guisers listening solemnly as each bite went down. They also took care
+to address their hostess as "guidwife" or "mistress," affecting not to
+have met her lately, and inquiring genially after the health of herself
+and family. "How many have you?" was Tommy's masterpiece, and she
+answered in the proper spirit, but all the time she was hiding great
+part of her bridie beneath her apron, Hogmanay having come too late for
+her.
+
+Everything was to be done exactly as they were doing it in Thrums
+Street, and so presently Tommy made a speech; it was the speech of old
+Petey, who had rehearsed it several times before him. "Here's a toast,"
+said Tommy, standing up and waving his arms, "here's a toast that we'll
+drink in silence, one that maun have sad thoughts at the back o't to
+some of us, but one, my friends, that keeps the hearts of Thrums folk
+green and ties us all thegither, like as it were wi' twine. It's to all
+them, wherever they may be the night, wha' have sat as lads and lasses
+at the Cuttle Well."
+
+To one of the listeners it was such an unexpected ending that a faint
+cry broke from her, which startled the children, and they sat in silence
+looking at her. She had turned her face from them, but her arm was
+extended as if entreating Tommy to stop.
+
+"That was the end," he said, at length, in a tone of expostulation;
+"it's auld Petey's speech."
+
+"Are you sure," his mother asked wistfully, "that Petey was to say _all_
+them as have sat at the Cuttle Well? He made no exception, did he?"
+
+Tommy did not know what exception was, but he assured her that he had
+repeated the speech, word for word. For the remainder of the evening she
+sat apart by the fire, while her children gambled for crack-nuts, young
+Petey having made a teetotum for Tommy and taught him what the letters
+on it meant. Their mirth rang faintly in her ear, and they scarcely
+heard her fits of coughing; she was as much engrossed in her own
+thoughts as they in theirs, but hers were sad and theirs were
+jocund--Hogmanay, like all festivals, being but a bank from which we
+can only draw what we put in. So an hour or more passed, after which
+Tommy whispered to Elspeth: "Now's the time; they're at it now," and
+each took a hand of their mother, and she woke from her reverie to find
+that they had pulled her from her chair and were jumping up and down,
+shouting, excitedly, "For Auld Lang Syne, my dear, for Auld Lang Syne,
+Auld Lang Syne, my dear, Auld Lang Syne." She tried to sing the words
+with her children, tried to dance round with them, tried to smile, but--
+
+It was Tommy who dropped her hand first. "Mother," he cried, "your face
+is wet, you're greeting sair, and you said you had forgot the way."
+
+"I mind it now, man, I mind it now," she said, standing helplessly in
+the middle of the room.
+
+Elspeth nestled against her, crying, "My mother was thinking about
+Thrums, wasn't she, Tommy?"
+
+"I was thinking about the part o't I'm most awid to be in," the poor
+woman said, sinking back into her chair.
+
+"It's the Den," Tommy told Elspeth.
+
+"It's the Square," Elspeth told Tommy.
+
+"No, it's Monypenny."
+
+"No, it's the Commonty."
+
+But it was none of these places. "It's the cemetery," the woman said,
+"it's the hamely, quiet cemetery on the hillside. Oh, there's mony a
+bonny place in my nain bonny toon, but there's nain so hamely like as
+the cemetery." She sat shaking in the chair, and they thought she was to
+say no more, but presently she rose excitedly, and with a vehemence that
+made them shrink from her she cried: "I winna lie in London! tell Aaron
+Latta that; I winna lie in London!"
+
+For a few more days she trudged to her work, and after that she seldom
+left her bed. She had no longer strength to coax up the phlegm, and a
+doctor brought in by Shovel's mother warned her that her days were near
+an end. Then she wrote her last letter to Thrums, Tommy and Elspeth
+standing by to pick up the pen when it fell from her feeble hand, and in
+the intervals she told them that she was Jean Myles.
+
+"And if I die and Aaron hasna come," she said, "you maun just gang to
+auld Petey and tell him wha you are."
+
+"But how can you be Jean Myles?" asked astounded Tommy. "You ain't a
+grand lady and--"
+
+His mother looked at Elspeth. "No' afore her," she besought him; but
+before he set off to post the letter she said: "Come canny into my bed
+the night, when Elspeth 's sleeping, and syne I'll tell you all there is
+to tell about Jean Myles."
+
+"Tell me now whether the letter is to Aaron Latta?"
+
+"It's for him," she said, "but it's no' to him. I'm feared he might burn
+it without opening it if he saw my write on the cover, so I've wrote it
+to a friend of his wha will read it to him."
+
+"And what's inside, mother?" the boy begged, inquisitively. "It must be
+queer things if they'll bring Aaron Latta all the way from Thrums."
+
+"There's but little in it, man," she said, pressing her hand hard upon
+her chest. "It's no muckle mair than 'Auld Lang Syne, my dear, for Auld
+Lang Syne.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE FAVORITE OF THE LADIES
+
+
+That night the excited boy was wakened by a tap-tap, as of someone
+knocking for admittance, and stealing to his mother's side, he cried,
+"Aaron Latta has come; hearken to him chapping at the door!"
+
+It was only the man through the wall, but Mrs. Sandys took Tommy into
+bed with her, and while Elspeth slept, told him the story of her life.
+She coughed feebly now, but the panting of the dying is a sound that no
+walls can cage, and the man continued to remonstrate at intervals. Tommy
+never recalled his mother's story without seeming, through the darkness
+in which it was told, to hear Elspeth's peaceful breathing and the angry
+tap-tap on the wall.
+
+"I'm sweer to tell it to you," she began, "but tell I maun, for though
+it's just a warning to you and Elspeth no' to be like them that brought
+you into the world, it's all I have to leave you. Ay, and there's
+another reason: you may soon be among folk wha ken but half the story
+and put a waur face on it than I deserve."
+
+She had spoken calmly, but her next words were passionate.
+
+"They thought I was fond o'him," she cried; "oh, they were blind,
+blind! Frae the first I could never thole the sight o' him.
+
+"Maybe that's no' true," she had to add. "I aye kent he was a black, but
+yet I couldna put him out o' my head; he took sudden grips o' me like an
+evil thought. I aye ran frae him, and yet I sair doubt that I went
+looking for him too."
+
+"Was it Aaron Latta?" Tommy asked.
+
+"No, it was your father. The first I ever saw of him was at Cullew, four
+lang miles frae Thrums. There was a ball after the market, and Esther
+Auld and me went to it. We went in a cart, and I was wearing a pink
+print, wi' a white bonnet, and blue ribbons that tied aneath the chin. I
+had a shawl abune, no' to file them. There wasna a more innocent lassie
+in Thrums, man, no, nor a happier one; for Aaron Latta--Aaron came half
+the way wi' us, and he was hauding my hand aneath the shawl. He hadna
+speired me at that time, but I just kent.
+
+"It was an auld custom to choose a queen of beauty at the ball, but that
+night the men couldna 'gree wha should be judge, and in the tail-end
+they went out thegither to look for one, determined to mak' judge o' the
+first man they met, though they should have to tear him off a horse and
+bring him in by force. You wouldna believe to look at me now, man, that
+I could have had any thait o' being made queen, but I was fell bonny,
+and I was as keen as the rest. How simple we were, all pretending to
+one another that we didna want to be chosen! Esther Auld said she would
+hod ahint the tent till a queen was picked, and at the very time she
+said it, she was in a palsy, through no being able to decide whether she
+looked better in her shell necklace or wanting it. She put it on in the
+end, and syne when we heard the tramp o' the men, her mind misgave her,
+and she cried: 'For the love o' mercy, keep them out till I get it off
+again!' So we were a' laughing when they came in.
+
+"Laddie, it was your father and Elspeth's that they brought wi' them,
+and he was a stranger to us, though we kent something about him afore
+the night was out. He was finely put on, wi' a gold chain, and a free
+w'y of looking at women, and if you mind o' him ava, you ken that he was
+fair and buirdly, wi' a full face, and aye a laugh ahint it. I tell ye,
+man, that when our een met, and I saw that triumphing laugh ahint his
+face, I took a fear of him, as if I had guessed the end.
+
+"For years and years after that night I dreamed it ower again, and aye I
+heard mysel' crying to God to keep that man awa' frae me. But I doubt I
+put up no sic prayer at the time; his masterful look fleid me, and yet
+it drew me against my will, and I was trembling wi' pride as well as
+fear when he made me queen. We danced thegither and fought thegither a'
+through the ball, and my will was no match for his, and the worst o't
+was I had a kind o' secret pleasure in being mastered.
+
+"Man, he kissed me. Lads had kissed me afore that night, but never since
+first I went wi' Aaron Latta to the Cuttle Well. Aaron hadna done it,
+but I was never to let none do it again except him. So when your father
+did it I struck him, but ahint the redness that came ower his face, I
+saw his triumphing laugh, and he whispered that he liked me for the
+blow. He said, 'I prefer the sweer anes, and the more you struggle, my
+beauty, the better pleased I'll be.' Almost his hinmost words to me was,
+'I've been hearing of your Aaron, and that pleases me too!' I fired up
+at that and telled him what I thought of him, but he said, 'If you canna
+abide me, what made you dance wi' me so often?' and, oh, laddie, that's
+a question that has sung in my head since syne.
+
+"I've telled you that we found out wha he was, and 'deed he made no
+secret of it. Up to the time he was twal year auld he had been a kent
+face in that part, for his mither was a Cullew woman called Mag Sandys,
+ay, and a single woman. She was a hard ane too, for when he was twelve
+year auld he flung out o' the house saying he would ne'er come back, and
+she said he shouldna run awa' wi' thae new boots on, so she took the
+boots off him and let him go.
+
+"He was a grown man when more was heard o' him, and syne stories came
+saying he was at Redlintie, playing queer games wi' his father. His
+father was gauger there, that's exciseman, a Mr. Cray, wha got his wife
+out o' Thrums, and even when he was courting her (so they say) had the
+heart to be ower chief wi' this other woman. Weel, Magerful Tam, as he
+was called through being so masterful, cast up at Redlintie frae none
+kent where, gey desperate for siller, but wi' a black coat on his back,
+and he said that all he wanted was to be owned as the gauger's son. Mr.
+Cray said there was no proof that he was his son, and syne the queer
+sport began. Your father had noticed he was like Mr. Cray, except in the
+beard, and so he had his beard clippit the same, and he got hand o' some
+weel-kent claethes o' the gauger's that had been presented to a poor
+body, and he learned up a' the gauger's tricks of speech and walking,
+especially a droll w'y he had o' taking snuff and syne flinging back his
+head. They were as like as buckies after that, and soon there was a town
+about it, for one day ladies would find that they had been bowing to the
+son thinking he was the father, and the next they wouldna speak to the
+father, mistaking him for the son; and a report spread to the head
+office o' the excise that the gauger of Redlintie spent his evenings at
+a public house, singing 'The De'il's awa' wi' the Exciseman.' Tam drank
+nows and nans, and it ga'e Mr. Cray a turn to see him come rolling yont
+the street, just as if it was himsel' in a looking-glass. He was a
+sedate-living man now, but chiefly because his wife kept him in good
+control, and this sight brought back auld times so vive to him, that he
+a kind of mistook which ane he was, and took to dropping,
+forgetful-like, into public-houses again. It was high time Tam should be
+got out of the place, and they did manage to bribe him into leaving,
+though no easily, for it had been fine sport to him, and to make a
+sensation was what he valued above all things. We heard that he went
+back to Redlintie a curran years after, but both the gauger and his wife
+were dead, and I ken that he didna trouble the twa daughters. They were
+Miss Ailie and Miss Kitty, and as they werena left as well off as was
+expected they came to Thrums, which had been their mother's town, and
+started a school for the gentry there. I dinna doubt but what it's the
+school that Esther Auld's laddie is at.
+
+"So after being long lost sight o' he turned up at Cullew, wi' what
+looked to simple folk a fortune in his pouches, and half a dozen untrue
+stories about how he made it. He had come to make a show o' himsel'
+afore his mither, and I dare say to give her some gold, for he was aye
+ready to give when he had, I'll say that for him; but she had flitted to
+some unkent place, and so he bade on some weeks at the Cullew public. He
+caredna whether the folk praised or blamed him so long as they wondered
+at him, and queer stories about his doings was aye on the road to
+Thrums. One was that he gave wild suppers to whaever would come; another
+that he went to the kirk just for the glory of flinging a sovereign
+into the plate wi' a clatter; another that when he lay sleeping on twa
+chairs, gold and silver dribbled out o' his trouser pouches to the
+floor.
+
+"There was an ugly story too, about a lassie, that led to his leaving
+the place and coming to Thrums, after he had near killed the Cullew
+smith, in a fight. The first I heard o' his being in Thrums was when
+Aaron Latta walked into my granny's house and said there was a strange
+man at the Tappit Hen public standing drink to any that would tak', and
+boasting that he had but to waggle his finger to make me give Aaron up.
+I went wi' Aaron and looked in at the window, but I kent wha it was
+afore I looked. If Aaron had just gone in and struck him! All decent
+women, laddie, has a horror of being fought about. I'm no sure but what
+that's just the difference atween guid ones and ill ones, but this man
+had a power ower me; and if Aaron had just struck him! Instead o'
+meddling he turned white, and I couldna help contrasting them, and
+thinking how masterful your father looked. Fine I kent he was a brute,
+and yet I couldna help admiring him for looking so magerful.
+
+"He bade on at the Tappit Hen, flinging his siller about in the way that
+made him a king at Cullew, but no molesting Miss Ailie and Miss Kitty,
+which all but me thought was what he had come to Thrums to do. Aaron and
+me was cried for the first time the Sabbath after he came, and the next
+Sabbath for the second time, but afore that he was aye getting in my
+road and speaking to me, but I ran frae him and hod frae him when I
+could, and he said the reason I did that was because I kent his will was
+stronger than mine. He was aye saying things that made me think he saw
+down to the bottom o' my soul; what I didna understand was that in
+mastering other women he had been learning to master me. Ay, but though
+I thought ower muckle about him, never did I speak him fair. I loo'ed
+Aaron wi' all my heart, and your father kent it; and that, I doubt, was
+what made him so keen, for, oh, but he was vain!
+
+"And now we've come to the night I'm so sweer to speak about. She was a
+good happy lassie that went into the Den that moonlight night wi'
+Aaron's arm round her, but it was another woman that came out. We
+thought we had the Den to oursel's, and as we sat on the Shoaging Stane
+at the Cuttle Well, Aaron wrote wi' a stick on the ground 'Jean Latta,'
+and prigged wi' me to look at it, but I spread my hands ower my face,
+and he didna ken that I was keeking at it through my fingers all the
+time. We was so ta'en up with oursel's that we saw nobody coming, and
+all at once there was your father by the side o' us! 'You've written the
+wrong name, Aaron,' he said, jeering and pointing with his foot at the
+letters; 'it should be Jean Sandys.'
+
+"Aaron said not a word, but I had a presentiment of ill, and I cried,
+'Dinna let him change the name, Aaron!' Your father had been to change
+it himsel', but at that he had a new thait, and he said, 'No, I'll no'
+do it; your brave Aaron shall do it for me.'
+
+"Laddie, it doesna do for a man to be a coward afore a woman that's fond
+o' him. A woman will thole a man's being anything except like hersel'.
+When I was sure Aaron was a coward I stood still as death, waiting to
+ken wha's I was to be.
+
+"Aaron did it. He was loath, but your father crushed him to the ground,
+and said do it he should, and warned him too that if he did it he would
+lose me, bantering him and cowing him and advising him no' to shame me,
+all in a breath. He kent so weel, you see, what was in my mind, and aye
+there was that triumphing laugh ahint his face. If Aaron had fought and
+been beaten, even if he had just lain there and let the man strike away,
+if he had done anything except what he was bidden, he would have won,
+for it would have broken your father's power ower me. But to write the
+word! It was like dishonoring me to save his ain skin, and your father
+took good care he should ken it. You've heard me crying to Aaron in my
+sleep, but it wasna for him I cried, it was for his fire-side. All the
+love I had for him, and it was muckle, was skailed forever that night at
+the Cuttle Well. Without a look ahint me away I went wi' my master, and
+I had no more will to resist him--and oh, man, man, when I came to
+mysel' next morning I wished I had never been born!
+
+"The men folk saw that Aaron had shamed them, and they werena quite so
+set agin me as the women, wha had guessed the truth, though they couldna
+be sure o't. Sair I pitied mysel', and sair I grat, but only when none
+was looking. The mair they miscalled me the higher I held my head, and I
+hung on your father's arm as if I adored him, and I boasted about his
+office and his clerk in London till they believed what I didna believe a
+word o' myself.
+
+"But though I put sic a brave face on't, I was near demented in case he
+shouldna marry me, and he kent that and jokit me about it. Dinna think I
+was fond o' him; I hated him now. And dinna think his masterfulness had
+any more power ower me; his power was broken forever when I woke up that
+weary morning. But that was ower late, and to wait on by mysel' in
+Thrums for what might happen, and me a single woman--I daredna! So I
+flattered at him, and flattered at him, till I got the fool side o' him,
+and he married me.
+
+"My granny let the marriage take place in her house, and he sent in so
+muckle meat and drink that some folk was willing to come. One came that
+wasna wanted. In the middle o' the marriage Aaron Latta, wha had refused
+to speak to anybody since that night, walked in wearing his blacks, wi'
+crape on them, as if it was a funeral, and all he said was that he had
+come to see Jean Myles coffined. He went away quietly as soon as we was
+married, but the crowd outside had fathomed his meaning, and abune the
+minister's words I could hear them crying, 'Ay, it's mair like a burial
+than a marriage!'
+
+"My heart was near breaking wi' woe, but, oh, I was awid they shouldna
+ken it, and the bravest thing I ever did was to sit through the supper
+that night, making muckle o' your father, looking fond-like at him,
+laughing at his coarse jokes, and secretly hating him down to my very
+marrow a' the time. The crowd got word o' the ongoings, and they took a
+cruel revenge. A carriage had been ordered for nine o'clock to take us
+to Tilliedrum, where we should get the train to London, and when we
+heard it, as we thought, drive up to the door, out we went, me on your
+father's arm laughing, but wi' my teeth set. But Aaron's words had put
+an idea into their heads, though he didna intend it, and they had got
+out the hearse. It was the hearse they had brought to the door instead
+of a carriage.
+
+"We got awa' in a carriage in the tail-end, and the stanes hitting it was
+all the good luck flung after me. It had just one horse, and I mind how
+I cried to Esther Auld, wha had been the first to throw, that when I
+came back it would be in a carriage and pair.
+
+"Ay, I had pride! In the carriage your father telled me as a joke that
+he had got away without paying the supper, and that about all the money
+he had now, forby what was to pay our tickets to London, was the
+half-sovereign on his watch-chain. But I was determined to have Thrums
+think I had married grand, and as I had three pound six on me, the
+savings o' all my days, I gave two pound of it to Malcolm Crabb, the
+driver, unbeknown to your father, but pretending it was frae him, and
+telled him to pay for the supper and the carriage with it. He said it
+was far ower muckle, but I just laughed, and said wealthy gentlemen like
+Mr. Sandys couldna be bothered to take back change, so Malcolm could
+keep what was ower. Malcolm was the man Esther Auld had just married,
+and I counted on this maddening her and on Malcolm's spreading the story
+through the town. Laddie, I've kent since syne what it is to be without
+bite or sup, but I've never grudged that siller."
+
+The poor woman had halted many times in her tale, and she was glad to
+make an end. "You've forgotten what a life he led me in London," she
+said, "and it could do you no good to hear it, though it might be a
+lesson to thae lassies at the dancing-school wha think so much o'
+masterful men. It was by betting at horseraces that your father made a
+living, and whiles he was large o' siller, but that didna last, and I
+question whether he would have stuck to me if I hadna got work. Well,
+he's gone, and the Thrums folk'll soon ken the truth about Jean Myles
+now."
+
+She paused, and then cried, with extraordinary vehemence: "Oh, man, how
+I wish I could keep it frae them for ever and ever!"
+
+But presently she was calm again and she said: "What I've been telling
+you, you can understand little o' the now, but some of it will come
+back to you when you're a grown man, and if you're magerful and have
+some lassie in your grip, maybe for the memory of her that bore you,
+you'll let the poor thing awa'."
+
+And she asked him to add this to his nightly prayer: "O God, keep me
+from being a magerful man!" and to teach this other prayer to Elspeth,
+"O God, whatever is to be my fate, may I never be one of them that bow
+the knee to magerful men, and if I was born like that and canna help it,
+oh, take me up to heaven afore I'm fil't."
+
+The wardrobe was invisible in the darkness, but they could still hear
+Elspeth's breathing as she slept, and the exhausted woman listened long
+to it, as if she would fain carry away with her to the other world the
+memory of that sweet sound.
+
+"If you gang to Thrums," she said at last, "you may hear my story frae
+some that winna spare me in the telling; but should Elspeth be wi' you
+at sic times, dinna answer back; just slip quietly away wi' her. She's
+so young that she'll soon forget all about her life in London and all
+about me, and that'll be best for her. I would like her lassiehood to be
+bright and free frae cares, as if there had never been sic a woman as
+me. But laddie, oh, my laddie, dinna you forget me; you and me had him
+to thole thegither, dinna you forget me! Watch ower your little sister
+by day and hap her by night, and when the time comes that a man wants
+her--if he be magerful, tell her my story at once. But gin she loves
+one that is her ain true love, dinna rub off the bloom, laddie, with a
+word about me. Let her and him gang to the Cuttle Well, as Aaron and me
+went, kenning no guile and thinking none, and with their arms round one
+another's waists. But when her wedding-day comes round--"
+
+Her words broke in a sob and she cried: "I see them, I see them standing
+up thegither afore the minister! Oh! you lad, you lad that's to be
+married on my Elspeth, turn your face and let me see that you're no' a
+magerful man!"
+
+But the lad did not turn his face, and when she spoke next it was to
+Tommy.
+
+"In the bottom o' my kist there's a little silver teapot. It's no' real
+silver, but it's fell bonny. I bought it for Elspeth twa or three months
+back when I saw I couldna last the winter. I bought it to her for a
+marriage present. She's no' to see it till her wedding-day comes round.
+Syne you're to give it to her, man, and say it's with her mother's love.
+Tell her all about me, for it canna harm her then. Tell her of the fool
+lies I sent to Thrums, but dinna forget what a bonny place I thought it
+all the time, nor how I stood on many a driech night at the corner of
+that street, looking so waeful at the lighted windows, and hungering for
+the wring of a Thrums hand or the sound of the Thrums word, and all the
+time the shrewd blasts cutting through my thin trails of claithes. Tell
+her, man, how you and me spent this night, and how I fought to keep my
+hoast down so as no' to waken her. Mind that whatever I have been, I
+was aye fond o' my bairns, and slaved for them till I dropped. She'll
+have long forgotten what I was like, and it's just as well, but
+yet--Look at me, Tommy, look long, long, so as you'll be able to call up
+my face as it was on the far-back night when I telled you my mournful
+story. Na, you canna see in the dark, but haud my hand, haud it tight,
+so that, when you tell Elspeth, you'll mind how hot it was, and the skin
+loose on it; and put your hand on my cheeks, man, and feel how wet they
+are wi' sorrowful tears, and lay it on my breast, so that you can tell
+her how I was shrunk awa'. And if she greets for her mother a whiley,
+let her greet."
+
+The sobbing boy hugged his mother. "Do you think I'm an auld woman?" she
+said to him.
+
+"You're gey auld, are you no'?" he answered.
+
+"Ay," she said, "I'm gey auld; I'm nine and twenty. I was seventeen on
+the day when Aaron Latta went half-road in the cart wi' me to Cullew,
+hauding my hand aneath my shawl. He hadna spiered me, but I just kent."
+
+Tommy remained in his mother's bed for the rest of the night, and so
+many things were buzzing in his brain that not for an hour did he think
+it time to repeat his new prayer. At last he said reverently: "O God,
+keep me from being a magerful man!" Then he opened his eyes to let God
+see that his prayer was ended, and added to himself: "But I think I
+would fell like it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+AARON LATTA
+
+
+The Airlie post had dropped the letters for outlying farms at the
+Monypenny smithy and trudged on. The smith having wiped his hand on his
+hair, made a row of them, without looking at the addresses, on his
+window-sill, where, happening to be seven in number, they were almost a
+model of Monypenny, which is within hail of Thrums, but round the corner
+from it, and so has ways of its own. With the next clang on the anvil
+the middle letter fell flat, and now the likeness to Monypenny was
+absolute.
+
+Again all the sound in the land was the melancholy sweet kink, kink,
+kink of the smith's hammer.
+
+Across the road sat Dite Deuchars, the mole-catcher, a solitary figure,
+taking his pleasure on the dyke. Behind him was the flour-miller's
+field, and beyond it the Den, of which only some tree-tops were visible.
+He looked wearily east the road, but no one emerged from Thrums; he
+looked wearily west the road, which doubled out of sight at Aaron
+Latta's cottage, little more than a stone's throw distant. On the inside
+of Aaron's window an endless procession seemed to be passing, but it
+was only the warping mill going round. It was an empty day, but Dite,
+the accursed, was used to them; nothing ever happened where he was, but
+many things as soon as he had gone.
+
+He yawned and looked at the houses opposite. They were all of one story;
+the smith's had a rusty plough stowed away on its roof; under a window
+stood a pew and bookboard, bought at the roup of an old church, and thus
+transformed into a garden-seat. There were many of them in Thrums that
+year. All the doors, except that of the smithy, were shut, until one of
+them blew ajar, when Dite knew at once, from the smell which crossed the
+road, that Blinder was in the bunk pulling the teeth of his potatoes.
+May Ann Irons, the blind man's niece, came out at this door to beat the
+cistern with a bass, and she gave Dite a wag of her head. He was to be
+married to her if she could get nothing better.
+
+By and by the Painted Lady came along the road. She was a little woman,
+brightly dressed, so fragile that a collie might have knocked her over
+with his tail, and she had a beautiful white-and-pink face, the white
+ending of a sudden in the middle of her neck, where it met skin of a
+duller color. As she tripped along with mincing gait, she was speaking
+confidentially to herself, but when she saw Dite grinning, she seemed,
+first, afraid, and then sorry for herself, and then she tried to carry
+it off with a giggle, cocking her head impudently at him. Even then she
+looked childish, and a faded guilelessness, with many pretty airs and
+graces, still lingered about her, like innocent birds loath to be gone
+from the spot where their nest has been. When she had passed monotony
+again reigned, and Dite crossed to the smithy window, though none of the
+letters could be for him. He could read the addresses on six of them,
+but the seventh lay on its back, and every time he rose on his tip-toes
+to squint down at it, the spout pushed his bonnet over his eyes.
+
+"Smith," he cried in at the door, "to gang hame afore I ken wha that
+letter's to is more than I can do."
+
+The smith good-naturedly brought the letter to him, and then glancing at
+the address was dumfounded. "God behears," he exclaimed, with a sudden
+look at the distant cemetery, "it's to Double Dykes!"
+
+Dite also shot a look at the cemetery. "He'll never get it," he said,
+with mighty conviction.
+
+The two men gazed at the cemetery for some time, and at last Dite
+muttered, "Ay, ay, Double Dykes, you was aye fond o' your joke!"
+
+"What has that to do wi' 't?" rapped out the smith, uncomfortably.
+
+Dite shuddered. "Man," he said, "does that letter no bring Double Dykes
+back terrible vive again! If we was to see him climbing the cemetery
+dyke the now, and coming stepping down the fields in his moleskin
+waistcoat wi' the pearl buttons--"
+
+Auchterlonie stopped him with a nervous gesture.
+
+"But it couldna be the pearl buttons," Dite added thoughtfully, "for
+Betty Finlayson has been wearing them to the kirk this four year. Ay,
+ay, Double Dykes, that puts you farther awa' again."
+
+The smith took the letter to a neighbor's house to ask the advice of old
+Irons, the blind tailor, who when he lost his sight had given himself
+the name of Blinder for bairns to play with.
+
+"Make your mind easy, smith," was Blinder's counsel. "The letter is
+meant for the Painted Lady. What's Double Dykes? It's but the name of a
+farm, and we gave it to Sanders because he was the farmer. He's dead,
+and them that's in the house now become Double Dykes in his place."
+
+But the Painted Lady only had the house, objected Dite; Nether Drumgley
+was farming the land, and so he was the real Double Dykes. True, she
+might have pretended to her friends that she had the land also.
+
+She had no friends, the smith said, and since she came to Double Dykes
+from no one could find out where, though they knew her furniture was
+bought in Tilliedrum, she had never got a letter. Often, though, as she
+passed his window she had keeked sideways at the letters, as bairns
+might look at parlys. If he made a tinkle with his hammer at such times
+off she went at once, for she was as easily flichtered as a field of
+crows, that take wing if you tap your pipe on the loof of your hand. It
+was true she had spoken to him once; when he suddenly saw her standing
+at his smiddy door, the surprise near made him fall over his brot. She
+looked so neat and ladylike that he gave his hair a respectful pull
+before he remembered the kind of woman she was.
+
+And what was it she said to him? Dite asked eagerly.
+
+She had pointed to the letters on the window-sill, and said she, "Oh,
+the dear loves!" It was a queer say, but she had a bonny English word.
+The English word was no doubt prideful, but it melted in the mouth like
+a lick of sirup. She offered him sixpence for a letter, any letter he
+liked, but of course he refused it. Then she prigged with him just to
+let her hold one in her hands, for said she, bairnlike, "I used to get
+one every day." It so happened that one of the letters was to Mysy
+Bobbie; and Mysy was of so little importance that he thought there would
+be no harm in letting the Painted Lady hold her letter, so he gave it to
+her, and you should have seen her dawting it with her hand and holding
+it to her breast like a lassie with a pigeon. "Isn't it sweet?" she
+said, and before he could stop her she kissed it. She forgot it was no
+letter of hers, and made to open it, and then she fell a-trembling and
+saying she durst not read it, for you never knew whether the first words
+might not break your heart. The envelope was red where her lips had
+touched it, and yet she had an innocent look beneath the paint. When he
+took the letter from her, though, she called him a low, vulgar fellow
+for presuming to address a lady. She worked herself into a fury, and
+said far worse than that; a perfect guller of clarty language came
+pouring out of her. He had heard women curse many a time without turning
+a hair, but he felt wae when she did it, for she just spoke it like a
+bairn that had been in ill company.
+
+The smith's wife, Suphy, who had joined the company, thought that men
+were easily taken in, especially smiths. She offered, however, to convey
+the letter to Double Dykes. She was anxious to see the inside of the
+Painted Lady's house, and this would be a good opportunity. She admitted
+that she had crawled to the east window of it before now, but that dour
+bairn of the Painted Lady's had seen her head and whipped down the
+blind.
+
+Unfortunate Suphy! she could not try the window this time, as it was
+broad daylight, and the Painted Lady took the letter from her at the
+door. She returned crestfallen, and for an hour nothing happened. The
+mole-catcher went off to the square, saying, despondently, that nothing
+would happen until he was round the corner. No sooner had he rounded the
+corner than something did happen.
+
+A girl who had left Double Dykes with a letter was walking quickly
+toward Monypenny. She wore a white pinafore over a magenta frock, and no
+one could tell her whether she was seven or eight, for she was only the
+Painted Lady's child. Some boys, her natural enemies, were behind; they
+had just emerged from the Den, and she heard them before they saw her,
+and at once her little heart jumped and ran off with her. But the halloo
+that told her she was discovered checked her running. Her teeth went
+into her underlip; now her head was erect. After her came the rabble
+with a rush, flinging stones that had no mark and epithets that hit.
+Grizel disdained to look over her shoulder. Little hunted child, where
+was succor to come from if she could not fight for herself?
+
+Though under the torture she would not cry out. "What's a father?" was
+their favorite jeer, because she had once innocently asked this question
+of a false friend. One tried to snatch the letter from her, but she
+flashed him a look that sent him to the other side of the dyke, where,
+he said, did she think he was afraid of her? Another strutted by her
+side, mimicking her in such diverting manner that presently the others
+had to pick him out of the ditch. Thus Grizel moved onward defiantly
+until she reached Monypenny, where she tossed the letter in at the
+smithy door and immediately returned home. It was the letter that had
+been sent to her mother, now sent back, because it was meant for the
+dead farmer after all.
+
+The smith read Jean Myles's last letter, with a face of growing gravity.
+"Dear Double Dykes," it said, "I send you these few scrapes to say I am
+dying, and you and Aaron Latta was seldom sindry, so I charge you to go
+to him and say to him 'Aaron Latta, it's all lies Jean Myles wrote to
+Thrums about her grandeur, and her man died mony year back, and it was
+the only kindness he ever did her, and if she doesna die quick, her and
+her starving bairns will be flung out into the streets.' If that doesna
+move him, say, 'Aaron Latta, do you mind yon day at Inverquharity and
+the cushie doos?' likewise, 'Aaron Latta, do you mind yon day at the
+Kaims of Airlie?' likewise, 'Aaron Latta, do you mind that Jean Myles
+was ower heavy for you to lift? Oh, Aaron, you could lift me so pitiful
+easy now.' And syne says you solemnly three times, 'Aaron Latta, Jean
+Myles is lying dying all alone in a foreign land; Aaron Latta, Jean
+Myles is lying dying all alone in a foreign land; Aaron Latta, Jean
+Myles is lying dying all alone in a foreign land.' And if he's sweer to
+come, just say, 'Oh, Aaron, man, you micht; oh, Aaron, oh, Aaron, are
+you coming?'"
+
+The smith had often denounced this woman, but he never said a word
+against her again. He stood long reflecting, and then took the letter to
+Blinder and read it to him.
+
+"She doesna say, 'Oh, Aaron Latta, do you mind the Cuttle Well?'" was
+the blind man's first comment.
+
+"She was thinking about it," said Auchterlonie.
+
+"Ay, and he's thinking about it," said Blinder, "night and day, night
+and day. What a town there'll be about that letter, smith!"
+
+"There will. But I'm to take it to Aaron afore the news spreads. He'll
+never gang to London though."
+
+"I think he will, smith."
+
+"I ken him well."
+
+"Maybe I ken him better."
+
+"You canna see the ugly mark it left on his brow."
+
+"I can see the uglier marks it has left in his breast."
+
+"Well, I'll take the letter; I can do no more."
+
+When the smith opened the door of Aaron's house he let out a draught of
+hot air that was glad to be gone from the warper's restless home. The
+usual hallan, or passage, divided the but from the ben, and in the ben a
+great revolving thing, the warping-mill, half filled the room. Between
+it and a pile of webs that obscured the light a little silent man was
+sitting on a box turning a handle. His shoulders were almost as high as
+his ears, as if he had been caught forever in a storm, and though he was
+barely five and thirty, he had the tattered, dishonored beard of black
+and white that comes to none till the glory of life has gone.
+
+Suddenly the smith appeared round the webs. "Aaron," he said, awkwardly,
+"do you mind Jean Myles?"
+
+The warper did not for a moment take his eyes off a contrivance with
+pirns in it that was climbing up and down the whirring mill.
+
+"She's dead," he answered.
+
+"She's dying," said the smith.
+
+A thread broke, and Aaron had to rise to mend it.
+
+"Stop the mill and listen," Auchterlonie begged him, but the warper
+returned to his seat and the mill again revolved.
+
+"This is her dying words to you," continued the smith. "Did you speak?"
+
+"I didna, but I wish you would take your arm off the haik."
+
+"She's loath to die without seeing you. Do you hear, man? You shall
+listen to me, I tell you."
+
+"I am listening, smith," the warper replied, without rancour. "It's but
+right that you should come here to take your pleasure on a shamed man."
+His calmness gave him a kind of dignity.
+
+"Did I ever say you was a shamed man, Aaron?"
+
+"Am I not?" the warper asked quietly; and Auchterlonie hung his head.
+
+Aaron continued, still turning the handle, "You're truthful, and you
+canna deny it. Nor will you deny that I shamed you and every other
+mother's son that night. You try to hod it out o' pity, smith, but even
+as you look at me now, does the man in you no rise up against me?"
+
+"If so," the smith answered reluctantly, "if so, it's against my will."
+
+"It is so," said Aaron, in the same measured voice, "and it's right
+that it should be so. A man may thieve or debauch or murder, and yet no
+be so very different frae his fellow-men, but there's one thing he shall
+not do without their wanting to spit him out o' their mouths, and that
+is, violate the feelings of sex."
+
+The strange words in which the warper described his fall had always an
+uncomfortable effect on those who heard him use them, and Auchterlonie
+could only answer in distress, "Maybe that's what it is."
+
+"That's what it is. I have had twal lang years sitting on this box to
+think it out. I blame none but mysel'."
+
+"Then you'll have pity on Jean in her sair need," said the smith. He
+read slowly the first part of the letter, but Aaron made no comment, and
+the mill had not stopped for a moment.
+
+"She says," the smith proceeded, doggedly--"she says to say to you,
+'Aaron Latta, do you mind yon day at Inverquharity and the cushie
+doos?'"
+
+Only the monotonous whirr of the mill replied.
+
+"She says, 'Aaron Latta, do you mind that Jean Myles was ower heavy for
+you to lift? Oh, Aaron, you could lift me so pitiful easy now.'"
+
+Another thread broke and the warper rose with sudden fury.
+
+"Now that you've eased your conscience, smith," he said, fiercely, "make
+your feet your friend."
+
+"I'll do so," Auchterlonie answered, laying the letter on the webs, "but
+I leave this ahint me."
+
+"Wap it in the fire."
+
+"If that's to be done, you do it yoursel'. Aaron, she treated you ill,
+but--"
+
+"There's the door, smith."
+
+The smith walked away, and had only gone a few steps when he heard the
+whirr of the mill again. He went back to the door.
+
+"She's dying, man!" he cried.
+
+"Let her die!" answered Aaron.
+
+In an hour the sensational news was through half of Thrums, of which
+Monypenny may be regarded as a broken piece, left behind, like the dot
+of quicksilver in the tube, to show how high the town once rose. Some
+could only rejoice at first in the down-come of Jean Myles, but most
+blamed the smith (and himself among them) for not taking note of her
+address, so that Thrums Street could be informed of it and sent to her
+relief. For Blinder alone believed that Aaron would be softened.
+
+"It was twa threads the smith saw him break," the blind man said, "and
+Aaron's good at his work. He'll go to London, I tell you."
+
+"You forget, Blinders, that he was warping afore I was a dozen steps
+frae the door."
+
+"Ay, and that just proves he hadna burned the letter, for he hadna time.
+If he didna do it at the first impulse, he'll no do it now."
+
+Every little while the boys were sent along the road to look in at
+Aaron's end window and report.
+
+At seven in the evening Aaron had not left his box, and the blind man's
+reputation for seeing farther than those with eyes was fallen low.
+
+"It's a good sign," he insisted, nevertheless. "It shows his mind's
+troubled, for he usually louses at six."
+
+By eight the news was that Aaron had left his mill and was sitting
+staring at his kitchen fire.
+
+"He's thinking o' Inverquharity and the cushie doos," said Blinder.
+
+"More likely," said Dite Deuchars, "he's thinking o' the Cuttle Well."
+
+Corp Shiach clattered along the road about nine to say that Aaron Latta
+was putting on his blacks as if for a journey.
+
+At once the blind man's reputation rose on stilts. It fell flat,
+however, before the ten-o'clock bell rang, when three of the
+Auchterlonie children, each pulling the others back that he might arrive
+first, announced that Aaron had put on his corduroys again, and was back
+at the mill.
+
+"That settles it," was everyone's good-night to Blinder, but he only
+answered thoughtfully, "There's a fierce fight going on, my billies."
+
+Next morning when his niece was shaving the blind man, the razor had to
+travel over a triumphant smirk which would not explain itself to
+womankind, Blinder being a man who could bide his time. The time came
+when the smith looked in to say, "Should I gang yont to Aaron's and see
+if he'll give me the puir woman's address?"
+
+"No, I wouldna advise that," answered Blinder, cleverly concealing his
+elation, "for Aaron Latta's awa' to London."
+
+"What! How can you ken?"
+
+"I heard him go by in the night."
+
+"It's no possible!"
+
+"I kent his foot."
+
+"You're sure it was Aaron?"
+
+Blinder did not consider the question worth answering, his sharpness at
+recognizing friends by their tread being proved. Sometimes he may have
+carried his pretensions too far. Many granted that he could tell when a
+doctor went by, when a lawyer, when a thatcher, when a herd, and this is
+conceivable, for all callings have their walk. But he was regarded as
+uncanny when he claimed not only to know ministers in this way, but to
+be able to distinguish between the steps of the different denominations.
+
+He had made no mistake about the warper, however. Aaron was gone, and
+ten days elapsed before he was again seen in Thrums.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A CHILD'S TRAGEDY
+
+
+No one in Thrums ever got a word from Aaron Latta about how he spent
+those ten days, and Tommy and Elspeth, whom he brought back with him,
+also tried to be reticent, but some of the women were too clever for
+them. Jean and Aaron did not meet again. Her first intimation that he
+had come she got from Shovel, who said that a little high-shouldered man
+in black had been inquiring if she was dead, and was now walking up and
+down the street, like one waiting. She sent her children out to him, but
+he would not come up. He had answered Tommy roughly, but when Elspeth
+slipped her hand into his, he let it stay there, and he instructed her
+to tell Jean Myles that he would bury her in the Thrums cemetery and
+bring up her bairns. Jean managed once to go to the window and look down
+at him, and by and by he looked up and saw her. They looked long at each
+other, and then he turned away his head and began to walk up and down
+again.
+
+At Tilliedrum the coffin was put into a hearse and thus conveyed to
+Monypenny, Aaron and the two children sitting on the box-seat. Someone
+said, "Jean Myles boasted that when she came back to Thrums it would be
+in her carriage and pair, and she has kept her word," and the saying is
+still preserved in that Bible for week-days of which all little places
+have their unwritten copy, one of the wisest of books, but nearly every
+text in it has cost a life.
+
+About a score of men put on their blacks and followed the hearse from
+the warper's house to the grave. Elspeth wanted to accompany Tommy, but
+Aaron held her back, saying, quietly, "In this part, it's only men that
+go to burials, so you and me maun bide at name," and then she cried, no
+one understood why, except Tommy. It was because he would see Thrums
+first; but he whispered to her, "I promise to keep my eyes shut and no
+look once," and so faithfully did he keep his promise on the whole that
+the smith held him by the hand most of the way, under the impression
+that he was blind.
+
+But he had opened his eyes at the grave, when a cord was put into his
+hand, and then he wept passionately, and on his way back to Monypenny,
+whether his eyes were open or shut, what he saw was his mother being
+shut up in a black hole and trying for ever and ever to get out. He ran
+to Elspeth for comfort, but in the meantime she had learned from
+Blinder's niece that graves are dark and cold, and so he found her
+sobbing even like himself. Tommy could never bear to see Elspeth
+crying, and he revealed his true self in his way of drying her tears.
+
+"It will be so cold in that hole," she sobbed.
+
+"No," he said, "it's warm."
+
+"It will be dark."
+
+"No, it's clear."
+
+"She would like to get out."
+
+"No, she was terrible pleased to get in."
+
+It was characteristic of him that he soon had Elspeth happy by arguments
+not one of which he believed himself; characteristic also that his own
+grief was soothed by the sound of them. Aaron, who was in the garret
+preparing their bed, had told the children that they must remain indoors
+to-day out of respect to their mother's memory (to-morrow morning they
+could explore Thrums); but there were many things in that kitchen for
+them to look at and exult over. It had no commonplace ceiling, the
+couples, or rafters, being covered with the loose flooring of a romantic
+garret, and in the rafters were several great hooks, from one of which
+hung a ham, and Tommy remembered, with a thrill which he communicated to
+Elspeth, that it is the right of Thrums children to snip off the ham as
+much as they can remove with their finger-nails and roast it on the ribs
+of the fire. The chief pieces of furniture were a dresser, a corner
+cupboard with diamond panes, two tables, one of which stood beneath the
+other, but would have to come out if Aaron tried to bake, and a bed
+with a door. These two did not know it, but the room was full of
+memories of Jean Myles. The corner cupboard had been bought by Aaron at
+a roup because she said she would like to have one; it was she who had
+chosen the six cups and saucers with the blue spots on them. A
+razor-strop, now hard as iron, hung on a nail on the wall; it had not
+been used since the last time Aaron strutted through the Den with his
+sweetheart. One day later he had opened the door of the bird-cage, which
+still stood in the window, and let the yellow yite go. Many things were
+where no woman would have left them: clothes on the floor with the nail
+they had torn from the wall; on a chair a tin basin, soapy water and a
+flannel rag in it; horn spoons with whistles at the end of them were
+anywhere--on the mantelpiece, beneath the bed; there were drawers that
+could not be opened because their handles were inside. Perhaps the
+windows were closed hopelessly also, but this must be left doubtful; no
+one had ever tried to open them.
+
+The garret where Tommy and Elspeth were to sleep was reached by a ladder
+from the hallan; when you were near the top of the ladder your head hit
+a trap-door and pushed it open. At one end of the garret was the bed,
+and at the other end were piled sticks for firewood and curious
+dark-colored slabs whose smell the children disliked until Tommy said,
+excitedly, "Peat!" and then they sniffed reverently.
+
+It was Tommy, too, who discovered the tree-tops of the Den, and Elspeth
+seeing him gazing in a transport out at the window cried, "What is it,
+Tommy? Quick!"
+
+"Promise no to scream," he replied, warningly. "Well, then, Elspeth
+Sandys, that's where the Den is!"
+
+Elspeth blinked with awe, and anon said, wistfully, "Tommy, do you see
+that there? That's where the Den is!"
+
+"It were me what told you," cried Tommy, jealously.
+
+"But let me tell you, Tommy!"
+
+"Well, then, you can tell me."
+
+"That there is the Den, Tommy!"
+
+"Dagont!"
+
+Oh, that to-morrow were here! Oh, that Shovel could see these two
+to-morrow!
+
+Here is another splendid game, T. Sandys, inventor. The girl goes into
+the bed, the boy shuts the door on her, and imitates the sound of a
+train in motion. He opens the door and cries, "Tickets, please." The
+girl says, "What is the name of this place?" The boy replies, "It's
+Thrums!" There is more to follow, but the only two who have played the
+game always roared so joyously at this point that they could get no
+farther.
+
+"Oh, to-morrow, come quick, quick!"
+
+"Oh, poor Shovel!"
+
+To-morrow came, and with it two eager little figures rose and gulped
+their porridge, and set off to see Thrums. They were dressed in the
+black clothes Aaron Latta had bought for them in London, and they had
+agreed just to walk, but when they reached the door and saw the
+tree-tops of the Den they--they ran. Would you not like to hold them
+back? It is a child's tragedy.
+
+They went first into the Den, and the rocks were dripping wet, all the
+trees, save the firs, were bare, and the mud round a tiny spring pulled
+off one of Elspeth's boots.
+
+"Tommy," she cried, quaking, "that narsty puddle can't not be the Cuttle
+Well, can it?"
+
+"No, it ain't," said Tommy, quickly, but he feared it was.
+
+"It's c-c-colder here than London," Elspeth said, shivering, and Tommy
+was shivering too, but he answered, "I'm--I'm--I'm warm."
+
+The Den was strangely small, and soon they were on a shabby brae where
+women in short gowns came to their doors and men in night-caps sat down
+on the shafts of their barrows to look at Jean Myles's bairns.
+
+"What does yer think?" Elspeth whispered, very doubtfully.
+
+"They're beauties," Tommy answered, determinedly.
+
+Presently Elspeth cried, "Oh, Tommy, what a ugly stair! Where is the
+beauty stairs as is wore outside for show?"
+
+This was one of them and Tommy knew it. "Wait till you see the west
+town end," he said bravely; "it's grand." But when they were in the west
+town end, and he had to admit it, "Wait till you see the square," he
+said, and when they were in the square, "Wait," he said, huskily, "till
+you see the town-house." Alas, this was the town-house facing them, and
+when they knew it, he said hurriedly, "Wait till you see the Auld Licht
+Kirk."
+
+They stood long in front of the Auld Licht Kirk, which he had sworn was
+bigger and lovelier than St. Paul's, but--well, it is a different style
+of architecture, and had Elspeth not been there with tears in waiting,
+Tommy would have blubbered. "It's--it's littler than I thought," he said
+desperately, "but--the minister, oh, what a wonderful big man he is!"
+
+"Are you sure?" Elspeth squeaked.
+
+"I swear he is."
+
+The church door opened and a gentleman came out, a little man, boyish in
+the back, with the eager face of those who live too quickly. But it was
+not at him that Tommy pointed reassuringly; it was at the monster church
+key, half of which protruded from his tail pocket and waggled like the
+hilt of a sword.
+
+Speaking like an old residenter, Tommy explained that he had brought his
+sister to see the church, "She's ta'en aback," he said, picking out
+Scotch words carefully, "because it's littler than the London kirks,
+but I telled her--I telled her that the preaching is better."
+
+This seemed to please the stranger, for he patted Tommy on the head
+while inquiring, "How do you know that the preaching is better?"
+
+"Tell him, Elspeth," replied Tommy modestly.
+
+"There ain't nuthin' as Tommy don't know," Elspeth explained. "He knows
+what the minister is like too."
+
+"He's a noble sight," said Tommy.
+
+"He can get anything from God he likes," said Elspeth.
+
+"He's a terrible big man," said Tommy.
+
+This seemed to please the little gentleman less. "Big!" he exclaimed,
+irritably; "why should he be big?"
+
+"He is big," Elspeth almost screamed, for the minister was her last
+hope.
+
+"Nonsense!" said the little gentleman. "He is--well, I am the minister."
+
+"You!" roared Tommy, wrathfully.
+
+"Oh, oh, oh!" sobbed Elspeth.
+
+For a moment the Rev. Mr. Dishart looked as if he would like to knock
+two little heads together, but he walked away without doing it.
+
+"Never mind," Tommy whispered hoarsely to Elspeth. "Never mind, Elspeth,
+you have me yet."
+
+This consolation seldom failed to gladden her, but her disappointment
+was so sharp to-day that she would not even look up.
+
+"Come away to the cemetery, it's grand," he said; but still she would
+not be comforted.
+
+"And I'll let you hold my hand--as soon as we're past the houses," he
+added.
+
+"I'll let you hold it now," he said eventually; but even then Elspeth
+cried dismally, and her sobs were hurting him more than her.
+
+He knew all the ways of getting round Elspeth, and when next he spoke it
+was with a sorrowful dignity. "I didna think," he said, "as yer wanted
+me never to be able to speak again; no, I didna think it, Elspeth."
+
+She took her hands from her face and looked at him inquiringly.
+
+"One of the stories mamma telled me and Reddy," he said, "were about a
+man what saw such a beauty thing that he was struck dumb with
+admiration. Struck dumb is never to be able to speak again, and I wish I
+had been struck dumb when you wanted it."
+
+"But I didn't want it!" Elspeth cried.
+
+"If Thrums had been one little bit beautier than it is," he went on
+solemnly, "it would have struck me dumb. It would have hurt me sore, but
+what about that, if it pleased you!"
+
+Then did Elspeth see what a wicked girl she had been, and when next the
+two were observed by the curious (it was on the cemetery road), they
+were once more looking cheerful. At the smallest provocation they
+exchanged notes of admiration, such as, "Oh, Tommy, what a bonny
+barrel!" or "Oh, Elspeth, I tell yer that's a dyke, and there's just
+walls in London," but sometimes Elspeth would stoop hastily, pretending
+that she wanted to tie her bootlace, but really to brush away a tear,
+and there were moments when Tommy hung very limp. Each was trying to
+deceive the other for the other's sake, and one of them was never good
+at deception. They saw through each other, yet kept up the chilly game,
+because they could think of nothing better, and perhaps the game was
+worth playing, for love invented it.
+
+They sat down on their mother's grave. No stone was ever erected to the
+memory of Jean Myles, but it is enough for her that she lies at home.
+That comfort will last her to the Judgment Day.
+
+The man who had dug the grave sent them away, and they wandered to the
+hill, and thence down the Roods, where there were so many outside stairs
+not put there for show that it was well Elspeth remembered how
+susceptible Tommy was to being struck dumb. For her sake he said,
+"They're bonny," and for his sake she replied, "I'm glad they ain't
+bonnier."
+
+When within one turn of Monypenny they came suddenly upon some boys
+playing at capey-dykey, a game with marbles that is only known in
+Thrums. There are thirty-five ways of playing marbles, but this is the
+best way, and Elspeth knew that Tommy was hungering to look on, but
+without her, lest he should be accused of sweethearting. So she offered
+to remain in the background.
+
+Was she sure she shouldn't mind?
+
+She said falteringly that of course she would mind a little, but--
+
+Then Tommy was irritated, and said he knew she would mind, but if she
+just pretended she didn't mind, he could leave her without feeling that
+he was mean.
+
+So Elspeth affected not to mind, and then he deserted her, conscience at
+rest, which was his nature. But he should have remained with her. The
+players only gave him the side of their eye, and a horrid fear grew on
+him that they did not know he was a Thrums boy. "Dagont!" he cried to
+put them right on that point, but though they paused in their game, it
+was only to laugh at him uproariously. Let the historian use an oath for
+once; dagont, Tommy had said the swear in the wrong place!
+
+How fond he had been of that word! Many a time he had fired it in the
+face of Londoners, and the flash had often blinded them and always him.
+Now he had brought it home, and Thrums would have none of it; it was as
+if these boys were jeering at their own flag. He tottered away from them
+until he came to a trance, or passage, where he put his face to the wall
+and forgot even Elspeth.
+
+He had not noticed a girl pass the mouth of the trance, trying not very
+successfully to conceal a brandy-bottle beneath her pinafore, but
+presently he heard shouts, and looking out he saw Grizel, the Painted
+Lady's child, in the hands of her tormentors. She was unknown to him, of
+course, but she hit back so courageously that he watched her with
+interest, until--until suddenly he retreated farther into the trance. He
+had seen Elspeth go on her knees, obviously to ask God to stay the hands
+and tongues of these cruel boys.
+
+Elspeth had disgraced him, he felt. He was done with her forever. If
+they struck her, serve her right.
+
+Struck her! Struck little Elspeth! His imagination painted the picture
+with one sweep of its brush. Take care, you boys, Tommy is scudding
+back.
+
+They had not molested Elspeth as yet. When they saw and heard her
+praying, they had bent forward, agape, as if struck suddenly in the
+stomach. Then one of them, Francie Crabb, the golden-haired son of
+Esther Auld, recovered and began to knead Grizel's back with his fists,
+less in viciousness than to show that the prayer was futile. Into this
+scene sprang Tommy, and he thought that Elspeth was the kneaded one. Had
+he taken time to reflect he would probably have used the Thrums feint,
+and then in with a left-hander, which is not very efficacious in its own
+country; but being in a hurry he let out with Shovel's favorite, and
+down went Francie Crabb.
+
+"Would you!" said Tommy, threatening, when Francie attempted to rise.
+
+He saw now that Elspeth was untouched, that he had rescued an unknown
+girl, and it cannot be pretended of him that he was the boy to squire
+all ladies in distress. In ordinary circumstances he might have left
+Grizel to her fate, but having struck for her, he felt that he would
+like to go on striking. He had also the day's disappointments to avenge.
+It is startling to reflect that the little minister's height, for
+instance, put an extra kick in him.
+
+So he stood stridelegs over Francie, who whimpered, "I wouldna have
+struck this one if that one hadna prayed for me. It wasna likely I would
+stand that."
+
+"You shall stand it," replied Tommy, and turning to Elspeth, who had
+risen from her knees, he said: "Pray away, Elspeth."
+
+Elspeth refused, feeling that there would be something wrong in praying
+from triumph, and Tommy, about to be very angry with her, had a glorious
+inspiration. "Pray for yourself," he said to Francie, "and do it out
+loud."
+
+The other boys saw that a novelty promised, and now Francie need expect
+no aid from them. At first he refused to pray, but he succumbed when
+Tommy had explained the consequences, and illustrated them.
+
+Tommy dictated: "Oh, God, I am a sinner. Go on."
+
+Francie not only said it, but looked it.
+
+"And I pray to you to repent me, though I ain't worthy," continued
+Tommy.
+
+"And I pray to you to repent me, though I ain't worthy," growled
+Francie. (It was the arrival of ain't in Thrums.)
+
+Tommy considered, and then: "I thank Thee, O God," he said, "for telling
+this girl--this lassie--to pray for me."
+
+Two gentle taps helped to knock this out of Francie.
+
+Being an artist, Tommy had kept his best for the end (and made it up
+first). "And lastly," he said, "I thank this boy for thrashing me--I
+mean this here laddie. Oh, may he allus be near to thrash me when I
+strike this other lassie again. Amen."
+
+When it was all over Tommy looked around triumphantly, and though he
+liked the expression on several faces, Grizel's pleased him best. "It
+ain't no wonder you would like to be me, lassie!" he said, in an
+ecstasy.
+
+"I don't want to be you, you conceited boy," retorted the Painted Lady's
+child hotly, and her heat was the greater because the clever little
+wretch had read her thoughts aright. But it was her sweet voice that
+surprised him.
+
+"You're English!" he cried.
+
+"So are you," broke in a boy offensively, and then Tommy said to Grizel
+loftily, "Run away; I'll not let none on them touch you."
+
+"I am not afraid of them," she rejoined, with scorn, "and I shall not
+let you help me, and I won't run." And run she did not; she walked off
+leisurely with her head in the air, and her dignity was beautiful,
+except once when she made the mistake of turning round to put out her
+tongue.
+
+But, alas! in the end someone ran. If only they had not called him
+"English." In vain he fired a volley of Scotch; they pretended not to
+understand it. Then he screamed that he and Shovel could fight the lot
+of them. Who was Shovel? they asked derisively. He replied that Shovel
+was a bloke who could lick any two of them--and with one hand tied
+behind his back.
+
+No sooner had he made this proud boast than he went white, and soon two
+disgraceful tears rolled down his cheeks. The boys saw that for some
+reason unknown his courage was gone, and even Francie Crabb began to
+turn up his sleeves and spit upon his hands.
+
+Elspeth was as bewildered as the others, but she slipped her hand into
+his and away they ran ingloriously, the foe too much astounded to jeer.
+She sought to comfort him by saying (and it brought her a step nearer
+womanhood), "You wasn't feared for yourself, you wasn't; you was just
+feared they would hurt me."
+
+But Tommy sobbed in reply, "That ain't it. I bounced so much about the
+Thrums folk to Shovel, and now the first day I'm here I heard myself
+bouncing about Shovel to Thrums folk, and it were that what made me
+cry. Oh, Elspeth, it's--it's not the same what I thought it would be!"
+
+Nor was it the same to Elspeth, so they sat down by the roadside and
+cried with their arms round each other, and any passer-by could look who
+had the heart. But when night came, and they were in their garret bed,
+Tommy was once more seeking to comfort Elspeth with arguments he
+disbelieved, and again he succeeded. As usual, too, the make-believe
+made him happy also.
+
+"Have you forgot," he whispered, "that my mother said as she would come
+and see us every night in our bed? If yer cries, she'll see as we're
+terrible unhappy, and that will make her unhappy too."
+
+"Oh, Tommy, is she here now?"
+
+"Whisht! She's here, but they don't like living ones to let on as they
+knows it."
+
+Elspeth kept closer to Tommy, and with their heads beneath the blankets,
+so as to stifle the sound, he explained to her how they could cheat
+their mother. When she understood, he took the blankets off their faces
+and said in the darkness in a loud voice:
+
+"It's a grand place, Thrums!"
+
+Elspeth replied in a similar voice, "Ain't the town-house just big!"
+
+Said Tommy, almost chuckling, "Oh, the bonny, bonny Auld Licht Kirk!"
+
+Said Elspeth, "Oh, the beauty outside stairs!"
+
+Said Tommy, "The minister is so long!"
+
+Said Elspeth, "The folk is so kind!"
+
+Said Tommy, "Especially the laddies!"
+
+"Oh, I is so happy!" cried Elspeth.
+
+"Me too!" cried Tommy.
+
+"My mother would be so chirpy if she could jest see us!" Elspeth said,
+quite archly.
+
+"But she canna!" replied Tommy, slyly pinching Elspeth in the rib.
+
+Then they dived beneath the blankets, and the whispering was resumed.
+
+"Did she hear, does yer think?" asked Elspeth.
+
+"Every word," Tommy replied. "Elspeth, we've done her!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+SHOWS HOW TOMMY TOOK CARE OF ELSPETH
+
+
+Thus the first day passed, and others followed in which women, who had
+known Jean Myles, did her children kindnesses, but could not do all they
+would have done, for Aaron forbade them to enter his home except on
+business though it was begging for a housewife all day. Had Elspeth at
+the age of six now settled down to domestic duties she would not have
+been the youngest housekeeper ever known in Thrums, but she was never
+very good at doing things, only at loving and being loved, and the
+observant neighbors thought her a backward girl; they forgot, like most
+people, that service is not necessarily a handicraft. Tommy discovered
+what they were saying, and to shield Elspeth he took to housewifery with
+the blind down; but Aaron, entering the kitchen unexpectedly, took the
+besom from, him, saying:
+
+"It's an ill thing for men folk to ken ower muckle about women's work."
+
+"You do it yoursel'," Tommy argued.
+
+"I said men folk," replied Aaron, quietly.
+
+The children knew that remarks of this sort had reference to their
+mother, of whom he never spoke more directly; indeed he seldom spoke to
+them at all, and save when he was cooking or giving the kitchen a
+slovenly cleaning they saw little of him. Monypenny had predicted that
+their presence must make a new man of him, but he was still unsociable
+and morose and sat as long as ever at the warping-mill, of which he
+seemed to have become the silent wheel. Tommy and Elspeth always dropped
+their voices when they spoke of him, and sometimes when his mill stopped
+he heard one of them say to the other, "Whisht, he's coming!" Though he
+seldom, spoke sharply to them, his face did not lose its loneliness at
+sight of them. Elspeth was his favorite (somewhat to the indignation of
+both); they found this out without his telling them or even showing it
+markedly, and when they wanted to ask anything of him she was deputed to
+do it, but she did it quavering, and after drawing farther away from him
+instead of going nearer. A dreary life would have lain before them had
+they not been sent to school.
+
+There were at this time three schools in Thrums, the chief of them ruled
+over by the terrible Cathro (called Knuckly when you were a street away
+from him). It was a famous school, from which a band of three or four or
+even six marched every autumn to the universities as determined after
+bursaries as ever were Highlandmen to lift cattle, and for the same
+reason, that they could not do without.
+
+A very different kind of dominie was Cursing Ballingall, who had been
+dropped at Thrums by a travelling circus, and first became familiar to
+the town as, carrying two carpet shoes, two books, a pillow, and a
+saucepan, which were all his belongings, he wandered from manse to manse
+offering to write sermons for the ministers at circus prices. That
+scheme failing, he was next seen looking in at windows in search of a
+canny calling, and eventually he cut one of his braces into a pair of
+tawse, thus with a single stroke of the knife, making himself a
+school-master and lop-sided for life. His fee was but a penny a week,
+"with a bit o' the swine when your father kills," and sometimes there
+were so many pupils on a form that they could only rise as one. During
+the first half of the scholastic day Ballingall's shouts and pounces
+were for parents to listen to, but after his dinner of crowdy, which is
+raw meal and hot water, served in a cogie, or wooden bowl, languor
+overcame him and he would sleep, having first given out a sum in
+arithmetic and announced:
+
+"The one as finds out the answer first, I'll give him his licks."
+
+Last comes the Hanky School, which was for the genteel and for the
+common who contemplated soaring. You were not admitted to it in
+corduroys or bare-footed, nor did you pay weekly; no, your father called
+four times a year with the money in an envelope. He was shown into the
+blue-and-white room, and there, after business had been transacted, very
+nervously on Miss Ailie's part, she offered him his choice between
+ginger wine and what she falteringly called wh-wh-whiskey. He partook in
+the polite national manner, which is thus:
+
+"You will take something, Mr. Cortachy?"
+
+"No, I thank you, ma'am."
+
+"A little ginger wine?"
+
+"It agrees ill with me."
+
+"Then a little wh-wh-whiskey?"
+
+"You are ower kind."
+
+"Then may I?"
+
+"I am not heeding."
+
+"Perhaps, though, you don't take?"
+
+"I can take it or want it."
+
+"Is that enough?"
+
+"It will do perfectly."
+
+"Shall I fill it up?"
+
+"As you please, ma'am."
+
+Miss Ailie's relationship to the magerful man may be remembered; she
+shuddered to think of it herself, for in middle-age she retained the
+mind of a young girl, but when duty seemed to call, this school-mistress
+could be brave, and she offered to give Elspeth her schooling free of
+charge. Like the other two hers was a "mixed" school, but she did not
+want Tommy, because she had seen him in the square one day, and there
+was a leer on his face that reminded her of his father.
+
+Another woman was less particular. This was Mrs. Crabb, of the Tappit
+Hen, the Esther Auld whom Jean Myles's letters had so frequently sent
+to bed. Her Francie was still a pupil of Miss Ailie, and still he wore
+the golden hair, which, despite all advice, she would not crop. It was
+so beautiful that no common boys could see it without wanting to give it
+a tug in passing, and partly to prevent this, partly to show how high
+she had risen in the social scale, Esther usually sent him to school
+under the charge of her servant lass. She now proposed to Aaron that
+this duty should devolve on Tommy, and for the service she would pay his
+fees at the Hanky School.
+
+"We maun all lend a hand to poor Jean's bairns," she said, with a gleam
+in her eye. "It would have been well for her, Aaron, if she had married
+you."
+
+"Is that all you have to say?" asked the warper, who had let her enter
+no farther than the hallan.
+
+"I would expect him to lift Francie ower the pools in wet weather; and
+it might be as well if he called him Master Francie."
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"Ay, I ask no more, for we maun all help Jean's bairns. If she could
+only look down, Aaron, and see her little velvets, as she called him,
+lifting my little corduroys ower the pools!"
+
+Aaron flung open the door. "Munt!" he said, and he looked so dangerous
+that she retired at once. He sent Tommy to Ballingall's, and accepted
+Miss Ailie's offer for Elspeth, but this was an impossible arrangement,
+for it was known to the two persons primarily concerned that Elspeth
+would die if she was not where Tommy was. The few boys he had already
+begun to know were at Cathro's or Ballingall's, and as they called Miss
+Ailie's a lassie school he had no desire to attend it, but where he was
+there also must Elspeth be. Daily he escaped from Ballingall's and hid
+near the Dovecot, as Miss Ailie's house was called, and every little
+while he gave vent to Shovel's whistle, so that Elspeth might know of
+his proximity and be cheered. Thrice was he carried back, kicking, to
+Ballingall's by urchins sent in pursuit, stern ministers of justice on
+the first two occasions; but on the third they made him an offer: if he
+would hide in Couthie's hen-house they were willing to look for him
+everywhere else for two hours.
+
+Tommy's behavior seemed beautiful to the impressionable Miss Ailie, but
+it infuriated Aaron, and on the fourth day he set off for the parish
+school, meaning to put the truant in the hands of Cathro, from whom
+there was no escape. Vainly had Elspeth implored him to let Tommy come
+to the Dovecot, and vainly apparently was she trotting at his side now,
+looking up appealingly in his face. But when they reached the gate of
+the parish school-yard he walked past it because she was tugging him,
+and always when he seemed about to turn she took his hand again, and he
+seemed to have lost the power to resist Jean Myles's bairn. So they came
+to the Dovecot, and Miss Ailie gained a pupil who had been meant for
+Cathro. Tommy's arms were stronger than Elspeth's, but they could not
+hare done as much for him that day.
+
+Thus did the two children enter upon the genteel career, to the
+indignation of the other boys and girls of Monypenny, all of whom were
+commoners.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE HANKY SCHOOL
+
+
+The Dovecot was a prim little cottage standing back from the steepest
+brae in Thrums and hidden by high garden walls, to the top of which
+another boy's shoulders were, for apple-lovers, but one step up.
+Jargonelle trees grew against the house, stretching their arms round it
+as if to measure its girth, and it was also remarkable for several
+"dumb" windows with the most artful blinds painted on them. Miss Ailie's
+fruit was famous, but she loved her flowers best, and for long a notice
+board in her garden said, appealingly: "Persons who come to steal the
+fruit are requested not to walk on the flower-beds." It was that old
+bachelor, Dr. McQueen, who suggested this inscription to her, and she
+could never understand why he chuckled every time he read it.
+
+There were seven rooms in the house, but only two were of public note,
+the school-room, which was downstairs, and the blue-and-white room
+above. The school-room was so long that it looked very low in the
+ceiling, and it had a carpet, and on the walls were texts as well as
+maps. Miss Ailie's desk was in the middle of the room, and there was
+another desk in the corner; a cloth had been hung over it, as one covers
+a cage to send the bird to sleep. Perhaps Miss Ailie thought that a bird
+had once sung there, for this had been the desk of her sister, Miss
+Kitty, who died years before Tommy came to Thrums. Dainty Miss Kitty,
+Miss Kitty with the roguish curls, it is strange to think that you are
+dead, and that only Miss Ailie hears you singing now at your desk in the
+corner! Miss Kitty never sang there, but the playful ringlets were once
+the bright thing in the room, and Miss Ailie sees them still, and they
+are a song to her.
+
+The pupils had to bring handkerchiefs to the Dovecot, which led to its
+being called the Hanky School, and in time these handkerchiefs may be
+said to have assumed a religious character, though their purpose was
+merely to protect Miss Ailie's carpet. She opened each scholastic day by
+reading fifteen verses from the Bible, and then she said sternly,
+"Hankies!" whereupon her pupils whipped out their handkerchiefs, spread
+them on the floor and kneeled on them while Miss Ailie repeated the
+Lord's Prayer. School closed at four o'clock, again with hankies.
+
+Only on great occasions were the boys and girls admitted to the
+blue-and-white room, when they were given shortbread, but had to eat it
+with their heads flung back so that no crumbs should fall. Nearly
+everything in this room was blue or white, or both. There were white
+blinds and blue curtains, a blue table-cover and a white crumb-cloth, a
+white sheepskin with a blue footstool on it, blue chairs dotted with
+white buttons. Only white flowers came into this room, where there were
+blue vases for them, not a book was to be seen without a blue alpaca
+cover. Here Miss Ailie received visitors in her white with the blue
+braid, and enrolled new pupils in blue ink with a white pen. Some
+laughed at her, others remembered that she must have something to love
+after Miss Kitty died.
+
+Miss Ailie had her romance, as you may hear by and by, but you would not
+have thought it as she came forward to meet you in the blue-and-white
+room, trembling lest your feet had brought in mud, but too much a lady
+to ask you to stand on a newspaper, as she would have liked dearly to
+do. She was somewhat beyond middle-age, and stoutly, even squarely,
+built, which gave her a masculine appearance; but she had grown so timid
+since Miss Kitty's death that when she spoke you felt that either her
+figure or her manner must have been intended for someone else. In
+conversation she had a way of ending a sentence in the middle which gave
+her a reputation of being "thro'ither," though an artificial tooth was
+the cause. It was slightly loose, and had she not at times shut her
+mouth suddenly, and then done something with her tongue, an accident
+might have happened. This tooth fascinated Tommy, and once when she was
+talking he cried, excitedly, "Quick, it's coming!" whereupon her mouth
+snapped close, and she turned pink in the blue-and-white room.
+
+Nevertheless Tommy became her favorite, and as he had taught himself to
+read, after a fashion, in London, where his lesson-books were chiefly
+placards and the journal subscribed to by Shovel's father, she often
+invited him after school hours to the blue-and-white room, where he sat
+on a kitchen chair (with his boots off) and read aloud, very slowly,
+while Miss Ailie knitted. The volume was from the Thrums Book Club, of
+which Miss Ailie was one of the twelve members. Each member contributed
+a book every year, and as their tastes in literature differed, all sorts
+of books came into the club, and there was one member who invariably
+gave a ro-ro-romance. He was double-chinned and forty, but the
+school-mistress called him the dashing young banker, and for months she
+avoided his dangerous contribution. But always there came a black day
+when a desire to read the novel seized her, and she hurried home with it
+beneath her rokelay. This year the dashing banker's choice was a lady's
+novel called "I Love My Love with an A," and it was a frivolous tale,
+those being before the days of the new fiction, with its grand discovery
+that women have an equal right with men to grow beards. The hero had
+such a way with him and was so young (Miss Ailie could not stand them a
+day more than twenty) that the school-mistress was enraptured and scared
+at every page, but she fondly hoped that Tommy did not understand.
+However, he discovered one day what something printed thus, "D--n,"
+meant, and he immediately said the word with such unction that Miss
+Ailie let fall her knitting. She would have ended the readings then had
+not Agatha been at that point in the arms of an officer who, Miss Ailie
+felt almost certain, had a wife in India, and so how could she rest till
+she knew for certain? To track the officer by herself was not to be
+thought of, to read without knitting being such shameless waste of time,
+and it was decided to resume the readings on a revised plan: Tommy to
+say "stroke" in place of the "D--ns," and "word we have no concern with"
+instead of "Darling" and "Little One."
+
+Miss Ailie was not the only person at the Dovecot who admired Tommy.
+Though in duty bound, as young patriots, to jeer at him for having been
+born in the wrong place, the pupils of his own age could not resist the
+charm of his reminiscences; even Gav Dishart, a son of the manse,
+listened attentively to him. His great topic was his birthplace, and
+whatever happened in Thrums, he instantly made contemptible by citing
+something of the same kind, but on a larger scale, that had happened in
+London; he turned up his nose almost farther than was safe when they
+said Catlaw was a stiff mountain to climb. ("Oh, Gav, if you just saw
+the London mountains!") Snow! why they didn't know what snow was in
+Thrums. If they could only see St. Paul's or Hyde Park or Shovel! he
+couldn't help laughing at Thrums, he couldn't--Larfing, he said at
+first, but in a short time his Scotch was better than theirs, though
+less unconscious. His English was better also, of course, and you had to
+speak in a kind of English when inside the Hanky School; you got your
+revenge at "minutes." On the whole, Tommy irritated his fellow-pupils a
+good deal, but they found it difficult to keep away from him.
+
+He also contrived to enrage the less genteel boys of Monypenny. Their
+leader was Corp Shiach, three years Tommy's senior, who had never been
+inside a school except once, when he broke hopefully into Ballingall's
+because of a stirring rumor (nothing in it) that the dominie had hangit
+himself with his remaining brace; then in order of merit came Birkie
+Fleemister; then, perhaps, the smith's family, called the
+Haggerty-Taggertys, they were such slovens. When school was over Tommy
+frequently stepped out of his boots and stockings, so that he no longer
+looked offensively genteel, and then Monypenny was willing to let him
+join in spyo, smuggle bools, kickbonnety, peeries, the preens, suckers
+pilly, or whatever game was in season, even to the baiting of the
+Painted Lady, but they would not have Elspeth, who should have been
+content to play dumps with the female Haggerty-Taggertys, but could
+enjoy no game of which Tommy was not the larger half. Many times he
+deserted her for manlier joys, but though she was out of sight he could
+not forget her longing face, and soon he sneaked off to her; he
+upbraided her, but he stayed with her. They bore with him for a time,
+but when they discovered that she had persuaded him (after prayer) to
+put back the spug's eggs which he had brought home in triumph, then they
+drove him from their company, and for a long time afterwards his deadly
+enemy was the hard-hitting Corp Shiach.
+
+Elspeth was not invited to attend the readings of "I Love My Love with
+an A," perhaps because there were so many words in it that she had no
+concern with, but she knew they ended as the eight-o'clock bell began to
+ring, and it was her custom to meet Tommy a few yards from Aaron's door.
+Farther she durst not venture in the gloaming through fear of the
+Painted Lady, for Aaron's house was not far from the fearsome lane that
+led to Double Dykes, and even the big boys who made faces at this woman
+by day ran from her in the dusk. Creepy tales were told of what happened
+to those on whom she cast a blighting eye before they could touch cold
+iron, and Tommy was one of many who kept a bit of cold iron from the
+smithy handy in his pocket. On his way home from the readings he never
+had occasion to use it, but at these times he sometimes met Grizel, who
+liked to do her shopping in the evenings when her persecutors were more
+easily eluded, and he forced her to speak to him. Not her loneliness
+appealed to him, but that look of admiration she had given him when he
+was astride of Francie Crabb. For such a look he could pardon many
+rebuffs; without it no praise greatly pleased him; he was always on the
+outlook for it.
+
+"I warrant," he said to her one evening, "you want to have some man-body
+to take care of you the way I take care of Elspeth."
+
+"No, I don't," she replied, promptly.
+
+"Would you no like somebody to love you?"
+
+"Do you mean kissing?" she asked.
+
+"There's better things in it than that," he said guardedly; "but if you
+want kissing, I--I--Elspeth'll kiss you."
+
+"Will she want to do it?" inquired Grizel, a little wistfully.
+
+"I'll make her do it," Tommy said.
+
+"I don't want her to do it," cried Grizel, and he could not draw another
+word from her. However he was sure she thought him a wonder, and when
+next they met he challenged her with it.
+
+"Do you not now?"
+
+"I won't tell you," answered Grizel, who was never known to lie.
+
+"You think I'm a wonder," Tommy persisted, "but you dinna want me to
+know you think it."
+
+Grizel rocked her arms, a quaint way she had when excited, and she
+blurted out, "How do you know?"
+
+The look he liked had come back to her face, but he had no time to enjoy
+it, for just then Elspeth appeared, and Elspeth's jealousy was easily
+aroused.
+
+"I dinna ken you, lassie," he said coolly to Grizel, and left her
+stamping her foot at him. She decided never to speak to Tommy again, but
+the next time they met he took her into the Den and taught her how to
+fight.
+
+It is painful to have to tell that Miss Ailie was the person who
+provided him with the opportunity. In the readings they arrived one
+evening at the scene in the conservatory, which has not a single Stroke
+in it, but is so full of Words We have no Concern with that Tommy reeled
+home blinking, and next day so disgracefully did he flounder in his
+lessons that the gentle school-mistress cast up her arms in despair.
+
+"I don't know what to say to you," she exclaimed.
+
+"Fine I know what you want to say," he retorted, and unfortunately she
+asked, "What?"
+
+"Stroke!" he replied, leering horridly.
+
+"I Love My Love with an A" was returned to the club forthwith (whether
+he really did have a wife in India Miss Ailie never knew) and "Judd on
+the Shorter Catechism" took its place. But mark the result. The readings
+ended at a quarter to eight now, at twenty to eight, at half-past seven,
+and so Tommy could loiter on the way home without arousing Elspeth's
+suspicion. One evening he saw Grizel cutting her way through the
+Haggerty-Taggerty group, and he offered to come to her aid if she would
+say "Help me." But she refused.
+
+When, however, the Haggerty-Taggertys were gone she condescended to say,
+"I shall never, never ask you to help me, but--if you like--you can
+show me how to hit without biting my tongue."
+
+"I'll learn you Shovel's curly ones," replied Tommy, cordially, and he
+adjourned with her to the Den for that purpose. He said he chose the Den
+so that Corp Shiach and the others might not interrupt them, but it was
+Elspeth he was thinking of.
+
+"You are like Miss Ailie with her cane when she is pandying," he told
+Grizel. "You begin well, but you slacken just when you are going to
+hit."
+
+"It is because my hand opens," Grizel said.
+
+"And then it ends in a shove," said her mentor, severely. "You should
+close your fists like this, with the thumbs inside, and then play dab,
+this way, that way, yon way. That's what Shovel calls, 'You want it,
+take it, you've got it.'"
+
+Thus did the hunted girl get her first lesson in scientific warfare in
+the Den, and neither she nor Tommy saw the pathos of it. Other lessons
+followed, and during the rests Grizel told Tommy all that she knew about
+herself. He had won her confidence at last by--by swearing dagont that
+he was English also.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE MAN WHO NEVER CAME
+
+
+"Is it true that your mother's a bonny swearer?"
+
+Tommy wanted to find out all about the Painted Lady, and the best way
+was to ask.
+
+"She does not always swear," Grizel said eagerly. "She sometimes says
+sweet, sweet things."
+
+"What kind of things?"
+
+"I won't tell you."
+
+"Tell me one."
+
+"Well, then, 'Beloved.'"
+
+"Word We have no Concern with," murmured Tommy. He was shocked, but
+still curious. "Does she say 'Beloved' to you?" he inquired.
+
+"No, she says it to him."
+
+"Him! Wha is he?" Tommy thought he was at the beginning of a discovery,
+but she answered, uncomfortably,
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"But you've seen him?"
+
+"No, he--he is not there."
+
+"Not there! How can she speak to him if he's no there?"
+
+"She thinks he is there. He--he comes on a horse."
+
+"What is the horse like?"
+
+"There is no horse."
+
+"But you said--"
+
+"She just thinks there is a horse. She hears it."
+
+"Do you ever hear it?"
+
+"No."
+
+The girl was looking imploringly into Tommy's face as if begging it to
+say that these things need not terrify her, but what he wanted was
+information.
+
+"What does the Painted Lady do," he asked, "when she thinks she hears
+the horse?"
+
+"She blows kisses, and then--then she goes to the Den."
+
+"What to do?"
+
+"She walks up and down the Den, talking to the man."
+
+"And him no there?" cried Tommy, scared.
+
+"No, there is no one there."
+
+"And syne what do you do?"
+
+"I won't tell you."
+
+Tommy reflected, and then he said, "She's daft."
+
+"She is not always daft," cried Grizel. "There are whole weeks when she
+is just sweet."
+
+"Then what do you make of her being so queer in the Den?"
+
+"I am not sure, but I think--I think there was once a place like the Den
+at her own home in England, where she used to meet the man long ago,
+and sometimes she forgets that it is not long ago now."
+
+"I wonder wha the man was?"
+
+"I think he was my father."
+
+"I thought you didna ken what a father was?"
+
+"I know now. I think my father was a Scotsman."
+
+"What makes you think that?"
+
+"I heard a Thrums woman say it would account for my being called Grizel,
+and I think we came to Scotland to look for him, but it is so long, long
+ago."
+
+"How long?"
+
+"I don't know. We have lived here four years, but we were looking for
+him before that. It was not in this part of Scotland we looked for him.
+We gave up looking for him before we came here."
+
+"What made the Painted Lady take a house here, then?"
+
+"I think it was because the Den is so like the place she used to meet
+him in long ago."
+
+"What was his name?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Does the Painted Lady no tell you about yoursel'?"
+
+"No, she is angry if I ask."
+
+"Her name is Mary, I've heard?"
+
+"Mary Gray is her name, but--but I don't think it is her real name."
+
+"How, does she no use her real name?"
+
+"Because she wants her own mamma to think she is dead."
+
+"What makes her want that?"
+
+"I am not sure, but I think it is because there is me. I think it was
+naughty of me to be born. Can you help being born?"
+
+Tommy would have liked to tell her about Reddy, but forbore, because he
+still believed that he had acted criminally in that affair, and so for
+the time being the inquisition ended. But though he had already
+discovered all that Grizel knew about her mother and nearly all that
+curious Thrums ever ferreted out, he returned to the subject at the next
+meeting in the Den.
+
+"Where does the Painted Lady get her money?"
+
+"Oh," said Grizel, "that is easy. She just goes into that house called
+the bank, and asks for some, and they give her as much as she likes."
+
+"Ay, I've heard that, but--"
+
+The remainder of the question was never uttered. Instead,
+
+"Hod ahint a tree!" cried Tommy, hastily, and he got behind one himself;
+but he was too late; Elspeth was upon them; she had caught them together
+at last.
+
+Tommy showed great cunning. "Pretend you have eggs in your hand," he
+whispered to Grizel, and then, in a loud voice, he said: "Think shame of
+yoursel', lassie, for harrying birds' nests. It's a good thing I saw
+you, and brought you here to force you to put them back. Is that you,
+Elspeth? I catched this limmer wi' eggs in her hands (and the poor birds
+sic bonny singers, too!), and so I was forcing her to--"
+
+But it would not do. Grizel was ablaze with indignation. "You are a
+horrid story-teller," she said, "and if I had known you were ashamed of
+being seen with me, I should never have spoken to you. Take him," she
+cried, giving Tommy a push toward Elspeth, "I don't want the mean little
+story-teller."
+
+"He's not mean!" retorted Elspeth.
+
+"Nor yet little!" roared Tommy.
+
+"Yes, he is," insisted Grizel, "and I was not harrying nests. He came
+with me here because he wanted to."
+
+"Just for the once," he said, hastily.
+
+"This is the sixth time," said Grizel, and then she marched out of the
+Den. Tommy and Elspeth followed slowly, and not a word did either say
+until they were in front of Aaron's house. Then by the light in the
+window Tommy saw that Elspeth was crying softly, and he felt miserable.
+
+"I was just teaching her to fight," he said humbly.
+
+"You looked like it!" she replied, with the scorn that comes
+occasionally to the sweetest lady.
+
+He tried to comfort her in various tender ways, but none of them
+sufficed this time, "You'll marry her as soon as you're a man," she
+insisted, and she would not let this tragic picture go. It was a case
+for his biggest efforts, and he opened his mouth to threaten instant
+self-destruction unless she became happy at once. But he had threatened
+this too frequently of late, even shown himself drawing the knife across
+his throat.
+
+As usual the right idea came to him at the right moment. "If you just
+kent how I did it for your sake," he said, with gentle dignity, "you
+wouldna blame me; you would think me noble."
+
+She would not help him with a question, and after waiting for it he
+proceeded. "If you just kent wha she is! And I thought she was dead!
+What a start it gave me when I found out it was her!"
+
+"Wha is she?" cried Elspeth, with a sudden shiver.
+
+"I was trying to keep it frae you," replied Tommy, sadly.
+
+She seized his arm. "Is it Reddy?" she gasped, for the story of Reddy
+had been a terror to her all her days.
+
+"She doesna ken I was the laddie that diddled her in London," he said,
+"and I promise you never to let on, Elspeth. I--I just went to the Den
+with her to say things that would put her off the scent. If I hadna done
+that she might have found out and ta'en your place here and tried to
+pack you off to the Painted Lady's."
+
+Elspeth stared at him, the other grief already forgotten, and he thought
+he was getting on excellently, when she cried with passion, "I don't
+believe as it is Reddy!" and ran into the house.
+
+"Dinna believe it, then!" disappointed Tommy shouted, and now he was in
+such a rage with himself that his heart hardened against her. He sought
+the company of old Blinder.
+
+Unfortunately Elspeth had believed it, and her woe was the more pitiful
+because she saw at once, what had never struck Tommy, that it would be
+wicked to keep Grizel out of her rights. "I'll no win to Heaven now,"
+she said, despairingly, to herself, for to offer to change places with
+Grizel was beyond her courage, and she tried some childish ways of
+getting round God, such as going on her knees and saying, "I'm so
+little, and I hinna no mother!" That was not a bad way.
+
+Another way was to give Grizel everything she had, except Tommy. She
+collected all her treasures, the bottle with the brass top that she had
+got from Shovel's old girl, the "housewife" that was a present from Miss
+Ailie, the teetotum, the pretty buttons Tommy had won for her at the
+game of buttony, the witchy marble, the twopence she had already saved
+for the Muckley, these and some other precious trifles she made a little
+bundle of and set off for Double Dykes with them, intending to leave
+them at the door. This was Elspeth, who in ordinary circumstances would
+not have ventured near that mysterious dwelling even in daylight and in
+Tommy's company. There was no room for vulgar fear in her bursting
+little heart to-night.
+
+Tommy went home anon, meaning to be whatever kind of boy she seemed
+most in need of, but she was not in the house, she was not in the
+garden; he called her name, and it was only Birkie Fleemister, mimicking
+her, who answered, "Oh, Tommy, come to me!" But Birkie had news for him.
+
+"Sure as death," he said in some awe, "I saw Elspeth ganging yont the
+double dykes, and I cried to her that the Painted Lady would do her a
+mischief, but she just ran on."
+
+Elspeth in the double dykes--alone--and at night! Oh, how Tommy would
+have liked to strike himself now! She must have believed his wicked lie
+after all, and being so religious she had gone to--He gave himself no
+time to finish the thought. The vital thing was that she was in peril,
+he seemed to hear her calling to him, "Oh, Tommy, come quick! oh, Tommy,
+oh, Tommy!" and in an agony of apprehension he ran after her. But by the
+time he got to the beginning of the double dykes he knew that she must
+be at the end of them, and in the Painted Lady's maw, unless their
+repute by night had blown her back. He paused on the Coffin Brig, which
+is one long narrow stone; and along the funnel of the double dykes he
+sent the lonely whisper, "Elspeth, are you there?" He tried to shout it,
+but no boy could shout there after nightfall in the Painted Lady's time,
+and when the words had travelled only a little way along the double
+dykes, they came whining back to him, like a dog despatched on uncanny
+work. He heard no other sound save the burn stealing on tiptoe from an
+evil place, and the uneasy rustling of tree-tops, and his own breathing.
+
+The Coffin Brig remains, but the double dykes have fallen bit by bit
+into the burn, and the path they made safe is again as naked as when the
+Kingoldrum Jacobites filed along it, and sweer they were, to the support
+of the Pretender. It traverses a ridge and is streaked with slippery
+beech-roots which like to fling you off your feet, on the one side into
+a black burn twenty feet below, on the other down a pleasant slope. The
+double dykes were built by a farmer fond of his dram, to stop the tongue
+of a water-kelpie which lived in a pool below and gave him a turn every
+night he staggered home by shouting, "Drunk again, Peewitbrae!" and
+announcing, with a smack of the lips, that it had a bed ready for him in
+the burn. So Peewitbrae built two parallel dykes two feet apart and two
+feet high, between which he could walk home like a straight man. His
+cunning took the heart out of the brute, and water-kelpies have not been
+seen near Thrums since about that time.
+
+By day even girls played at palaulays here, and it was a favorite resort
+of boys, who knew that you were a man when you could stand on both dykes
+at once. They also stripped boldly to the skin and then looked
+doubtfully at the water. But at night! To test your nerves you walked
+alone between the double dykes, and the popular practice was to start
+off whistling, which keeps up the courage. At the point where you turned
+to run back (the Painted Lady after you, or so you thought) you dropped
+a marked stone, which told next day how far you had ventured. Corp
+Shiach long held the championship, and his stone was ostentatiously
+fixed in one of the dykes with lime. Tommy had suffered at his hands for
+saying that Shovel's mark was thirty yards farther on.
+
+With head bent to the level of the dykes, though it was almost a mirk
+night beneath the trees, and one arm outstretched before him straight as
+an elvint, Tommy faced this fearful passage, sometimes stopping to touch
+cold iron, but on the whole hanging back little, for Elspeth was in
+peril. Soon he reached the paling that was not needed to keep boys out
+of the Painted Lady's garden, one of the prettiest and best-tended
+flower-gardens in Thrums, and crawling through where some spars had
+fallen, he approached the door as noiseless as an Indian brave after
+scalps. There he crouched, with a heart that was going like a shuttle on
+a loom, and listened for Elspeth's voice.
+
+On a night he had come nearly as far as this before, but in the tail of
+big fellows with a turnip lantern. Into the wood-work of the east window
+they had thrust a pin, to which a button was tied, and the button was
+also attached to a long string. They hunkered afar off and pulled this
+string, and then the button tapped the death-rap on the window, and the
+sport was successful, for the Painted Lady screamed. But suddenly the
+door opened and they were put to flight by the fierce barking of a dog.
+One said that the brute nabbed him in the leg, another saw the vive
+tongue of it, a third played lick at it with the lantern; this was
+before they discovered that the dog had been Grizel imitating one, brave
+Grizel, always ready to protect her mother, and never allowed to cherish
+the childish fears that were hers by birthright.
+
+Tommy could not hear a sound from within, but he had startling proof
+that Elspeth was near. His foot struck against something at the door,
+and, stooping, he saw that it was a little bundle of the treasures she
+valued most. So she had indeed come to stay with the Painted Lady if
+Grizel proved merciless! Oh, what a black he had been!
+
+Though originally a farm-house, the cottage was no larger than Aaron's,
+and of its two front windows only one showed a light, and that through a
+blind. Tommy sidled round the house in the hope that the small east
+window would be more hospitable, and just as he saw that it was
+blindless something that had been crouching rose between him and it.
+
+"Let go!" he cried, feeling the Painted Lady's talons in his neck.
+
+"Tommy!" was the answer.
+
+"It's you, Elspeth?"
+
+"Is it you, Tommy?"
+
+"Of course. Whisht!"
+
+"But say it is."
+
+"It is."
+
+"Oh, Tommy, I'm so fleid!"
+
+He drew her farther from the window and told her it had all been a
+wicked lie, and she was so glad that she forgot to chide him, but he
+denounced himself, and he was better than Elspeth even at that. However,
+when he learned what had brought her here he dried his eyes and skulked
+to the door again and brought back her belongings, and then she wanted
+him to come away at once. But the window fascinated him; he knew he
+should never find courage to come here again, and he glided toward it,
+signing to Elspeth to accompany him. They were now too near Double Dykes
+for speaking to be safe, but he tapped his head as a warning to her to
+remove her hat, for a woman's head-gear always reaches a window in front
+of its wearer, and he touched his cold iron and passed it to her as if
+it were a snuff-mull. Thus fortified, they approached the window
+fearfully, holding hands and stepping high, like a couple in a minuet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE PAINTED LADY
+
+
+It had been the ordinary dwelling room of the unknown poor, the mean
+little "end"--ah, no, no, the noblest chamber in the annals of the
+Scottish nation. Here on a hard anvil has its character been fashioned
+and its history made at rush-lights and its God ever most prominent.
+Always within reach of hands which trembled with reverence as they
+turned its broad page could be found the Book that is compensation for
+all things, and that was never more at home than on bare dressers and
+worm-eaten looms. If you were brought up in that place and have
+forgotten it, there is no more hope for you.
+
+But though still recalling its past, the kitchen into which Tommy and
+Elspeth peered was trying successfully to be something else. The
+plate-rack had been a fixture, and the coffin-bed and the wooden bole,
+or board in the wall, with its round hole through which you thrust your
+hand when you wanted salt, and instead of a real mantelpiece there was a
+quaint imitation one painted over the fireplace. There were some pieces
+of furniture too, such as were usual in rooms of the kind, but most of
+them, perhaps in ignorance, had been put to novel uses, like the
+plate-rack, where the Painted Lady kept her many pretty shoes instead of
+her crockery. Gossip said she had a looking-glass of such prodigious
+size that it stood on the floor, and Tommy nudged Elspeth to signify,
+"There it is!" Other nudges called her attention to the carpet, the
+spinet, a chair that rocked like a cradle, and some smaller oddities, of
+which the queerest was a monster velvet glove hanging on the nail that
+by rights belonged to the bellows. The Painted Lady always put on this
+glove before she would touch the coals, which diverted Tommy, who knew
+that common folk lift coals with their bare hands while society uses the
+fringe of its second petticoat.
+
+It might have been a boudoir through which a kitchen and bedroom had
+wandered, spilling by the way, but though the effect was tawdry,
+everything had been rubbed clean by that passionate housewife, Grizel.
+She was on her knees at present ca'ming the hearth-stone a beautiful
+blue, and sometimes looking round to address her mother, who was busy
+among her plants and cut flowers. Surely they were know-nothings who
+called this woman silly, and blind who said she painted. It was a little
+face all of one color, dingy pale, not chubby, but retaining the soft
+contours of a child's face, and the features were singularly delicate.
+She was clad in a soft gray, and her figure was of the smallest; there
+was such an air of youth about her that Tommy thought she could become a
+girl again by merely shortening her frock, not such a girl as gaunt
+Grizel, though, who would have looked a little woman had she let her
+frock down. In appearance indeed the Painted Lady resembled her plain
+daughter not at all, but in manner in a score of ways, as when she
+rocked her arms joyously at sight of a fresh bud or tossed her brown
+hair from her brows with a pretty gesture that ought, God knows, to have
+been for some man to love. The watchers could not hear what she and
+Grizel said, but evidently it was pleasant converse, and mother and
+child, happy in each other's company, presented a picture as sweet as it
+is common, though some might have complained that they were doing each
+other's work. But the Painted Lady's delight in flowers was a scandal in
+Thrums, where she would stand her ground if the roughest boy approached
+her with roses in his hand, and she gave money for them, which was one
+reason why the people thought her daft. She was tending her flowers now
+with experienced eye, smelling them daintily, and every time she touched
+them it was a caress.
+
+The watchers retired into the field to compare impressions, and Elspeth
+said emphatically, "I like her, Tommy, I'm not none fleid at her."
+
+Tommy had liked her also, but being a man he said, "You forget that
+she's an ill one."
+
+"She looks as if she didna ken that hersel'," answered Elspeth, and
+these words of a child are the best picture we can hope to get of the
+Painted Lady.
+
+On their return to the window, they saw that Grizel had finished her
+ca'ming and was now sitting on the floor nursing a doll. Tommy had not
+thought her the kind to shut her eyes to the truth about dolls, but she
+was hugging this one passionately. Without its clothes it was of the
+nine-pin formation, and the painted eyes and mouth had been incorporated
+long since in loving Grizel's system; but it became just sweet as she
+swaddled it in a long yellow frock and slipped its bullet head into a
+duck of a pink bonnet. These articles of attire and the others that you
+begin with had all been made by Grizel herself out of the colored
+tissue-paper that shopkeepers wrap round brandy bottles. The doll's name
+was Griselda, and it was exactly six months old, and Grizel had found
+it, two years ago, lying near the Coffin Brig, naked and almost dead.
+
+It was making the usual fuss at having its clothes put on, and Grizel
+had to tell it frequently that of all the babies--which shamed it now
+and again, but kept her so occupied that she forgot her mother. The
+Painted Lady had sunk into the rocking-chair, and for a time she amused
+herself with it, but by and by it ceased to rock, and as she sat looking
+straight before her a change came over her face. Elspeth's hand
+tightened its clutch on Tommy's; the Painted Lady had begun to talk to
+herself.
+
+She was not speaking aloud, for evidently Grizel, whose back was toward
+her, heard nothing, but her lips moved and she nodded her head and
+smiled and beckoned, apparently to the wall, and the childish face
+rapidly became vacant and foolish. This mood passed, and now she was
+sitting very still, only her head moving, as she looked in apprehension
+and perplexity this way and that, like one who no longer knew where she
+was, nor who was the child by the fire. When at last Grizel turned and
+observed the change, she may have sighed, but there was no fear in her
+face; the fear was on the face of her mother, who shrank from her in
+unmistakable terror and would have screamed at a harsh word or a hasty
+movement. Grizel seemed to know this, for she remained where she was,
+and first she nodded and smiled reassuringly to her mother, and then,
+leaning forward, took her hand and stroked it softly and began to talk.
+She had laid aside her doll, and with the act become a woman again.
+
+The Painted Lady was soothed, but her bewildered look came and went, as
+if she only caught at some explanation Grizel was making, to lose it in
+a moment. Yet she seemed most eager to be persuaded. The little watchers
+at this queer play saw that Grizel was saying things to her which she
+repeated docilely and clung to and lost hold of. Often Grizel
+illustrated her words by a sort of pantomime, as when she sat down on a
+chair and placed the doll in her lap, then sat down on her mother's lap;
+and when she had done this several times Tommy took Elspeth into the
+field to say to her:
+
+"Do you no see? She means as she is the Painted Lady's bairn, just the
+same as the doll is her bairn."
+
+If the Painted Lady needed to be told this every minute she was daft
+indeed, and Elspeth could peer no longer at the eerie spectacle. To
+leave Tommy, however, was equally difficult, so she crouched at his feet
+when he returned to the window, drawn there hastily by the sound of
+music.
+
+The Painted Lady could play on the spinet beautifully, but Grizel could
+not play, though it was she who was trying to play now. She was running
+her fingers over the notes, producing noises from them, while she swayed
+grotesquely on her seat and made comic faces. Her object was to capture
+her mother's mind, and she succeeded for a short time, but soon it
+floated away from all control, and the Painted Lady fell a-shaking
+violently. Then Grizel seemed to be alarmed, and her arms rocked
+despairingly, but she went to her mother and took loving hold of her,
+and the woman clung to her child in a way pitiful to see. She was on
+Grizel's knee now, but she still shivered as if in a deadly chill, and
+her feet rattled on the floor, and her arms against the sides of the
+chair. Grizel pinned the trembling arms with her own and twisted her
+legs round her mother's, and still the Painted Lady's tremors shook
+them both, so that to Tommy they were as two people wrestling.
+
+The shivering slowly lessened and at last ceased, but this seemed to
+make Grizel no less unhappy. To her vehement attempt to draw her
+mother's attention she got no response; the Painted Lady was hearkening
+intently for some sound other than Grizel's voice, and only once did she
+look at her child. Then it was with cruel, ugly eyes, and at the same
+moment she shoved Grizel aside so viciously that it was almost a blow.
+Grizel sat down sorrowfully beside her doll, like one aware that she
+could do no more, and her mother at once forgot her. What was she
+listening for so eagerly? Was it for the gallop of a horse? Tommy
+strained his ears.
+
+"Elspeth--speak low--do you hear anything?"
+
+"No; I'm ower fleid to listen."
+
+"Whisht! do you no hear a horse?"
+
+"No, everything's terrible still. Do you hear a horse?"
+
+"I--I think I do, but far awa'."
+
+His imagination was on fire. Did he hear a distant galloping or did he
+only make himself hear it? He had bent his head, and Elspeth, looking
+affrighted into his face, whispered, "I hear it too, oh, Tommy, so do
+I!"
+
+And the Painted Lady had heard it. She kissed her hand toward the Den
+several times, and each time Tommy seemed to hear that distant
+galloping. All the sweetness had returned to her face now, and with it a
+surging joy, and she rocked her arms exultantly, but quickly controlled
+them lest Grizel should see. For evidently Grizel must be cheated, and
+so the Painted Lady became very sly. She slipped off her shoes to be
+able to make her preparations noiselessly, and though at all other times
+her face expressed the rapture of love, when she glanced at her child it
+was suspiciously and with a gleam of hatred. Her preparations were for
+going out. She was long at the famous mirror, and when she left it her
+hair was elaborately dressed and her face so transformed that first
+Tommy exclaimed "Bonny!" and then corrected himself with a scornful
+"Paint!" On her feet she put a foolish little pair of red shoes, on her
+head a hat too gay with flowers, and across her shoulders a flimsy white
+shawl at which the night air of Thrums would laugh. Her every movement
+was light and cautious and accompanied by side-glances at Grizel, who
+occasionally looked at her, when the Painted Lady immediately pretended
+to be tending her plants again. She spoke to Grizel sweetly to deceive
+her, and shot baleful glances at her next moment. Tommy saw that Grizel
+had taken up her doll once more and was squeezing it to her breast. She
+knew very well what was going on behind her back.
+
+Suddenly Tommy took to his heels, Elspeth after him. He had seen the
+Painted Lady coming on her tip-toes to the window. They saw the window
+open and a figure in a white shawl creep out of it, as she had doubtless
+escaped long ago by another window when the door was barred. They lost
+sight of her at once.
+
+"What will Grizel do now?" Tommy whispered, and he would have returned
+to his watching place, but Elspeth pointed to the window. Grizel was
+there closing it, and next moment the lamp was extinguished. They heard
+a key turn in the lock, and presently Grizel, carrying warm wraps,
+passed very near them and proceeded along the double dykes, not anxious
+apparently to keep her mother in view, but slowly, as if she knew where
+to find her. She went into the Den, where Tommy dared not follow her,
+but he listened at the stile and in the awful silence he fancied he
+heard the neighing of a horse.
+
+The next time he met Grizel he was yearning to ask her how she spent
+that night, but he knew she would not answer; it would be a long time
+before she gave him her confidence again. He offered her his piece of
+cold iron, however, and explained why he carried it, whereupon she flung
+it across the road, crying, "You horrid boy, do you think I am
+frightened at my mamma!" But when he was out of sight she came back and
+slipped the cold iron into her pocket.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+IN WHICH TOMMY SOLVES THE WOMAN PROBLEM
+
+
+Pity made Elspeth want to like the Painted Lady's child now, but her own
+rules of life were all from a book never opened by Grizel, who made her
+religion for herself and thought God a swear; she also despised Elspeth
+for being so dependent on Tommy, and Elspeth knew it. The two great
+subjects being barred thus, it was not likely that either girl, despite
+some attempts on Elspeth's part, should find out the best that was in
+the other, without which friendship has no meaning, and they would have
+gone different ways had not Tommy given an arm to each. He, indeed, had
+as little in common with Grizel, for most conspicuous of his traits was
+the faculty of stepping into other people's shoes and remaining there
+until he became someone else; his individuality consisted in having
+none, while she could only be herself and was without tolerance for
+those who were different; he had at no time in his life the least desire
+to make other persons like himself, but if they were not like Grizel she
+rocked her arms and cried, "Why, why, why?" which is the mark of the
+"womanly" woman. But his tendency to be anyone he was interested in
+implied enormous sympathy (for the time being), and though Grizel
+spurned his overtures, this only fired his pride of conquest. We can all
+get whatever we want if we are quite determined to have it (though it be
+a king's daughter), and in the end Tommy vanquished Grizel. How? By
+offering to let her come into Aaron's house and wash it and dust it and
+ca'm it, "just as if you were our mother," an invitation she could not
+resist. To you this may seem an easy way, but consider the penetration
+he showed in thinking of it. It came to him one day when he saw her lift
+the smith's baby out of the gutter, and hug it with a passionate delight
+in babies.
+
+"She's so awid to do it," he said basely to Elspeth, "that we needna let
+on how much we want it done." And he also mentioned her eagerness to
+Aaron as a reason why she should be allowed to do it for nothing.
+
+For Aaron to hold out against her admittance would have been to defraud
+himself, for she transformed his house. When she saw the brass lining of
+the jelly-pan discolored, and that the stockings hanging from the string
+beneath the mantelpiece had given way where the wearers were hardest on
+them; when she found dripping adhering to a cold frying-pan instead of
+in a "pig," and the pitcher leaking and the carrot-grater stopped--when
+these and similar discoveries were made by Grizel, was it a squeal of
+horror she gave that such things should be, or a cry of rapture because
+to her had fallen the task of setting them right?
+
+"She just made a jump for the besom," was Tommy's graphic description of
+how it all began.
+
+You should have seen Grizel on the hoddy-table knocking nails into the
+wall. The hoddy-table is so called because it goes beneath the larger
+one at night, like a chicken under its mother, and Grizel, with the
+nails in her mouth, used them up so quickly that you would have sworn
+she swallowed half of them; yet she rocked her arms because she could
+not be at all four walls at once. She rushed about the room until she
+was dizzy, and Tommy knew the moment to cry "Grip her, she'll tumble!"
+when he and Elspeth seized her and put her on a stool.
+
+It is on the hoddy-table that you bake and iron. "There's not a
+baking-board in the house," Elspeth explained. "There is!" cried Grizel,
+there and then converting a drawer into one.
+
+Between her big bannocks she made baby ones, for no better reason than
+that she was so fond of babies, and she kissed the baby ones and said,
+"Oh, the loves, they are just sweet!" and she felt for them when Tommy
+took a bite. She could go so quickly between the board and the girdle
+that she was always at one end of the course or the other, but never
+gave you time to say at which end, and on the limited space round the
+fire she could balance such a number of bannocks that they were as much
+a wonder as the Lord's prayer written on a sixpence. Such a vigilant eye
+she kept on them, too, that they dared not fall. Yet she had never been
+taught to bake; a good-natured neighbor had now and again allowed her to
+look on.
+
+Then her ironing! Even Aaron opened his mouth on this subject, Blinder
+being his confidant. "I thought there was a smell o' burning," he said,
+"and so I went butt the house; but man, as soon as my een lighted on her
+I minded of my mother at the same job. The crittur was so busy with her
+work that she looked as if, though the last trumpet had blawn, she would
+just have cried, 'I canna come till my ironing's done!' Ay, I went ben
+without a word."
+
+But best of all was to see Grizel "redding up" on a Saturday afternoon.
+Where were Tommy and Elspeth then? They were shut up in the coffin-bed
+to be out of the way, and could scarce have told whether they fled
+thither or were wrapped into it by her energetic arms. Even Aaron dared
+not cross the floor until it was sanded. "I believe," he said, trying to
+jest, "you would like to shut me up in the bed too!" "I should just love
+it," she cried, eagerly; "will you go?" It is an inferior woman who has
+a sense of humor when there is a besom in her hand.
+
+Thus began great days to Grizel, "sweet" she called them, for she had
+many of her mother's words, and a pretty way of emphasizing them with
+her plain face that turned them all into superlatives. But though Tommy
+and Elspeth were her friends now, her mouth shut obstinately the moment
+they mentioned the Painted Lady; she regretted ever having given Tommy
+her confidence on that subject, and was determined not to do so again.
+He did not dare tell her that he had once been at the east window of her
+home, but often he and Elspeth spoke to each other of that adventure,
+and sometimes they woke in their garret bed thinking they heard the
+horseman galloping by. Then they crept closer to each other, and
+wondered whether Grizel was cosey in her bed or stalking an eerie figure
+in the Den.
+
+Aaron said little, but he was drawn to the girl, who had not the
+self-consciousness of Tommy and Elspeth in his presence, and sometimes
+he slipped a penny into her hand. The pennies were not spent, they were
+hoarded for the fair, or Muckle Friday, or Muckley, great day of the
+year in Thrums. If you would know how Tommy was making ready for this
+mighty festival, listen.
+
+One of his sources of income was the _Mentor_, a famous London weekly
+paper, which seemed to visitors to be taken in by every person of
+position in Thrums. It was to be seen not only in parlors, but on the
+armchair at the Jute Bank, in the gauger's gig, in the Spittal factor's
+dog-cart, on a shoemaker's form, protruding from Dr. McQueen's tail
+pocket and from Mr. Duthie's oxter pocket, on Cathro's school-desk, in
+the Rev. Mr. Dishart's study, in half a dozen farms. Miss Ailie
+compelled her little servant, Gavinia, to read the _Mentor_, and stood
+over her while she did it; the phrase, "this week's," meant this week's
+_Mentor_. Yet the secret must be told: only one copy of the paper came
+to Thrums weekly; it was subscribed for by the whole reading public
+between them, and by Miss Ailie's influence Tommy had become the boy who
+carried it from house to house.
+
+This brought him a penny a week, but so heavy were his incidental
+expenses that he could have saved little for the Muckley had not another
+organization given him a better chance. It was a society, newly started,
+for helping the deserving poor; they had to subscribe not less than a
+penny weekly to it, and at the end of the year each subscriber was to be
+given fuel, etc., to the value of double what he or she had put in. "The
+three Ps" was a nickname given to the society by Dr. McQueen, because it
+claimed to distribute "Peats and Potatoes with Propriety," but he was
+one of its heartiest supporters nevertheless. The history of this
+society in the first months of its existence not only shows how Tommy
+became a moneyed man, but gives a glimpse into the character of those it
+benefited.
+
+Miss Ailie was treasurer, and the pennies were to be brought to her on
+Monday evenings between the hours of seven and eight. The first Monday
+evening found her ready in the school-room, in her hand the famous
+pencil that wrote red with the one end and blue with the other; by her
+side her assistant, Mr. T. Sandys, a pen balanced on his ear. For a
+whole hour did they wait, but though many of the worthiest poor had been
+enrolled as members, the few who appeared with their pennies were
+notoriously riff-raff. At eight Miss Ailie disconsolately sent Tommy
+home, but he was back in five minutes.
+
+"There's a mask of them," he told her, excitedly, "hanging about, but
+feared to come in because the others would see them. They're ashamed to
+have it kent that they belong to a charity society, and Meggy Robbie is
+wandering round the Dovecot wi' her penny wrapped in a paper, and Watty
+Rattray and Ronny-On is walking up and down the brae pretending they
+dinna ken one another, and auld Connacher's Jeanie Ann says she has been
+four times round the town waiting for Kitty Elshioner to go away, and
+there's a one-leggit man hodding in the ditch, and Tibbie Birse is out
+wi' a lantern counting them."
+
+Miss Ailie did not know what to do. "Here's Jeanie Ann's penny," Tommy
+continued, opening his hand, "and this is three bawbees frae Kitty
+Elshioner and you and me is no to tell a soul they've joined."
+
+A furtive tapping was heard at the door. It was Ronny-On, who had
+skulked forward with twopence, but Gavinia answered his knock, so he
+just said, "Ay, Gavinia, it's yoursel'. Well, I'll be stepping," and
+would have retired had not Miss Ailie caught him. Even then he said,
+"Three bawbees is to you to lay by, and one bawbee to Gavinia no to
+tell."
+
+To next Monday evening Miss Ailie now looked with apprehension, but
+Tommy lay awake that night until, to use a favorite crow of his, he
+"found a way." He borrowed the school-mistress's blue-and-red pencil and
+sought the houses of the sensitive poor with the following effect. One
+sample will suffice; take him at the door of Meggy Robbie in the West
+Muir, which he flung open with the effrontery of a tax-collector.
+
+"You're a three P," he said, with a wave of his pencil.
+
+"I'm no sic thing!" cried the old lady.
+
+"It winna do, woman," Tommy said sternly. "Miss Ailie telled me you paid
+in your first penny on the chap of ten." He wetted the pencil on his
+tongue to show that it was vain to trifle with him, and Meggy bowed her
+head.
+
+"It'll be through the town that I've joined," she moaned, but Tommy
+explained that he was there to save her.
+
+"I'm willing to come to your house," he said, "and collect the money
+every week, and not a soul will I tell except the committee."
+
+"Kitty Elshioner would see you coming," said Meggy.
+
+"No, no, I'll creep yont the hedge and climb the hen-house."
+
+"But it would be a' found out at any rate," she remembered, "when I go
+for the peats and things at Hogmanay."
+
+"It needna be," eagerly replied Tommy. "I'll bring them to you in a
+barrow in the dead o' night."
+
+"Could you?" she cried passionately, and he promised he would, and it
+may be mentioned here that he did.
+
+"And what for yoursel'?" she inquired.
+
+"A bawbee," he said, "the night afore the Muckley."
+
+The bargain was made, but before he could get away, "Tell me, laddie,"
+said Meggy, coaxingly, "has Kitty Elshioner joined?" They were all as
+curious to know who had joined as they were anxious to keep their own
+membership a secret; but Tommy betrayed none, at least none who agreed
+to his proposal. There were so many of these that on the night before
+the Muckley he had thirteen pence.
+
+"And you was doing good all the time you was making the thirteen pence,"
+Elspeth said, fondly. "I believe that was the reason you did it."
+
+"I believe it was!" Tommy exclaimed. He had not thought of this before,
+but it was easy to him to believe anything.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE MUCKLEY
+
+
+Every child in Thrums went to bed on the night before the Muckley
+hugging a pirly, or, as the vulgar say, a money-box; and all the pirlies
+were ready for to-morrow, that is to say, the mouths of them had been
+widened with gully knives by owners now so skilful at the jerk which
+sends their contents to the floor that pirlies they were no longer.
+"Disgorge!" was the universal cry, or, in the vernacular, "Out you come,
+you sweer deevils!"
+
+Not a coin but had its history, not a boy who was unable to pick out his
+own among a hundred. The black one came from the 'Sosh, the bent lad he
+got for carrying in Ronny-On's sticks. Oh michty me, sure as death he
+had nearly forgotten the one with the warts on it. Which to spend first?
+The goldy one? Na faags, it was ower ill to come by. The scartit one?
+No, no, it was a lucky. Well, then, the one found in the rat's hole?
+(That was a day!) Ay, dagont, ay, we'll make the first blatter with it.
+
+It was Tommy's first Muckley, and the report that he had thirteen pence
+brought him many advisers about its best investment. Even Corp Shiach
+(five pence) suspended hostilities for this purpose. "Mind this," he
+said solemnly, "there's none o' the candies as sucks so long as
+Californy's Teuch and Tasty. Other kinds may be sweeter, but Teuch and
+Tasty lasts the longest, and what a grip it has! It pulls out your
+teeth!" Corp seemed to think that this was a recommendation.
+
+"I'm nane sure o' Teuch and Tasty," Birkie said. "If you dinna keep a
+watch on it, it slips ower when you're swallowing your spittle."
+
+"Then you should tie a string to it," suggested Tommy, who was thought
+more of from that hour.
+
+_Beware of Pickpockets!_ Had it not been for placards with this glorious
+announcement (it is the state's first printed acknowledgment that boys
+and girls form part of the body politic) you might have thought that the
+night before the Muckley was absurdly like other nights. Not a show had
+arrived, not a strange dog, no romantic figures were wandering the
+streets in search of lodgings, no stands had sprung up in the square.
+You could pass hours in pretending to fear that when the morning came
+there would be no fairyland. And all the time you _knew_.
+
+About ten o'clock Ballingall's cat was observed washing its face, a
+deliberate attempt to bring on rain. It was immediately put to death.
+
+Tommy and Elspeth had agreed to lie awake all night; if Tommy nipped
+Elspeth, Elspeth would nip Tommy. Other children had made the same
+arrangement, though the experienced ones were aware that it would fail.
+If it was true that all the witches were dead, then the streets of
+stands and shows and gaming-tables and shooting-galleries were erected
+by human hands, and it followed that were you to listen through the
+night you must hear the hammers. But always in the watches the god of
+the Muckley came unseen and glued your eyes, as if with Teuch and Tasty,
+and while you slept--Up you woke with a start. What was it you were to
+mind as soon as you woke? Listen! That's a drum beating! It's the
+Muckley! They are all here! It has begun! Oh, michty, michty, michty,
+whaur's my breeks?
+
+When Tommy, with Elspeth and Grizel, set off excitedly for the town, the
+country folk were already swarming in. The Monypenny road was thick with
+them, braw loons in blue bonnets with red bobs to them, tartan
+waistcoats, scarves of every color, woollen shirts as gay, and the
+strutting wearers in two minds--whether to take off the scarf to display
+the shirt, or hide the shirt and trust to the scarf. Came lassies, too,
+in wincey bodices they were like to burst through, and they were
+listening apprehensively as they ploughed onward for a tearing at the
+seams. There were red-headed lasses, yellow-chy-headed and black-headed,
+blue-shawled and red-shawled lasses; boots on every one of them,
+stockings almost as common, the skirt kilted up for the present, but
+down it should go when they were in the thick of things, and then it
+must take care of itself. All were solemn and sheepish as yet, but wait
+a bit.
+
+The first-known face our three met was Corp. He was only able to sign to
+them, because Californy's specialty had already done its work and glued
+his teeth together. He was off to the smithy to be melted, but gave them
+to understand that though awkward it was glorious. Then came Birkie, who
+had sewn up the mouths of his pockets, all but a small slit in each, as
+a precaution against pickpockets, and was now at his own request being
+held upside down by the Haggerty-Taggertys on the chance that a
+halfpenny which had disappeared mysteriously might fall out. A more
+tragic figure was Francie Crabb (one and seven pence), who, like a mad,
+mad thing, had taken all his money to the fair at once. In ten minutes
+he had bought fourteen musical instruments.
+
+Tommy and party had not yet reached the celebrated corner of the west
+town end where the stands began, but they were near it, and he stopped
+to give Grizel and Elspeth his final instructions: "(1) Keep your money
+in your purse, and your purse in your hand, and your hand in your
+pocket; (2) if you lose me, I'll give Shovel's whistle, and syne you
+maun squeeze and birse your way back to me."
+
+Now then, are you ready? Bang! They were in it. Strike up, ye fiddlers;
+drums, break; tooters, fifers, at it for your lives; trumpets, blow;
+bagpipes, skirl; music-boxes, all together now--Tommy has arrived.
+
+Even before he had seen Thrums, except with his mother's eye, Tommy knew
+that the wise begin the Muckley by measuring its extent. That the square
+and adjoining wynds would be crammed was a law of nature, but boyhood
+drew imaginary lines across the Roods, the west town end, the east town
+end, and the brae, and if the stands did not reach these there had been
+retrogression. Tommy found all well in two quarters, got a nasty shock
+on the brae, but medicine for it in the Roods; on the whole, yelled a
+hundred children, by way of greeting to each other, a better Muckley
+than ever.
+
+From those who loved them best, the more notable Muckleys got
+distinctive names for convenience of reference. As shall be
+ostentatiously shown in its place, there was a Muckley called (and by
+Corp Shiach, too) after Tommy, but this, his first, was dubbed Sewster's
+Muckley, in honor of a seamstress who hanged herself that day in the
+Three-cornered Wood. Poor little sewster, she had known joyous Muckleys
+too, but now she was up in the Three-cornered Wood hanging herself, aged
+nineteen. I know nothing more of her, except that in her maiden days
+when she left the house her mother always came to the door to look
+proudly after her.
+
+How to describe the scene, when owing to the throng a boy could only
+peer at it between legs or through the crook of a woman's arm? Shovel
+would have run up ploughmen to get his bird's-eye view, and he could
+have told Tommy what he saw, and Tommy could have made a picture of it
+in his mind, every figure ten feet high. But perhaps to be lost in it
+was best. You had but to dive and come up anywhere to find something
+amazing; you fell over a box of jumping-jacks into a new world.
+
+Everyone to his taste. If you want Tommy's sentiments, here they are,
+condensed: "The shows surpass everything else on earth. Four streets of
+them in the square! The best is the menagerie, because there is the
+loudest roaring there. Kick the caravans and you increase the roaring.
+Admission, however, prohibitive (threepence). More economical to stand
+outside the show of the 'Mountain Maid and the Shepherd's Bride' and
+watch the merriman saying funny things to the monkey. Take care you
+don't get in front of the steps, else you will be pressed up by those
+behind and have to pay before you have decided that you want to go in.
+When you fling pennies at the Mountain Maid and the Shepherd's Bride
+they stop play-acting and scramble for them. Go in at night when there
+are drunk ploughmen to fling pennies. The Fat Wife with the Golden Locks
+lets you put your fingers in her arms, but that is soon over. 'The
+Slave-driver and his Victims.' Not worth the money; they are not
+blooding. To Jerusalem and Back in a Jiffy. This is a swindle. You just
+keek through holes."
+
+But Elspeth was of a different mind. She liked To Jerusalem and Back
+best, and gave the Slave-driver and his Victims a penny to be
+Christians. The only show she disliked was the wax-work, where was
+performed the "Tragedy of Tiffano and the Haughty Princess." Tiffano
+loved the woodman's daughter, and so he would not have the Haughty
+Princess, and so she got a magician to turn him into a pumpkin, and then
+she ate him. What distressed Elspeth was that Tiffano could never get to
+heaven now, and all the consolation Tommy, doing his best, could give
+her was, "He could go, no doubt he could go, but he would have to take
+the Haughty Princess wi' him, and he would be sweer to do that."
+
+Grizel reflected: "If I had a whip like the one the Slave-driver has
+shouldn't I lash the boys who hoot my mamma! I wish I could turn boys
+into pumpkins. The Mountain Maid wore a beautiful muslin with gold lace,
+but she does not wash her neck."
+
+Lastly, let Corp have his say: "I looked at the outside of the shows,
+but always landed back at Californy's stand. Sucking is better nor near
+anything. The Teuch and Tasty is stickier than ever. I have lost twa
+teeth. The Mountain Maid is biding all night at Tibbie Birse's, and I
+went in to see her. She had a bervie and a boiled egg to her tea. She
+likes her eggs saft wi' a lick of butter in them. The Fat Wife is the
+one I like best. She's biding wi' Shilpit Kaytherine on the Tanage Brae.
+She weighs Jeems and Kaytherine and the sma' black swine. She had an
+ingin to her tea. The Slave-driver's a fushinless body. One o' the
+Victims gives him his licks. They a' bide in the caravan. You can stand
+on the wheel and keek in. They had herrings wi' the rans to their tea. I
+cut a hole in Jerusalem and Back, and there was no Jerusalem there. The
+man as ocht Jerusalem greets because the Fair Circassian winna take him.
+He is biding a' night wi' Blinder. He likes a dram in his tea."
+
+Elspeth's money lasted till four o'clock. For Aaron, almost the only man
+in Thrums who shunned the revels that day, she bought a gingerbread
+house; and the miraculous powder which must be taken on a sixpence was
+to make Blinder see again, but unfortunately he forgot about putting it
+on the sixpence. And of course there was something for a certain boy.
+Grizel had completed her purchases by five o'clock, when Tommy was still
+heavy with threepence halfpenny. They included a fluffy pink shawl, she
+did not say for whom, but the Painted Lady wore it afterwards, and for
+herself another doll.
+
+"But that doll's leg is broken," Tommy pointed out.
+
+"That was why I bought it," she said warmly, "I feel so sorry for it,
+the darling," and she carried it carefully so that the poor thing might
+suffer as little pain as possible.
+
+Twice they rushed home for hasty meals, and were back so quickly that
+Tommy's shadow strained a muscle in turning with him. Night came on,
+and from a hundred strings stretched along stands and shows there now
+hung thousands of long tin things like trumpets. One burning paper could
+set a dozen of these ablaze, and no sooner were they lit than a wind
+that had been biding its time rushed in like the merriman, making the
+lamps swing on their strings, so that the flaring lights embraced, and
+from a distance Thrums seemed to be on fire.
+
+Even Grizel was willing to hold Tommy's hand now, and the three could
+only move this way and that as the roaring crowd carried them. They were
+not looking at the Muckley, they were part of it, and at last Thrums was
+all Tommy's fancy had painted it. This intoxicated him, so that he had
+to scream at intervals, "We're here, Elspeth, I tell you, we're here!"
+and he became pugnacious and asked youths twice his size whether they
+denied that he was here, and if so, would they come on. In this frenzy
+he was seen by Miss Ailie, who had stolen out in a veil to look for
+Gavinia, but just as she was about to reprove him, dreadful men asked
+her was she in search of a lad, whereupon she fled home and barred the
+door, and later in the evening warned Gavinia, through the key-hole,
+taking her for a roystering blade, that there were policemen in the
+house, to which the astounding reply of Gavinia, then aged twelve, was,
+"No sic luck."
+
+With the darkness, too, crept into the Muckley certain devils in the
+color of the night who spoke thickly and rolled braw lads in the mire,
+and egged on friends to fight and cast lewd thoughts into the minds of
+the women. At first the men had been bashful swains. To the women's "Gie
+me my faring, Jock," they had replied, "Wait, Jean, till I'm fee'd," but
+by night most had got their arles, with a dram above it, and he who
+could only guffaw at Jean a few hours ago had her round the waist now,
+and still an arm free for rough play with other kimmers. The Jeans were
+as boisterous as the Jocks, giving them leer for leer, running from them
+with a giggle, waiting to be caught and rudely kissed. Grand, patient,
+long-suffering fellows these men were, up at five, summer and winter,
+foddering their horses, maybe hours before there would be food for
+themselves, miserably paid, housed like cattle, and when the rheumatism
+seized them, liable to be flung aside like a broken graip. As hard was
+the life of the women: coarse food, chaff beds, damp clothes, their
+portion; their sweethearts in the service of masters who were reluctant
+to fee a married man. Is it to be wondered that these lads who could be
+faithful unto death drank soddenly on their one free day, that these
+girls, starved of opportunities for womanliness, of which they could
+make as much as the finest lady, sometimes woke after a Muckley to wish
+that they might wake no more? Our three brushed shoulders with the
+devils that had been let loose, but hardly saw them; they heard them,
+but did not understand their tongue. The eight-o'clock bell had rung
+long since, and though the racket was as great as ever, it was only
+because every reveller left now made the noise of two. Mothers were out
+fishing for their bairns. The Haggerty-Taggertys had straggled home
+hoarse as crows; every one of them went to bed that night with a
+stocking round his throat. Of Monypenny boys, Tommy could find none in
+the square but Corp, who, with another tooth missing, had been going
+about since six o'clock with his pockets hanging out, as a sign that all
+was over. An awkward silence had fallen on the trio; the reason, that
+Tommy had only threepence left and the smallest of them cost threepence.
+The reference of course is to the wondrous gold-paper packets of sweets
+(not unlike crackers in appearance) which are only seen at the Muckley,
+and are what every girl claims of her lad or lads. Now, Tommy had vowed
+to Elspeth--But he had also said to Grizel--In short, how could he buy
+for both with threepence?
+
+Grizel, as the stranger, ought to get--But he knew Elspeth too well to
+believe that she would dry her eyes with that.
+
+Elspeth being his sister--But he had promised Grizel, and she had been
+so ill brought up that she said nasty things when you broke your word.
+
+The gold packet was bought. That is it sticking out of Tommy's inside
+pocket. The girls saw it and knew what was troubling him, but not a
+word was spoken now between the three. They set off for home
+self-consciously, Tommy the least agitated on the whole, because he need
+not make up his mind for another ten minutes. But he wished Grizel would
+not look at him sideways and then rock her arms in irritation. They
+passed many merry-makers homeward bound, many of them following a
+tortuous course, for the Scottish toper gives way first in the legs, the
+Southron in the other extremity, and thus between them could be
+constructed a man wholly sober and another as drunk as Chloe. But though
+the highway clattered with many feet, not a soul was in the double
+dykes, and at the easy end of that formidable path Grizel came to a
+determined stop.
+
+"Good-night," she said, with such a disdainful glance at Tommy.
+
+He had not made up his mind yet, but he saw that it must be done now,
+and to take a decisive step was always agony to him, though once taken
+it ceased to trouble. To dodge it for another moment he said, weakly:
+"Let's--let's sit down a whiley on the dyke."
+
+But Grizel, while coveting the packet, because she had never got a
+present in her life, would not shilly-shally.
+
+"Are you to give it to Elspeth?" she asked, with the horrid directness
+that is so trying to an intellect like Tommy's.
+
+"N-no," he said.
+
+"To Grizel?" cried Elspeth.
+
+"N-no," he said again.
+
+It was an undignified moment for a great boy, but the providence that
+watched over Tommy until it tired of him came to his aid in the nick of
+time. It took the form of the Painted Lady, who appeared suddenly out of
+the gloom of the Double Dykes. Two of the children jumped, and the third
+clenched her little fists to defend her mamma if Tommy cast a word at
+her. But he did not; his mouth remained foolishly open. The Painted Lady
+had been talking cheerfully to herself, but she drew back
+apprehensively, with a look of appeal on her face, and then--and then
+Tommy "saw a way." He handed her the gold packet, "It's to you," he
+said, "it's--it's your Muckley!"
+
+For a moment she was afraid to take it, but when she knew that this
+sweet boy's gift was genuine, she fondled it and was greatly flattered,
+and dropped him the quaintest courtesy and then looked defiantly at
+Grizel. But Grizel did not take it from her. Instead, she flung her arms
+impulsively round Tommy's neck, she was so glad, glad, glad.
+
+As Tommy and Elspeth walked away to their home, Elspeth could hear him
+breathing heavily, and occasionally he gave her a furtive glance.
+
+"Grizel needna have done that," she said, sharply.
+
+"No," replied Tommy.
+
+"But it was noble of you," she continued, squeezing his hand, "to give
+it to the Painted Lady. Did you mean to give it to her a' the time?"
+
+"Oh, Elspeth!"
+
+"But did you?"
+
+"Oh, Elspeth!"
+
+"That's no you greeting, is it?" she asked, softly.
+
+"I'm near the greeting," he said truthfully, "but I'm no sure what
+about." His sympathy was so easily aroused that he sometimes cried
+without exactly knowing why.
+
+"It's because you're so good," Elspeth told him; but presently she said,
+with a complete change of voice, "No, Grizel needna have done that."
+
+"It was a shameful thing to do," Tommy agreed, shaking his head. "But
+she did it!" he added triumphantly; "you saw her do it, Elspeth!"
+
+"But you didna like it?" Elspeth asked, in terror.
+
+"No, of course I didna like it, but--"
+
+"But what, Tommy?"
+
+"But I liked her to like it," he admitted, and by and by he began to
+laugh hysterically. "I'm no sure what I'm laughing at," he said, "but I
+think it's at mysel'." He may have laughed at himself before, but this
+Muckley is memorable as the occasion on which he first caught himself
+doing it. The joke grew with the years, until sometimes he laughed in
+his most emotional moments, suddenly seeing himself in his true light.
+But it had become a bitter laugh by that time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+CORP IS BROUGHT TO HEEL--GRIZEL DEFIANT
+
+
+Corp Shiach was a bare-footed colt of a boy, of ungainly build, with a
+nose so thick and turned up that it was a certificate of character, and
+his hands were covered with warts, which he had a trick of biting till
+they bled. Then he rubbed them on his trousers, which were the
+picturesque part of him, for he was at present "serving" to the masons
+(he had "earned his keep" since long before he could remember), and so
+wore the white or yellow ducks which the dust of the quarry stains a
+rarer orange color than is known elsewhere. The orange of the masons'
+trousers, the blue of the hearthstones, these are the most beautiful
+colors to be seen in Thrums, though of course Corp was unaware of it. He
+was really very good-natured, and only used his fists freely because of
+imagination he had none, and thinking made him sweat, and consequently
+the simplest way of proving his case was to say, "I'll fight you." What
+might have been the issue of a conflict between him and Shovel was a
+problem for Tommy to puzzle over. Shovel was as quick as Corp was
+deliberate, and would have danced round him, putting in unexpected
+ones, but if he had remained just one moment too long within Corp's
+reach--
+
+They nicknamed him Corp because he took fits, when he lay like one dead.
+He was proud of his fits, was Corp, but they were a bother to him, too,
+because he could make so little of them. They interested doctors and
+other carriage folk, who came to his aunt's house to put their fingers
+into him, and gave him sixpence, and would have given him more, but when
+they pressed him to tell them what he remembered about his fits, he
+could only answer dejectedly, "Not a damned thing."
+
+"You might as well no have them ava," his wrathful aunt, with whom he
+lived, would say, and she thrashed him until his size forbade it.
+
+Soon after the Muckley came word that the Lady of the Spittal was to be
+brought to see Corp by Mr. Ogilvy, the school-master of Glen Quharity,
+and at first Corp boasted of it, but as the appointed day drew near he
+became uneasy.
+
+"The worst o't," he said to anyone who would listen, "is that my auntie
+is to be away frae hame, and so they'll put a' their questions to me."
+
+The Haggerty-Taggertys and Birkie were so jealous that they said they
+were glad _they_ never had fits, but Tommy made no such pretence.
+
+"Oh, Corp, if I had thae fits of yours!" he exclaimed greedily.
+
+"If they were mine to give awa'," replied Corp sullenly, "you could
+have them and welcome." Grown meek in his trouble, he invited Tommy to
+speak freely, with the result that his eyes were partially opened to the
+superiority of that boy's attainments. Tommy told him a number of
+interesting things to say to Mr. Ogilvy and the lady about his fits,
+about how queer he felt just before they came on, and the visions he had
+while he was lying stiff. But though the admiring Corp gave attentive
+ear, he said hopelessly next day, "Not a dagont thing do I mind. When
+they question me about my fits I'll just say I'm sometimes in them and
+sometimes out o' them, and if they badger me more, I can aye kick."
+
+Tommy gave him a look that meant, "Fits are just wasted on you," and
+Corp replied with another that meant, "I ken they are." Then they
+parted, one of them to reflect.
+
+"Corp," he said excitedly, when next they met, "has Mr. Ogilvy or the
+lady ever come to see you afore?"
+
+They had not, and Corp was able to swear that they did not even know him
+by sight.
+
+"They dinna ken me either," said Tommy.
+
+"What does that matter?" asked Corp, but Tommy was too full to speak. He
+had "found a way."
+
+The lady and Mr. Ogilvy found Corp such a success that the one gave him
+a shilling and the other took down his reminiscences in a note-book. But
+if you would hear of the rings of blue and white and yellow Corp saw,
+and of the other extraordinary experiences he described himself as
+having when in a fit, you need not search that note-book, for the page
+has been torn out. Instead of making inquiries of Mr. Ogilvy, try any
+other dominie in the district, Mr. Cathro, for instance, who delighted
+to tell the tale. This of course was when it leaked out that Tommy had
+personated Corp, by arrangement with the real Corp, who was listening in
+rapture beneath the bed.
+
+Tommy, who played his part so well that he came out of it in a daze, had
+Corp at heel from that hour. He told him what a rogue he had been in
+London, and Corp cried admiringly, "Oh, you deevil! oh, you queer little
+deevil!" and sometimes it was Elspeth who was narrator, and then Tommy's
+noble acts were the subject; but still Corp's comment was "Oh, the
+deevil! oh, the queer little deevil!" Elspeth was flattered by his
+hero-worship, but his language shocked her, and after consulting Miss
+Ailie she advised him to count twenty when he felt an oath coming, at
+the end of which exercise the desire to swear would have passed away.
+Good-natured Corp willingly promised to try this, but he was never
+hopeful, and as he explained to Tommy, after a failure, "It just made me
+waur than ever, for when I had counted the twenty I said a big Damn,
+thoughtful-like, and syne out jumpit three little damns, like as if the
+first ane had cleckit in my mouth."
+
+It was fortunate that Elspeth liked Corp on the whole, for during the
+three years now to be rapidly passed over, Tommy took delight in his
+society, though he never treated him as an equal; Corp indeed did not
+expect that, and was humbly grateful for what he got. In summer, fishing
+was their great diversion. They would set off as early as four in the
+morning, fishing wands in hand, and scour the world for trout, plodding
+home in the gloaming with stones in their fishing-basket to deceive
+those who felt its weight. In the long winter nights they liked best to
+listen to Blinder's tales of the Thrums Jacobites, tales never put into
+writing, but handed down from father to son, and proved true in the
+oddest of ways, as by Blinder's trick of involuntarily holding out his
+hands to a fire when he found himself near one, though he might be
+sweating to the shirt and the time a July forenoon. "I make no doubt,"
+he told them, "as I do that because my forbear, Buchan Osler (called
+Buchan wi' the Haap after the wars was ower), had to hod so lang frae
+the troopers, and them so greedy for him that he daredna crawl to a fire
+once in an eight days."
+
+The Lord of the Spittal and handsome Captain Body (whose being "out"
+made all the women anxious) marched through the Den, flapping their
+wings at the head of a fearsome retinue, and the Thrums folk looked so
+glum at them that gay Captain Body said he should kiss every lass who
+did not cheer for Charlie, and none cheered, but at the same time none
+ran away. Few in Thrums cared a doit for Charlie, but some hung on
+behind this troop till there was no turning back for them, and one of
+these was Buchan. He forced his wife to give Captain Body a white rose
+from her bush by the door, but a thorn in it pricked the gallant, and
+the blood from his fingers fell on the bush, and from that year it grew
+red roses.
+
+"If you dinna believe me," Blinder said, "look if the roses is no red on
+the bush at Pyotdykes, which was a split frae Buchan's, and speir
+whether they're no named the blood rose."
+
+"I believe you," Tommy would say breathlessly: "go on."
+
+Captain Body was back in the Den by and by, but he had no thought of
+preeing lasses' mouths now. His face was scratched and haggard and his
+gay coat torn, and when he crawled to the Cuttle Well he caught some of
+the water in his bonnet and mixed meal with it, stirring the precious
+compound with his finger and using the loof of his hand as a spoon.
+Every stick of furniture Buchan and the other Thrums rebels possessed
+was seized by the government and rouped in the market-place of Thrums,
+but few would bid against the late owners, for whom the things were
+secretly bought back very cheaply.
+
+To these and many similar stories Tommy listened open-mouthed, seeing
+the scene far more vividly than the narrator, who became alarmed at his
+quick, loud breathing, and advised him to forget them and go back to
+his lessons. But his lessons never interested Tommy, and he would go
+into the Den instead, and repeat Blinder's legends, with embellishments
+which made them so real that Corp and Elspeth and Grizel were afraid to
+look behind them lest the spectre of Captain Body should be standing
+there, leaning on a ghostly sword.
+
+At such times Elspeth kept a firm grip of Tommy's hand, but one evening
+as they all ran panic-stricken from some imaginary alarm, she lost him
+near the Cuttle Well, and then, as it seemed to her, the Den became
+suddenly very dark and lonely. At first she thought she had it to
+herself, but as she stole timidly along the pink path she heard voices,
+and she cried "Tommy!" joyously. But no answer came, so it could not be
+Tommy. Then she thought it must be a pair of lovers, but next moment she
+stood transfixed with fear, for it was the Painted Lady, who was coming
+along the path talking aloud to herself. No, not to herself--to someone
+she evidently thought was by her side; she called him darling and other
+sweet names, and waited for his replies and nodded pleased assent to
+them, or pouted at them, and terrified Elspeth knew that she was talking
+to the man who never came.
+
+When she saw Elspeth she stopped irresolutely, and the two stood looking
+in fear at each other. "You are not my brat, are you?" the Painted Lady
+asked.
+
+"N-no," the child gasped.
+
+"Then why don't you call me nasty names?"
+
+"I dinna never call you names," Elspeth replied, but the woman still
+looked puzzled.
+
+"Perhaps you are naughty also?" she said doubtfully, and then, as if
+making up her mind that it must be so, she came closer and said, with a
+voice full of pity: "I am so sorry."
+
+Elspeth did not understand half of it, but the pitying voice, which was
+of the rarest sweetness, drove away much of her fear, and she said: "Do
+you no mind me? I was wi' Tommy when he gave you the gold packet on
+Muckley night."
+
+Then the Painted Lady remembered. "He took such a fancy to me," she
+said, with a pleased simper, and then she looked serious again.
+
+"Do you love him?" she asked, and Elspeth nodded.
+
+"But is he all the world to you?"
+
+"Yes," Elspeth said.
+
+The Painted Lady took her by the arm and said impressively, "Don't let
+him know."
+
+"But he does know," said Elspeth.
+
+"I am so sorry," the Painted Lady said again. "When they know too well,
+then they have no pity."
+
+"But I want Tommy to know," Elspeth insisted.
+
+"That is the woeful thing," the Painted Lady said, rocking her arms in a
+way that reminded the child of Grizel. "We want them to know, we cannot
+help liking them to know!"
+
+Suddenly she became confidential. "Do you think I showed my love too
+openly?" she asked eagerly. "I tried to hide it, you know. I covered my
+face with my hands, but he pulled them away, and then, of course, he
+knew."
+
+She went on, "I kissed his horse's nose, and he said I did that because
+it was his horse. How could he know? When I asked him how he knew, he
+kissed me, and I pretended to be angry and ran away. But I was not
+angry, and I said to myself, 'I am glad, I am glad, I am glad!'
+
+"I wanted so to be good, but--It is so difficult to refuse when you
+love him very much, don't you think?"
+
+The pathos of that was lost on the girl, and the Painted Lady continued
+sadly: "It would be so nice, would it not, if they liked us to be good?
+I think it would be sweet." She bent forward and whispered emphatically,
+"But they don't, you know--it bores them.
+
+"Never bore them--and they are so easily bored! It bores them if you say
+you want to be married. I think it would be sweet to be married, but you
+should never ask for a wedding. They give you everything else, but if
+you say you want a wedding, they stamp their feet and go away. Why are
+you crying, girl? You should not cry; they don't like it. Put on your
+prettiest gown and laugh and pretend you are happy, and then they will
+tell you naughty stories and give you these." She felt her ears and
+looked at her fingers, on which there may once have been jewels, but
+there were none now.
+
+"If you cry you lose your complexion, and then they don't love you any
+more. I had always such a beautiful skin. Some ladies when they lose
+their complexion paint. Horrid, isn't it? I wonder they can do such a
+thing."
+
+She eyed Elspeth suspiciously. "But of course you might do it just a
+little," she said, pleadingly--"just to make them go on loving you,
+don't you think?
+
+"When they don't want to come any more they write you a letter, and you
+run with it to your room and kiss it, because you don't know what is
+inside. Then you open it, and that breaks your heart, you know." She
+nodded her head sagaciously and smiled with tears in her eyes. "Never,
+never, never open the letter. Keep it unopened on your breast, and then
+you can always think that he may come to-morrow. And if--"
+
+Someone was approaching, and she stopped and listened. "My brat!" she
+cried, furiously, "she is always following me," and she poured forth a
+torrent of filthy abuse of Grizel, in the midst of which Tommy (for it
+was he) appeared and carried Elspeth off hastily. This was the only
+conversation either child ever had with the Painted Lady, and it bore
+bad fruit for Grizel. Elspeth told some of the Monypenny women about it,
+and they thought it their duty to point out to Aaron that the Painted
+Lady and her child were not desirable acquaintances for Tommy and
+Elspeth.
+
+"I dinna ken," he answered sharply, "whether Tommy's a fit acquaintance
+for Grizel, but I'm very sure o' this, that she's more than a fit
+acquaintance for him. And look at what she has done for this house. I
+kenna what we should do if she didna come in nows and nans."
+
+"You ken well, Aaron," they said, "that onything we could do in the way
+o' keeping your house in order we should do gladly."
+
+"Thank you," he replied ungraciously, "but I would rather have her."
+
+Nevertheless he agreed that he ought to forbid any intercourse with the
+Painted Lady, and unfortunately Grizel heard of this. Probably there
+never would have been any such intercourse; Grizel guarded against it
+more than anyone, for reasons she never spoke of, but she resented this
+veto proudly.
+
+"Why must you not speak to my mamma?" she demanded of Tommy and Elspeth.
+
+"Because--because she is a queer one," he said.
+
+"She is not a queer one--she is just sweet."
+
+He tried to evade the question by saying weakly, "We never see her to
+speak to at any rate, so it will make no difference. It's no as if you
+ever asked us to come to Double Dykes."
+
+"But I ask you now," said Grizel, with flashing eyes.
+
+"Oh, I darena!" cried Elspeth.
+
+"Then I won't ever come into your house again," said Grizel, decisively.
+
+"No to redd up?" asked Tommy, incredulously. "No to bake nor to iron?
+You couldna help it."
+
+"Yes I could."
+
+"Think what you'll miss!"
+
+Grizel might have retorted, "Think what you will miss!" but perhaps the
+reply she did make had a sharper sting in it. "I shall never come
+again," she said loftily, "and my reason for not coming is that--that my
+mamma thinks your house is not respectable!" She flung this over her
+shoulder as she stalked away, and it may be that the tears came when
+there were none to see them, but hers was a resolute mind, and though
+she continued to be friendly with Tommy and Elspeth out of doors she
+never again crossed their threshold.
+
+"The house is in a terrible state for want o' you," Tommy would say,
+trying to wheedle her. "We hinna sanded the floor for months, and the
+box-iron has fallen ahint the dresser, and my gray sark is rove up the
+back, and oh, you should just see the holes in Aaron's stockings!"
+
+Then Grizel rocked her arms in agony, but no, she would not go in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE SHADOW OF SIR WALTER
+
+
+Tommy was in Miss Ailie's senior class now, though by no means at the
+top of it, and her mind was often disturbed about his future. On this
+subject Aaron had never spoken to anyone, and the problem gave Tommy
+himself so little trouble that all Elspeth knew was that he was to be
+great and that she was to keep his house. So the school-mistress braved
+an interview with Aaron for the sake of her favorite.
+
+"You know he is a remarkable boy," she said.
+
+"At his lessons, ma'am?" asked Aaron, quietly.
+
+Not exactly at his lessons, she had to admit.
+
+"In what way, then, ma'am?"
+
+Really Miss Ailie could not say. There was something wonderful about
+Tommy, you felt it, but you could not quite give it a name. The warper
+must have noticed it himself.
+
+"I've heard him saying something o' the kind to Elspeth," was Aaron's
+reply.
+
+"But sometimes he is like a boy inspired," said the school-mistress.
+"You must have seen that?"
+
+"When he was thinking o' himsel'," answered Aaron.
+
+"He has such noble sentiments."
+
+"He has."
+
+"And I think, I really think," said Miss Ailie, eagerly, for this was
+what she had come to say, "that he has got great gifts for the
+ministry."
+
+"I'm near sure o't," said Aaron, grimly.
+
+"Ah, I see you don't like him."
+
+"I dinna," the warper acknowledged quietly, "but I've been trying to do
+my duty by him for all that. It's no every laddie that gets three years'
+schooling straight on end."
+
+This was true, but Miss Ailie used it to press her point. "You have done
+so well by him," she said, "that I think you should keep him at school
+for another year or two, and so give him a chance of carrying a bursary.
+If he carries one it will support him at college; if he does not--well,
+then I suppose he must be apprenticed to some trade."
+
+"No," Aaron said, decisively; "if he gets the chance of a college
+education and flings it awa', I'll waste no more siller on his keep.
+I'll send him straight to the herding."
+
+"And I shall not blame you," Miss Ailie declared eagerly.
+
+"Though I would a hantle rather," continued the warper, "waur my money
+on Elspeth."
+
+"What you spend on him," Miss Ailie argued, "you will really be spending
+on her, for if he rises in the world he will not leave Elspeth behind.
+You are prejudiced against him, but you cannot deny that."
+
+"I dinna deny but what he's fond o' her," said Aaron, and after
+considering the matter for some days he decided that Tommy should get
+his chance. The school-mistress had not acted selfishly, for this
+decision, as she knew, meant that the boy must now be placed in the
+hands of Mr. Cathro, who was a Greek and Latin scholar. She taught Latin
+herself, it is true, but as cautiously as she crossed a plank bridge,
+and she was never comfortable in the dominie's company, because even at
+a tea-table he would refer familiarly to the ablative absolute instead
+of letting sleeping dogs lie.
+
+"But Elspeth couldna be happy if we were at different schools," Tommy
+objected instantly.
+
+"Yes, I could," said Elspeth, who had been won over by Miss Ailie; "it
+will be so fine, Tommy, to see you again after I hinna seen you for
+three hours."
+
+Tommy was little known to Mr. Cathro at this time, except as the boy who
+had got the better of a rival teacher in the affair of Corp, which had
+delighted him greatly. "But if the sacket thinks he can play any of his
+tricks on me," he told Aaron, "there is an awakening before him," and he
+began the cramming of Tommy for a bursary with perfect confidence.
+
+But before the end of the month, at the mere mention of Tommy's name,
+Mr. Cathro turned red in the face, and the fingers of his laying-on hand
+would clutch an imaginary pair of tawse. Already Tommy had made him
+self-conscious. He peered covertly at Tommy, and Tommy caught him at it
+every time, and then each quickly looked another way, and Cathro vowed
+never to look again, but did it next minute, and what enraged him most
+was that he knew Tommy noted his attempts at self-restraint as well as
+his covert glances. All the other pupils knew that a change for the
+worse had come over the dominie's temper. They saw him punish Tommy
+frequently without perceptible cause, and that he was still unsatisfied
+when the punishment was over. This apparently was because Tommy gave him
+a look before returning to his seat. When they had been walloped they
+gave Cathro a look also, but it merely meant, "Oh, that this was a dark
+road and I had a divot in my hand!" while his look was unreadable, that
+is unreadable to them, for the dominie understood it and writhed. What
+it said was, "You think me a wonder, and therefore I forgive you."
+
+"And sometimes he fair beats Cathro!" So Tommy's schoolmates reported at
+home, and the dominie had to acknowledge its truth to Aaron. "I wish you
+would give that sacket a thrashing for me," he said, half furiously, yet
+with a grin on his face, one day when he and the warper chanced to meet
+on the Monypenny road.
+
+"I'll no lay a hand on bairn o' Jean Myles," Aaron replied. "Ay, and I
+understood you to say that he should meet his match in you."
+
+"Did I ever say that, man? Well, well, we live and learn."
+
+"What has he been doing now?"
+
+"What has he been doing!" echoed Cathro. "He has been making me look
+foolish in my own class-room. Yes, sir, he has so completely got the
+better of me (and not for the first time) that when I tell the story of
+how he diddled Mr. Ogilvy, Mr. Ogilvy will be able to cap it with the
+story of how the little whelp diddled me. Upon my soul, Aaron, he is
+running away with all my self-respect and destroying my sense of humor."
+
+What had so crushed the dominie was the affair of Francie Crabb. Francie
+was now a pupil, like Gavin Dishart and Tommy, of Mr. Cathro's, who
+detested the boy's golden curls, perhaps because he was bald himself.
+They were also an incentive to evil-doing on the part of other boys, who
+must give them a tug in passing, and on a day the dominie said, in a
+fury, "Give your mother my compliments, Francie, and tell her I'm so
+tired of seeing your curls that I mean to cut them off to-morrow
+morning."
+
+"Say he shall not," whispered Tommy.
+
+"You shanna!" blurted out Francie.
+
+"But I will," said Cathro; "I would do it now if I had the shears."
+
+It was only an empty threat, but an hour afterwards the dominie caught
+Tommy wagering in witchy marbles and other coin that he would not do it,
+and then instead of taking the tawse to him he said, "Keep him to his
+bargains, laddies, for whatever may have been my intention at the time,
+I mean to be as good as my word now."
+
+He looked triumphantly at Tommy, who, however, instead of seeming
+crestfallen, continued to bet, and now the other boys were eager to
+close with him, for great was their faith in Cathro. These transactions
+were carried out on the sly, but the dominie knew what was going on, and
+despite his faith in himself he had his twitches of uneasiness.
+
+"However, the boy can only be trusting to fear of Mrs. Crabb restraining
+me," he decided, and he marched into the school-room next morning,
+ostentatiously displaying his wife's largest scissors. His pupils
+crowded in after him, and though he noticed that all were strangely
+quiet and many wearing scared faces, he put it down to the coming scene.
+He could not resist giving one triumphant glance at Tommy, who, however,
+instead of returning it, looked modestly down. Then--"Is Francie Crabb
+here?" asked Mr. Cathro, firmly.
+
+"He's hodding ahint the press," cried a dozen voices.
+
+"Come forward, Francie," said the dominie, clicking the shears to
+encourage him.
+
+There was a long pause, and then Francie emerged in fear from behind the
+press. Yes, it was Francie, but his curls were gone!
+
+The shears fell to the floor. "Who did this?" roared the terrible
+Cathro.
+
+"It was Tommy Sandys," blurted out Francis, in tears.
+
+The school-master was unable to speak, and, alarmed at the stillness,
+Francie whined, "He said it would be done at ony rate, and he promised
+me half his winnings."
+
+It is still remembered by bearded men and married women who were at
+school that day how Cathro leaped three forms to get at Tommy, and how
+Tommy cried under the tawse and yet laughed ecstatically at the same
+time, and how subsequently he and Francie collected so many dues that
+the pockets of them stood out like brackets from their little persons.
+
+The dominie could not help grinning a little at his own discomfiture as
+he told this story, but Aaron saw nothing amusing in it. "As I telled
+you," he repeated, "I winna touch him, so if you're no content wi' what
+you've done yoursel', you had better put Francie's mither on him."
+
+"I hear she has taken him in hand already," Mr. Cathro replied dryly.
+"But, Aaron, I wish you would at least keep him closer to his lessons at
+night, for it is seldom he comes to the school well prepared."
+
+"I see him sitting lang ower his books," said Aaron.
+
+"Ay, maybe, but is he at them?" responded the dominie with a shake of
+the head that made Aaron say, with his first show of interest in the
+conversation, "You have little faith in his carrying a bursary, I see."
+
+But this Mr. Cathro would not admit, for if he thought Tommy a numskull
+the one day he often saw cause to change his mind the next, so he
+answered guardedly, "It's too soon to say, Aaron, for he has eighteen
+months' stuffing to undergo yet before we send him to Aberdeen to try
+his fortune, and I have filled some gey toom wimes in eighteen months.
+But you must lend me a hand."
+
+The weaver considered, and then replied stubbornly, "No, I give him his
+chance, but I'll have nocht to do wi' his use o't. And, dominie, I want
+you to say not another word to me about him atween this and examination
+time, for my mind's made up no to say a word to him. It's well kent that
+I'm no more fit to bring up bairns than to have them (dinna conter me,
+man, for the thing was proved lang syne at the Cuttle Well), and so till
+that time I'll let him gang his ain gait. But if he doesna carry a
+bursary, to the herding he goes. I've said it and I'll stick to it."
+
+So, as far as Aaron was concerned, Tommy was left in peace to the glory
+of collecting his winnings from those who had sworn by Cathro, and among
+them was Master Gavin Ogilvy Dishart, who now found himself surrounded
+by a debt of sixpence, a degrading position for the son of an Auld Licht
+minister.
+
+Tommy would not give him time, but was willing to take his copy of
+"Waverley" as full payment.
+
+Gavin offered him "Ivanhoe" instead, because his mother had given a
+read of "Waverley" to Gavinia, Miss Ailie's servant, and she read so
+slowly, putting her finger beneath each word, that she had not yet
+reached the middle. Also, she was so enamoured of the work that she
+would fight anyone who tried to take it from her.
+
+Tommy refused "Ivanhoe," as it was not about Jacobites, but suggested
+that Gavinia should be offered it in lieu of "Waverley," and told that
+it was a better story.
+
+The suggestion came too late, as Gavinia had already had a loan of
+"Ivanhoe," and read it with rapture, inch by inch. However, if Tommy
+would wait a month, or--
+
+Tommy was so eager to read more about the Jacobites that he found it
+trying to wait five minutes. He thought Gavin's duty was to get his
+father to compel Gavinia to give the book up.
+
+Was Tommy daft? Mr. Dishart did not know that his son possessed these
+books. He did not approve of story books, and when Mrs. Dishart gave
+them to Gavin on his birthday she--she had told him to keep them out of
+his father's sight. (Mr. and Mrs. Dishart were very fond of each other,
+but there were certain little matters that she thought it unnecessary to
+trouble him about.)
+
+So if Tommy was to get "Waverley" at once, he must discover another way.
+He reflected, and then set off to Miss Ailie's (to whom he still read
+sober works of an evening, but novels never), looking as if he had
+found a way.
+
+For some time Miss Ailie had been anxious about her red-armed maid, who
+had never before given pain unless by excess of willingness, as when she
+offered her garter to tie Miss Ailie's parcels with. Of late, however,
+Gavinia had taken to blurting out disquieting questions, to the
+significance of which she withheld the key, such as--
+
+"Is there ony place nowadays, ma'am, where there's tourniements? And
+could an able-bodied lassie walk to them? and what might be the charge
+to win in?"
+
+Or, "Would you no like to be so michty beautiful, ma'am, that as soon as
+the men saw your bonny face they just up wi' you in their arms and ran?"
+
+Or again, "What's the heaviest weight o' a woman a grand lusty man could
+carry in his arms as if she were an infant?"
+
+This method of conveyance seemed to have a peculiar fascination for
+Gavinia, and she got herself weighed at the flesher's. On another
+occasion she broke a glass candlestick, and all she said to the pieces
+was, "Wha carries me, wears me."
+
+This mystery was troubling the school-mistress sadly when Tommy arrived
+with the key to it. "I'm doubting Gavinia's reading ill books on the
+sly," he said.
+
+"Never!" exclaimed Miss Ailie, "she reads nothing but the _Mentor_."
+
+Tommy shook his head, like one who would fain hope so, but could not
+overlook facts. "I've been hearing," he said, "that she reads books as
+are full o' Strokes and Words We have no Concern with."
+
+Miss Ailie could not believe it, but she was advised to search the
+kitchen, and under Gavinia's mattress was found the dreadful work.
+
+"And you are only fifteen!" said Miss Ailie, eying her little maid
+sorrowfully.
+
+"The easier to carry," replied Gavinia, darkly.
+
+"And you named after a minister!" Miss Ailie continued, for her maid had
+been christened Gavinia because she was the first child baptized in his
+church after the Rev. Gavin Dishart came to Thrums. "Gavinia, I must
+tell him of this. I shall take this book to Mr. Dishart this very day."
+
+"The right man to take it to," replied the maid, sullenly, "for it's his
+ain."
+
+"Gavinia!"
+
+"Well, it was Mrs. Dishart that lended it to me."
+
+"I--I never saw it on the manse shelves."
+
+"I'm thinking," said the brazen Gavinia, "as there's hoddy corners in
+manses as well as in--blue-and-white rooms."
+
+This dark suggestion was as great a shock to the gentle school-mistress
+as if out of a clear sky had come suddenly the word--
+
+_Stroke!_
+
+She tottered with the book that had so demoralized the once meek
+Gavinia into the blue-and-white room, where Tommy was restlessly
+awaiting her, and when she had told him all, he said, with downcast
+eyes:
+
+"I was never sure o' Mrs. Dishart. When I hand her the _Mentor_ she
+looks as if she didna care a stroke for't--"
+
+"Tommy!"
+
+"I'm doubting," he said sadly, "that she's ower fond o' Words We have no
+Concern with."
+
+Miss Ailie would not listen to such talk, but she approved of the
+suggestion that "Waverley" should be returned not to the minister, but
+to his wife, and she accepted gratefully Tommy's kindly offer to act as
+bearer. Only happening to open the book in the middle, she--
+
+"I'm waiting," said Tommy, after ten minutes.
+
+She did not hear him.
+
+"I'm waiting," he said again, but she was now in the next chapter.
+
+"Maybe you would like to read it yoursel'!" he cried, and then she came
+to, and, with a shudder handed him the book. But after he had gone she
+returned to the kitchen to reprove Gavinia at greater length, and in the
+midst of the reproof she said faintly: "You did not happen to look at
+the end, did you?"
+
+"That I did," replied Gavinia.
+
+"And did she--did he--"
+
+"No," said Gavinia, sorrowfully.
+
+Miss Ailie sighed. "That's what I think too," said Gavinia.
+
+"Why didn't they?" asked the school-mistress.
+
+"Because he was just a sumph," answered Gavinia, scornfully. "If he had
+been like Fergus, or like the chield in 'Ivanhoe,' he wouldna have ta'en
+a 'no.' He would just have whipped her up in his arms and away wi' her.
+That's the kind for me, ma'am."
+
+"There is a fascination about them," murmured Miss Ailie.
+
+"A what?"
+
+But again Miss Ailie came to. "For shame, Gavinia, for shame!" she said,
+severely; "these are disgraceful sentiments."
+
+In the meantime Tommy had hurried with the book, not to the manse, but
+to a certain garret, and as he read, his imagination went on fire.
+Blinder's stories had made him half a Jacobite, and now "Waverley"
+revealed to him that he was born neither for the ministry nor the
+herding, but to restore to his country its rightful king. The first to
+whom he confided this was Corp, who immediately exclaimed: "Michty me!
+But what will the police say?"
+
+"I ken a wy," answered Tommy, sternly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE LAST JACOBITE RISING
+
+
+On the evening of the Queen's birthday, bridies were eaten to her honor
+in a hundred Thrums homes, and her health was drunk in toddy, Scotch
+toddy and Highland toddy. Patullo, the writer, gave a men's party, and
+his sole instructions to his maid were "Keep running back and forrit wi'
+the hot water." At the bank there was a ladies' party and ginger wine.
+From Cathro's bedroom-window a flag was displayed with _Vivat Regina_ on
+it, the sentiment composed by Cathro, the words sewn by the girls of his
+McCulloch class. The eight-o'clock bell rang for an hour, and a loyal
+crowd had gathered in the square to shout. To a superficial observer,
+such as the Baron Bailie or Todd, the new policeman, all seemed well and
+fair.
+
+But a very different scene was being enacted at the same time in the
+fastnesses of the Den, where three resolute schemers had met by
+appointment. Their trysting-place was the Cuttle Well, which is most
+easily reached by the pink path made for that purpose; but the better to
+further their dark and sinister design, the plotters arrived by three
+circuitous routes, one descending the Reekie Broth Pot, a low but
+dangerous waterfall, the second daring the perils of the crags, and the
+third walking stealthily up the burn.
+
+"Is that you, Tommy?"
+
+"Whist! Do you mind the password?"
+
+"Stroke!"
+
+"Right. Have you heard Gav Dishart coming?"
+
+"I hinna. I doubt his father had grippit him as he was slinking out o'
+the manse."
+
+"I fear it, Corp. I'm thinking his father is in the Woman's pay."
+
+"What woman?"
+
+"The Woman of Hanover?"
+
+"That's the queen, is it no?"
+
+"She'll never get me to call her queen."
+
+"Nor yet me. I think I hear Gav coming."
+
+Gav Dishart was the one who had come by the burn, and his boots were
+cheeping like a field of mice. He gave the word "Stroke," and the three
+then looked at each other firmly. The lights of the town were not
+visible from the Cuttle Well, owing to an arm of cliff that is
+outstretched between, but the bell could be distinctly heard, and
+occasionally a shout of revelry.
+
+"They little ken!" said Tommy, darkly.
+
+"They hinna a notion," said Corp, but he was looking somewhat perplexed
+himself.
+
+"It's near time I was back for family exercise," said Gav, uneasily,
+"so we had better do it quick, Tommy."
+
+"Did you bring the wineglasses?" Tommy asked him.
+
+"No," Gav said, "the press was lockit, but I've brought egg-cups."
+
+"Stand round then."
+
+The three boys now presented a picturesque appearance, but there was
+none save the man in the moon to see them. They stood round the Cuttle
+Well, each holding an egg-cup, and though the daring nature of their
+undertaking and the romantic surroundings combined to excite them, it
+was not fear but soaring purpose that paled their faces and caused their
+hands to tremble, when Tommy said solemnly, "Afore we do what we've come
+here to do, let's swear."
+
+"Stroke!" he said.
+
+"Stroke!" said Gav.
+
+"Stroke!" said Corp.
+
+They then filled their cups and holding them over the well, so that they
+clinked, they said:
+
+"To the king ower the water!"
+
+"To the king ower the water!"
+
+"To the king ower the water!"
+
+When they had drunk Tommy broke his cup against a rock, for he was
+determined that it should never be used to honor a meaner toast, and the
+others followed his example, Corp briskly, though the act puzzled him,
+and Gav with a gloomy look because he knew that the cups would be
+missed to-morrow.
+
+"Is that a' now?" whispered Corp, wiping his forehead with his sleeve.
+
+"All!" cried Tommy. "Man, we've just begood."
+
+As secretly as they had entered it, they left the Den, and anon three
+figures were standing in a dark trance, cynically watching the revellers
+in the square.
+
+"If they just kent!" muttered the smallest, who was wearing his jacket
+outside in to escape observation.
+
+"But they little ken!" said Gav Dishart.
+
+"They hinna a notion!" said Corp, contemptuously, but still he was a
+little puzzled, and presently he asked softly: "Lads, what just is it
+that they dinna ken?"
+
+Had Gav been ready with an answer he could not have uttered it, for just
+then a terrible little man in black, who had been searching for him in
+likely places, seized him by the cuff of the neck, and, turning his face
+in an easterly direction, ran him to family worship. But there was still
+work to do for the other two. Walking home alone that night from Mr.
+Patullo's party, Mr. Cathro had an uncomfortable feeling that he was
+being dogged. When he stopped to listen, all was at once still, but the
+moment he moved onward he again heard stealthy steps behind. He retired
+to rest as soon as he reached his house, to be wakened presently by a
+slight noise at the window, whence the flag-post protruded. It had been
+but a gust of wind, he decided, and turned round to go to sleep again,
+when crash! the post was plucked from its place and cast to the ground.
+The dominie sprang out of bed, and while feeling for a light, thought he
+heard scurrying feet, but when he looked out at the window no one was to
+be seen; _Vivat Regina_ lay ignobly in the gutters. That it could have
+been the object of an intended theft was not probable, but the open
+window might have tempted thieves, and there was a possible though risky
+way up by the spout. The affair was a good deal talked about at the
+time, but it remained shrouded in a mystery which even we have been
+unable to penetrate.
+
+On the heels of the Queen's birthday came the Muckley, the one that was
+to be known to fame, if fame was willing to listen to Corp, as Tommy's
+Muckley. Unless he had some grand aim in view never was a boy who
+yielded to temptations more blithely than Tommy, but when he had such
+aim never was a boy so firm in withstanding them. At this Muckley he had
+a mighty reason for not spending money, and with ninepence in his pocket
+clamoring to be out he spent not one halfpenny. There was something
+uncanny in the sight of him stalking unscathed between rows of stands
+and shows, everyone of them aiming at his pockets. Corp and Gav, of
+course, were in the secret and did their humble best to act in the same
+unnatural manner, but now and again a show made a successful snap at
+Gav, and Corp had gloomy fears that he would lose his head in presence
+of the Teuch and Tasty, from which humiliation indeed he was only saved
+by the happy idea of requesting Tommy to shout "Deuteronomy!" in a
+warning voice, every time they drew nigh Californy's seductive stand.
+
+Was there nothing for sale, then, that the three thirsted to buy? There
+were many things, among them weapons of war, a pack of cards, more
+properly called Devil's books, blue bonnets suitable for Highland
+gentlemen, feathers for the bonnets, a tin lantern, yards of tartan
+cloth, which the deft fingers of Grizel would convert into warriors'
+sashes. Corp knew that these purchases were in Tommy's far-seeing eye,
+but he thought the only way to get them was to ask the price and then
+offer half. Gav, the scholar, who had already reached daylight through
+the first three books of Euclid, and took a walk every Saturday morning
+with his father and Herodotus, even Gav, the scholar, was as
+thick-witted as Corp.
+
+"We'll let other laddies buy them," Tommy explained in his superior way,
+"and then after the Muckley is past, we'll buy them frae them."
+
+The others understood now. After a Muckley there was always a great
+dearth of pence, and a moneyed man could become owner of Muckley
+purchases at a sixth part of the Muckley price.
+
+"You crittur!" exclaimed Corp, in abject admiration.
+
+But Gav saw an objection. "The feck of them," he pointed out, "will
+waur their siller on shows and things to eat, instead of on what we want
+them to buy."
+
+"So they will, the nasty sackets!" cried Corp.
+
+"You couldna blame a laddie for buying Teuch and Tasty," continued Gav
+with triumph, for he was a little jealous of Tommy.
+
+"You couldna," agreed Corp, "no, I'll be dagont, if you could," and his
+hand pressed his money feverishly.
+
+"Deuteronomy!" roared Tommy, and Corp's hand jumped as if it had been
+caught in some other person's, pocket.
+
+"But how are we to do?" he asked. "If you like, I'll take Birkie and the
+Haggerty-Taggertys round the Muckley and fight ilka ane that doesna
+buy--"
+
+"Corp," said Tommy, calmly, "I wonder at you. Do you no ken yet that the
+best plan is to leave a thing to me?"
+
+"Blethering gowks that we are, of course it is!" cried Corp, and he
+turned almost fiercely upon Gav. "Lippen all to him," he said with grand
+confidence, "he'll find a wy."
+
+And Tommy found a way. Birkie was the boy who bought the pack of cards.
+He saw Tommy looking so-woe-begone that it was necessary to ask the
+reason.
+
+"Oh, Birkie, lend me threepence," sobbed Tommy, "and I'll give you
+sixpence the morn."
+
+"You're daft," said Birkie, "there's no a laddie in Thrums that will
+have one single lonely bawbee the morn."
+
+"Him that buys the cards," moaned Tommy, "will never be without siller,
+for you tell auld folks fortunes on them at a penny every throw. Lend me
+threepence, Birkie. They cost a sic, and I have just--"
+
+"Na, na," said greedy Birkie, "I'm no to be catched wi' chaff. If it's
+true, what you say, I'll buy the cards mysel'."
+
+Having thus got hold of him, Tommy led Birkie to a stand where the King
+of Egypt was telling fortunes with cards, and doing a roaring trade
+among the Jocks and Jennys. He also sold packs at sixpence each, and the
+elated Birkie was an immediate purchaser.
+
+"You're no so clever as you think yoursel'!" he said triumphantly to
+Tommy, who replied with his inscrutable smile. But to his satellites he
+said, "Not a soul will buy a fortune frae Birkie. I'll get thae cards
+for a penny afore next week's out."
+
+Francie Crabb found Tommy sniggering to himself in the back wynd. "What
+are you goucking at?" asked Francie, in surprise, for, as a rule, Tommy
+only laughed behind his face.
+
+"I winna tell you," chuckled Tommy, "but what a bar, oh, what a divert!"
+
+"Come on, tell me."
+
+"Well, it's at the man as is swallowing swords ahint the menagerie."
+
+"I see nothing to laugh at in that."
+
+"I'm no laughing at that. I'm laughing at him for selling the swords for
+ninepence the piece. Oh, what ignorant he is, oh, what a bar!"
+
+"Ninepence is a mislaird price for a soord," said Francie. "I never gave
+ninepence."
+
+Tommy looked at him in the way that always made boys fidget with their
+fists.
+
+"You're near as big a bar as him," he said scornfully. "Did you ever see
+the sword that's hanging on the wall in the backroom at the
+post-office?"
+
+"No, but my father has telled me about it. It has a grand name."
+
+"It's an Andrea Ferrara, that's what it is."
+
+"Ay, I mind the name now; there has been folk killed wi' that soord."
+
+This was true, for the post-office Andrea Ferrara has a stirring
+history, but for the present its price was the important thing. "Dr.
+McQueen offered a pound note for it," said Tommy.
+
+"I ken that, but what has it to do wi' the soord-swallower?"
+
+"Just this; that the swords he is selling for ninepence are Andrea
+Ferraras, the same as the post-office ones, and he could get a pound a
+piece for them if he kent their worth. Oh, what a bar, oh, what--"
+
+Francie's eyes lit up greedily, and he looked at his two
+silver shillings, and took two steps in the direction of the
+sword-swallower's, and faltered and could not make up his agitated mind.
+Tommy set off toward the square at a brisk walk.
+
+"Whaur are you off to?" asked Francie, following him.
+
+"To tell the man what his swords is worth. It would be ill done no to
+tell him." To clinch the matter, off went Tommy at a run, and off went
+Francie after him. As a rule Tommy was the swifter, but on this occasion
+he lagged of fell purpose, and reached the sword-swallower's tent just
+in time to see Francie emerge elated therefrom, carrying two Andrea
+Ferraras. Francie grinned when they met.
+
+"What a bar!" he crowed.
+
+"What a bar!" agreed Tommy, and sufficient has now been told to show
+that he had found a way. Even Gav acknowledged a master, and, when the
+accoutrements of war were bought at second hand as cheaply as Tommy had
+predicted, applauded him with eyes and mouth for a full week, after
+which he saw things in a new light. Gav of course was to enter the
+bursary lists anon, and he had supposed that Cathro would have the last
+year's schooling of him; but no, his father decided to send him for the
+grand final grind to Mr. Ogilvy of Glen Quharity, a famous dominie
+between whom and Mr. Dishart existed a friendship that none had ever got
+at the root of. Mr. Cathro was more annoyed than he cared to show, Gav
+being of all the boys of that time the one likeliest to do his teacher
+honor at the university competitions, but Tommy, though the decision
+cost him an adherent, was not ill-pleased, for he had discovered that
+Gav was one of those irritating boys who like to be leader. Gav, as has
+been said, suddenly saw Tommy's victory over Messrs. Birkie, Francie,
+etc., in a new light; this was because when he wanted back the shilling
+which he had contributed to the funds for buying their purchases, Tommy
+replied firmly:
+
+"I canna give you the shilling, but I'll give you the lantern and the
+tartan cloth we bought wi' it."
+
+"What use could they be to me at Glen Quharity?" Gav protested.
+
+"Oh, if they are no use to you," Tommy said sweetly, "me and Corp is
+willing to buy them off you for threepence."
+
+Then Gav became a scorner of duplicity, but he had to consent to the
+bargain, and again Corp said to Tommy, "Oh, you crittur!" But he was
+sorry to lose a fellow-conspirator. "There's just the twa o' us now," he
+sighed.
+
+"Just twa!" cried Tommy. "What are you havering about, man? There's as
+many as I like to whistle for."
+
+"You mean Grizel and Elspeth, I ken, but--"
+
+"I wasna thinking of the womenfolk," Tommy told him, with a
+contemptuous wave of the hand. He went closer to Corp, and said, in a
+low voice, "The McKenzies are waiting!"
+
+"Are they, though?" said Corp, perplexed, as he had no notion who the
+McKenzies might be.
+
+"And Lochiel has twa hunder spearsmen."
+
+"Do you say so?"
+
+"Young Kinnordy's ettling to come out, and I meet Lord Airlie, when the
+moon rises, at the Loups o' Kenny, and auld Bradwardine's as spunky as
+ever, and there's fifty wild Highlandmen lying ready in the muckle cave
+of Clova."
+
+He spoke so earnestly that Corp could only ejaculate, "Michty me!"
+
+"But of course they winna rise," continued Tommy, darkly, "till he
+lands."
+
+"Of course no," said Corp, "but--wha is he?"
+
+"Himsel'," whispered Tommy, "the Chevalier!"
+
+Corp hesitated. "But, I thought," he said diffidently, "I thought you--"
+
+"So I am," said Tommy.
+
+"But you said he hadna landed yet?"
+
+"Neither he has."
+
+"But you--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"You're here, are you no?"
+
+Tommy stamped his foot in irritation. "You're slow in the uptak," he
+said. "I'm no here. How can I be here when I'm at St. Germains?"
+
+"Dinna be angry wi' me," Corp begged. "I ken you're ower the water, but
+when I see you, I kind of forget; and just for the minute I think you're
+here."
+
+"Well, think afore you speak."
+
+"I'll try, but that's teuch work. When do you come to Scotland?"
+
+"I'm no sure; but as soon as I'm ripe."
+
+At nights Tommy now sometimes lay among the cabbages of the school-house
+watching the shadow of Black Cathro on his sitting-room blind. Cathro
+never knew he was there. The reason Tommy lay among the cabbages was
+that there was a price upon his head.
+
+"But if Black Cathro wanted to get the blood-money," Corp said
+apologetically, "he could nab you any day. He kens you fine."
+
+Tommy smiled meaningly. "Not him," he answered, "I've cheated him bonny,
+he hasna a notion wha I am. Corp, would you like a good laugh?"
+
+"That I would."
+
+"Weel, then, I'll tell you wha he thinks I am. Do you ken a little house
+yont the road a bitty irae Monypenny?"
+
+"I ken no sic house," said Corp, "except Aaron's."
+
+"Aaron's the man as bides in it," Tommy continued hastily, "at least I
+think that's the name. Well, as you ken the house, you've maybe noticed
+a laddie that bides there too?"
+
+"There's no laddie," began Corp, "except--"
+
+"Let me see," interrupted Tommy, "what was his name? Was it Peter? No.
+Was it Willie? Stop, I mind, it was Tommy."
+
+He glared so that Corp dared not utter a word.
+
+"Have you notitched him?"
+
+"I've--I've seen him," Corp gasped.
+
+"Well, this is the joke," said Tommy, trying vainly to restrain his
+mirth, "Cathro thinks I'm that laddie! Ho! ho! ho!"
+
+Corp scratched his head, then he bit his warts, then he spat upon his
+hands, then he said "Damn."
+
+The crisis came when Cathro, still ignorant that the heather was on
+fire, dropped some disparaging remarks about the Stuarts to his history
+class. Tommy said nothing, but--but one of the school-windows was
+without a snib, and next morning when the dominie reached his desk he
+was surprised to find on it a little cotton glove. He raised it on high,
+greatly puzzled, and then, as ever when he suspected knavery, his eyes
+sought Tommy, who was sitting on a form, his arms proudly folded. That
+the whelp had put the glove there, Cathro no longer doubted, and he
+would have liked to know why, but was reluctant to give him the
+satisfaction of asking. So the gauntlet--for gauntlet it was--was laid
+aside, the while Tommy, his head humming like a beeskep, muttered
+triumphantly through his teeth, "But he lifted it, he lifted it!" and at
+closing time it was flung in his face with this fair tribute:
+
+"I'm no a rich man, laddie, but I would give a pound note to know what
+you'll be at ten years from now."
+
+There could be no mistaking the dire meaning of these words, and Tommy
+hurried, pale but determined, to the quarry, where Corp, with a barrow
+in his hands, was learning strange phrases by heart, and finding it a
+help to call his warts after the new swears.
+
+"Corp," cried Tommy, firmly, "I've set sail!"
+
+On the following Saturday evening Charles Edward landed in the Den. In
+his bonnet was the white cockade, and round his waist a tartan sash;
+though he had long passed man's allotted span his face was still full of
+fire, his figure lithe and even boyish. For state reasons he had assumed
+the name of Captain Stroke. As he leapt ashore from the bark, the
+Dancing Shovel, he was received right loyally by Corp and other faithful
+adherents, of whom only two, and these of a sex to which his House was
+ever partial, were visible, owing to the gathering gloom. Corp of that
+Ilk sank on his knees at the water's edge, and kissing his royal
+master's hand said, fervently, "Welcome, my prince, once more to bonny
+Scotland!" Then he rose and whispered, but with scarcely less emotion,
+"There's an egg to your tea."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE SIEGE OF THRUMS
+
+
+The man in the moon is a native of Thrums, who was put up there for
+hacking sticks on the Sabbath, and as he sails over the Den his interest
+in the bit placey is still sufficient to make him bend forward and cry
+"Boo!" at the lovers. When they jump apart you can see the aged
+reprobate grinning. Once out of sight of the den, he cares not a boddle
+how the moon travels, but the masterful crittur enrages him if she is in
+a hurry here, just as he is cleverly making out whose children's
+children are courting now. "Slow, there!" he cries to the moon, but she
+answers placidly that they have the rest of the world to view to-night.
+"The rest of the world be danged!" roars the man, and he cranes his neck
+for a last glimpse of the Cuttle Well, until he nearly falls out of the
+moon.
+
+Never had the man such a trying time as during the year now before him.
+It was the year when so many scientific magnates sat up half the night
+in their shirts, spying at him through telescopes. But every effort to
+discover why he was in such a fidget failed, because the spy-glasses
+were never levelled at the Thrums den. Through the whole of the
+incidents now to tell, you may conceive the man (on whom sympathy would
+be wasted) dagoning horribly, because he was always carried past the den
+before he could make head or tail of the change that had come over it.
+
+The spot chosen by the ill-fated Stuart and his gallant remnant for
+their last desperate enterprise was eminently fitted for their purpose.
+Being round the corner from Thrums, it was commanded by no fortified
+place save the farm of Nether Drumgley, and on a recent goustie night
+nearly all the trees had been blown down, making a hundred hiding-places
+for bold climbers, and transforming the Den into a scene of wild and
+mournful grandeur. In no bay more suitable than the flooded field called
+the Silent Pool could the hunted prince have cast anchor, for the Pool
+is not only sheltered from observation, but so little troubled by gales
+that it had only one drawback: at some seasons of the year it was not
+there. This, however, did not vex Stroke, as it is cannier to call him,
+for he burned his boats on the night he landed (and a dagont, tedious
+job it was too), and pointed out to his followers that the drouth which
+kept him in must also keep the enemy out. Part of the way to the lair
+they usually traversed in the burn, because water leaves no trace, and
+though they carried turnip lanterns and were armed to the teeth, this
+was often a perilous journey owing to the lovers close at hand on the
+pink path, from which the trees had been cleared, for lads and lasses
+must walk whate'er betide. Ronny-On's Jean and Peter Scrymgeour, little
+Lisbeth Doak and long Sam'l from Pyotdykes were pairing that year, and
+never knew how near they were to being dirked by Corp of Corp, who,
+lurking in the burn till there were no tibbits in his toes, muttered
+fiercely, "Cheep one single cheep, and it will be thy hinmost,
+methinks!" under the impression that Methinks was a Jacobite oath.
+
+For this voluntary service, Stroke clapped Corp of Corp on the shoulder
+with a naked sword, and said, "Rise, Sir Joseph!" which made Corp more
+confused than ever, for he was already Corp of Corp, Him of Muckle
+Kenny, Red McNeil, Andrew Ferrara, and the Master of Inverquharity
+(Stroke's names), as well as Stab-in-the-Dark, Grind-them-to-Mullins,
+and Warty Joe (his own), and which he was at any particular moment he
+never knew, till Stroke told him, and even then he forgot and had to be
+put in irons.
+
+The other frequenters of the lair on Saturday nights (when alone the
+rebellion was active) were the proud Lady Grizel and Widow Elspeth. It
+had been thought best to make Elspeth a widow, because she was so
+religious.
+
+The lair was on the right bank of the burn, near the waterfall, and you
+climbed to it by ropes, unless you preferred an easier way. It is now a
+dripping hollow, down which water dribbles from beneath a sluice, but at
+that time it was hidden on all sides by trees and the huge clods of
+sward they had torn from the earth as they fell. Two of these clods were
+the only walls of the lair, which had at times a ceiling not unlike
+Aaron Latta's bed coverlets, and the chief furniture was two barrels,
+marked "Usquebach" and "Powder." When the darkness of Stroke's fortunes
+sat like a pall upon his brow, as happened sometimes, he sought to drive
+it away by playing cards on one of these barrels with Sir Joseph, but
+the approach of the Widow made him pocket them quickly with a warning
+sign to his trusty knight, who did not understand, and asked what had
+become of them, whereupon Elspeth cried, in horror:
+
+"Cards! Oh, Tommy, you promised--"
+
+But Stroke rode her down with, "Cards! Wha has been playing cards? You,
+Muckle Kenny, and you, Sir Joseph, after I forbade it! Hie, there,
+Inverquharity, all of you, seize those men."
+
+Then Corp blinked, came to his senses and marched himself off to the
+prison on the lonely promontory called the Queen's Bower, saying
+ferociously, "Jouk, Sir Joseph, and I'll blaw you into posterity."
+
+It is sable night when Stroke and Sir Joseph reach a point in the Den
+whence the glimmering lights of the town are distinctly visible. Neither
+speaks. Presently the distant eight-o'clock bell rings, and then Sir
+Joseph looks anxiously at his warts, for this is the signal to begin,
+and as usual he has forgotten the words.
+
+"Go on," says someone in a whisper. It cannot be Stroke, for his head
+is brooding on his breast. This mysterious voice haunted all the doings
+in the Den, and had better be confined in brackets.
+
+("Go on.")
+
+"Methinks," says Sir Joseph, "methinks the borers--"
+
+
+("Burghers.")
+
+"Methinks the burghers now cease from their labors."
+
+"Ay," replied Stroke, "'tis so, would that they ceased from them
+forever!"
+
+"Methinks the time is at hand."
+
+"Ha!" exclaims Stroke, looking at his lieutenant curiously, "what makest
+thou say so? For three weeks these fortifications have defied my cannon,
+there is scarce a breach yet in the walls of yonder town."
+
+"Methinks thou wilt find a way."
+
+"It may be so, my good Sir Joseph, it may be so, and yet, even when I am
+most hopeful of success, my schemes go a gley."
+
+"Methinks thy dark--"
+
+("Dinna say Methinks so often.")
+
+("Tommy, I maun. If I dinna get that to start me off, I go through
+other.")
+
+("Go on.")
+
+"Methinks thy dark spirit lies on thee to-night."
+
+"Ay, 'tis too true. But canst thou blame me if I grow sad? The town
+still in the enemy's hands, and so much brave blood already spilt in
+vain. Knowest thou that the brave Kinnordy fell last night? My noble
+Kinnordy!"
+
+Here Stroke covers his face with his hands, weeping silently, and--and
+there is an awkward pause.
+
+("Go on--'Still have me.'")
+
+("So it is.") "Weep not, my royal scone--"
+
+("Scion.")
+
+"Weep not, my royal scion, havest thou not still me?"
+
+"Well said, Sir Joseph," cries Stroke, dashing the sign of weakness from
+his face. "I still have many brave fellows, and with their help I shall
+be master of this proud town."
+
+"And then ghost we to fair Edinburgh?"
+
+"Ay, 'tis so, but, Sir Joseph, thinkest thou these burghers love the
+Stuart not?"
+
+"'_Nay,_ methinks they are true to thee, but their starch
+commander--(give me my time, this is a lang ane,) but their arch
+commander is thy bitterest foe. Vile spoon that he is! (It's no spoon,
+it's spawn.)"
+
+"Thou meanest the craven Cathro?"
+
+"Methinks ay. (I like thae short anes.)"
+
+"'Tis well!" says Stroke, sternly. "That man hath ever slipped between
+me and my right. His time will come."
+
+"He floppeth thee--he flouteth thee from the battlements."
+
+"Ha, 'tis well!"
+
+("You've said that already.")
+
+("I say it twice.")
+
+("That's what aye puts me wrang.) Ghost thou to meet the proud Lady
+Grizel to-night?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+"Ghost thou alone?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+("What easy anes you have!) I fear it is not chancey for thee to go."
+
+"I must dree my dreed."
+
+"These women is kittle cattle."
+
+"The Stuart hath ever a soft side for them. Ah, my trusty
+foster-brother, knowest thou not what it is to love?"
+
+"Alas, I too have had my fling. (Does Grizel kiss your hand yet?)"
+
+"(No, she winna, the limmer.) Sir Joseph, I go to her."
+
+"Methinks she is a haughty onion. I prithee go not to-night."
+
+"I have given my word."
+
+"Thy word is a band."
+
+"Adieu, my friend."
+
+"Methinks thou ghost to thy damn. (Did we no promise Elspeth there
+should be no swearing?)"
+
+The raft Vick Lan Vohr is dragged to the shore, and Stroke steps on
+board, a proud solitary figure. "Farewell!" he cries hoarsely, as he
+seizes the oar.
+
+"Farewell, my leech," answers Corp, and then helps him to disembark.
+Their hands chance to meet, and Stroke's is so hot that Corp quails.
+
+"Tommy," he says, with a shudder, "do you--you dinna think it's a' true,
+do you?" But the ill-fated prince only gives him a warning look and
+plunges into the mazes of the forest. For a long time silence reigns
+over the Den. Lights glint fitfully, a human voice imitates the
+plaintive cry of the peewit, cautious whistling follows, comes next the
+clash of arms, and the scream of one in the death-throes, and again
+silence falls. Stroke emerges near the Reekie Broth Pot, wiping his
+sword and muttering, "Faugh! it drippeth!" At the same moment the air is
+filled with music of more than mortal--well, the air is filled with
+music. It seems to come from but a few yards away, and pressing his hand
+to his throbbing brow the Chevalier presses forward till, pushing aside
+the branches of a fallen fir, he comes suddenly upon a scene of such
+romantic beauty that he stands rooted to the ground. Before him, softly
+lit by a half-moon (the man in it perspiring with curiosity), is a
+miniature dell, behind which rise threatening rocks, overgrown here and
+there by grass, heath, and bracken, while in the centre of the dell is a
+bubbling spring called the Cuttle Well, whose water, as it overflows a
+natural basin, soaks into the surrounding ground and so finds a way into
+the picturesque stream below. But it is not the loveliness of the spot
+which fascinates the prince; rather is it the exquisite creature who
+sits by the bubbling spring, a reed from a hand-loom in her hands, from
+which she strikes mournful sounds, the while she raises her voice in
+song. A pink scarf and a blue ribbon are crossed upon her breast, her
+dark tresses kiss her lovely neck, and as she sits on the only dry
+stone, her face raised as if in wrapt communion with the heavens, and
+her feet tucked beneath her to avoid the mud, she seems not a human
+being, but the very spirit of the place and hour. The royal wanderer
+remains spellbound, while she strikes her lyre and sings (with but one
+trivial alteration) the song of MacMurrough:--
+
+Awake on your hills, on your islands awake,
+Brave sons of the mountains, the frith and the lake!
+'Tis the bugle--but not for the chase is the call;
+'Tis the pibroch's shrill summons--but not to the hall.
+
+'Tis the summons of heroes for conquest or death,
+When the banners are blazing on mountain and heath;
+They call to the dirk, the claymore and the targe,
+To the march and the muster, the line and the charge.
+
+Be the brand of each Chieftain like Stroke's in his ire!
+May the blood through his veins flow like currents of fire!
+Burst the base foreign yoke as your sires did of yore,
+Or die like your sires, and endure it no more.
+
+As the fair singer concluded, Stroke, who had been deeply moved, heaved
+a great sigh, and immediately, as if in echo of it, came a sigh from the
+opposite side of the dell. In a second of time three people had learned
+that a certain lady had two lovers. She starts to her feet, still
+carefully avoiding the puddles, but it is not she who speaks.
+
+("Did you hear me?")
+
+("Ay.")
+
+("You're ready?")
+
+("Ca' awa'.")
+
+Stroke dashes to the girl's side, just in time to pluck her from the
+arms of a masked man. The villain raises his mask and reveals the face
+of--it looks like Corp, but the disguise is thrown away on Stroke.
+
+"Ha, Cathro," he exclaims joyfully, "so at last we meet on equal terms!"
+
+"Back, Stroke, and let me pass."
+
+"Nay, we fight for the wench."
+
+"So be it. The prideful onion is his who wins her."
+
+"Have at thee, caitiff!"
+
+A terrible conflict ensues. Cathro draws first blood. 'Tis but a
+scratch. Ha! well thrust, Stroke. In vain Cathro girns his teeth. Inch
+by inch he is driven back, he slips, he recovers, he pants, he is
+apparently about to fling himself down the steep bank and so find safety
+in flight, but he comes on again.
+
+("What are you doing? You run now.")
+
+("I ken, but I'm sweer!")
+
+("Off you go.")
+
+Even as Stroke is about to press home, the cowardly foe flings himself
+down the steep bank and rolls out of sight. He will give no more trouble
+to-night; and the victor turns to the Lady Grizel, who had been
+repinning the silk scarf across her breast, while the issue of the
+combat was still in doubt.
+
+("Now, then, Grizel, you kiss my hand.")
+
+("I tell you I won't.")
+
+("Well, then, go on your knees to me.")
+
+("You needn't think it.")
+
+("Dagon you! Then ca' awa' standing.")
+
+"My liege, thou hast saved me from the wretch Cathro."
+
+"May I always be near to defend thee in time of danger, my pretty
+chick."
+
+("Tommy, you promised not to call me by those silly names.")
+
+("They slip out, I tell you. That was aye the way wi' the Stuarts.")
+
+("Well, you must say 'Lady Grizel.') Good, my prince, how can I thank
+thee?"
+
+"By being my wife. (Not a word of this to Elspeth.)"
+
+"Nay, I summoned thee here to tell thee that can never be. The Grizels
+of Grizel are of ancient lineage, but they mate not with monarchs. My
+sire, the nunnery gates will soon close on me forever."
+
+"Then at least say thou lovest me."
+
+"Alas, I love thee not."
+
+("What haver is this? I telled you to say 'Charles, would that I loved
+thee less.'")
+
+("And I told you I would not.")
+
+("Well, then, where are we now?")
+
+("We miss out all that about my wearing your portrait next my heart, and
+put in the rich apparel bit, the same as last week.")
+
+("Oh! Then I go on?) Bethink thee, fair jade--"
+
+("Lady.")
+
+"Bethink thee, fair lady, Stuart is not so poor but that, if thou come
+with him to his lowly lair, he can deck thee with rich apparel and
+ribbons rare."
+
+"I spurn thy gifts, unhappy man, but if there are holes in--"
+
+("Miss that common bit out. I canna thole it.")
+
+("I like it.) If there are holes in the garments of thy loyal followers,
+I will come and mend them, and have a needle and thread in my pocket.
+(Tommy, there is another button off your shirt! Have you got the
+button?")
+
+"(It's down my breeks.) So be it, proud girl, come!"
+
+It was Grizel who made masks out of tin rags, picked up where tinkers
+had passed the night, and musical instruments out of broken reeds that
+smelled of caddis and Jacobite head-gear out of weaver's night-caps; and
+she kept the lair so clean and tidy as to raise a fear that intruders
+might mistake its character. Elspeth had to mind the pot, which Aaron
+Latta never missed, and Corp was supposed to light the fire by striking
+sparks from his knife, a trick which Tommy considered so easy that he
+refused to show how it was done. Many strange sauces were boiled in that
+pot, a sort of potato-turnip pudding often coming out even when not
+expected, but there was an occasional rabbit that had been bowled over
+by Corp's unerring hand, and once Tommy shot a--a haunch of venison,
+having first, with Corp's help, howked it out of Ronny-On's swine, then
+suspended head downward, and open like a book at the page of contents,
+steaming, dripping, a tub beneath, boys with bladders in the distance.
+When they had supped they gathered round the fire, Grizel knitting a
+shawl for they knew whom, but the name was never mentioned, and Tommy
+told the story of his life at the French court, and how he fought in the
+'45 and afterward hid in caves, and so did he shudder, as he described
+the cold of his bracken beds, and so glowed his face, for it was all
+real to him, that Grizel let the wool drop on her knee, and Corp
+whispered to Elspeth, "Dinna be fleid for him; I'se uphaud he found a
+wy." Those quiet evenings were not the least pleasant spent in the Den.
+
+But sometimes they were interrupted by a fierce endeavor to carry the
+lair, when boys from Cathro's climbed to it up each other's backs, the
+rope, of course, having been pulled into safety at the first sound, and
+then that end of the Den rang with shouts, and deeds of valor on both
+sides were as common as pine needles, and once Tommy and Corp were only
+saved from captors who had them down, by Grizel rushing into the midst
+of things with two flaring torches, and another time bold Birkie, most
+daring of the storming party, was seized with two others and made to
+walk the plank. The plank had been part of a gate, and was suspended
+over the bank of the Silent Pool, so that, as you approached the farther
+end, down you went. It was not a Jacobite method, but Tommy feared that
+rows of bodies, hanging from the trees still standing in the Den, might
+attract attention.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+GRIZEL PAYS THREE VISITS
+
+
+Less alarming but more irritating was the attempt of the youth of
+Monypenny and the West town end, to establish a rival firm of Jacobites
+(without even being sure of the name). They started business (Francie
+Crabb leader, because he had a kilt) on a flagon of porter and an
+ounce of twist, which they carried on a stick through the Den, saying
+"Bowf!" like dogs, when they met anyone, and then laughing doubtfully.
+The twist and porter were seized by Tommy and his followers, and
+Haggerty-Taggerty, Major, arrived home with his head so firmly secured
+in the flagon that the solder had to be melted before he saw the world
+again. Francie was in still worse plight, for during the remainder of
+the evening he had to hide in shame among the brackens, and Tommy wore a
+kilt.
+
+One cruel revenge the beaten rivals had. They waylaid Grizel, when she
+was alone, and thus assailed her, she answering not a word.
+
+"What's a father?"
+
+"She'll soon no have a mither either!"
+
+"The Painted Lady needs to paint her cheeks no longer!"
+
+"Na, the red spots comes themsels now."
+
+"Have you heard her hoasting?"
+
+"Ay, it's the hoast o' a dying woman."
+
+"The joiner heard it, and gave her a look, measuring her wi' his eye for
+the coffin. 'Five and a half by one and a half would hold her snod,' he
+says to himsel'."
+
+"Ronny-On's auld wife heard it, and says she, 'Dinna think, my leddy, as
+you'll be buried in consecrated ground.'"
+
+"Na, a'body kens she'll just be hauled at the end o' a rope to the hole
+where the witches was shooled in."
+
+"Wi' a paling spar through her, to keep her down on the day o'
+judgment."
+
+Well, well, these children became men and women in time, one of them
+even a bit of a hero, though he never knew it.
+
+Are you angry with them? If so, put the cheap thing aside, or think only
+of Grizel, and perhaps God will turn your anger into love for her.
+
+Great-hearted, solitary child! She walked away from them without
+flinching, but on reaching the Den, where no one could see her--she lay
+down on the ground, and her cheeks were dry, but little wells of water
+stood in her eyes.
+
+She would not be the Lady Grizel that night. She went home instead, but
+there was something she wanted to ask Tommy now, and the next time she
+saw him she began at once. Grizel always began at once, often in the
+middle, she saw what she was making for so clearly.
+
+"Do you know what it means when there are red spots in your cheeks, that
+used not to be there?"
+
+Tommy knew at once to whom she was referring, for he had heard the
+gossip of the youth of Monypenny, and he hesitated to answer.
+
+"And if, when you cough, you bring up a tiny speck of blood?"
+
+"I would get a bottle frae the doctor," said Tommy, evasively.
+
+"She won't have the doctor," answered Grizel, unguardedly, and then with
+a look dared Tommy to say that she spoke of her mother.
+
+"Does it mean you are dying?"
+
+"I--I--oh, no, they soon get better."
+
+He said this because he was so sorry for Grizel. There never was a more
+sympathetic nature than Tommy's. At every time of his life his pity was
+easily roused for persons in distress, and he sought to comfort them by
+shutting their eyes to the truth as long as possible. This sometimes
+brought relief to them, but it was useless to Grizel, who must face her
+troubles.
+
+"Why don't you answer truthfully?" she cried, with vehemence. "It is so
+easy to be truthful!"
+
+"Well, then," said Tommy, reluctantly, "I think they generally die."
+
+Elspeth often carried in her pocket a little Testament, presented to her
+by the Rev. Mr. Dishart for learning by heart one of the noblest of
+books, the Shorter Catechism, as Scottish children do or did, not
+understanding it at the time, but its meaning comes long afterwards and
+suddenly, when you have most need of it. Sometimes Elspeth read aloud
+from her Testament to Grizel, who made no comment, but this same
+evening, when the two were alone, she said abruptly:
+
+"Have you your Testament?"
+
+"Yes," Elspeth said, producing it.
+
+"Which is the page about saving sinners?"
+
+"It's all about that."
+
+"But the page when you are in a hurry?"
+
+Elspeth read aloud the story of the Crucifixion, and Grizel listened
+sharply until she heard what Jesus said to the malefactor: "To-day shalt
+thou be with me in Paradise."
+
+"And was he?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"But he had been wicked all his life, and I believe he was only good,
+just that minute, because they were crucifying him. If they had let him
+come down.--"
+
+"No, he repented, you know. That means he had faith, and if you have
+faith you are saved. It doesna matter how bad you have been. You have
+just to say 'I believe' before you die, and God lets you in. It's so
+easy, Grizel," cried Elspeth, with shining eyes.
+
+Grizel pondered. "I don't believe it is so easy as that," she said,
+decisively.
+
+Nevertheless she asked presently what the Testament cost, and when
+Elspeth answered "Fourpence," offered her the money.
+
+"I don't want to sell it," Elspeth remonstrated.
+
+"If you don't give it to me, I shall take it from you," said Grizel,
+determinedly.
+
+"You can buy one."
+
+"No, the shop people would guess."
+
+"Guess what?"
+
+"I won't tell you."
+
+"I'll lend it to you."
+
+"I won't take it that way." So Elspeth had to part with her Testament,
+saying wonderingly, "Can you read?"
+
+"Yes, and write too. Mamma taught me."
+
+"But I thought she was daft," Elspeth blurted out.
+
+"She is only daft now and then," Grizel replied, without her usual
+spirit. "Generally she is not daft at all, but only timid."
+
+Next morning the Painted Lady's child paid three calls, one in town, two
+in the country. The adorable thing is that, once having made up her
+mind, she never flinched, not even when her hand was on the knocker.
+
+The first gentleman received her in his lobby. For a moment he did not
+remember her; then suddenly the color deepened on his face, and he went
+back and shut the parlor-door.
+
+"Did anybody see you coming here?" he asked, quickly.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"What does she want?"
+
+"She did not send me, I came myself."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"When you come to our house--"
+
+"I never come to your house."
+
+"That is a lie."
+
+"Speak lower!"
+
+"When you come to our house you tell me to go out and play. But I don't.
+I go and cry."
+
+No doubt he was listening, but his eyes were on the parlor-door.
+
+"I don't know why I cry, but you know, you wicked man! Why is it?"
+
+"Why is it?" she demanded again, like a queen-child, but he could only
+fidget with his gold chain and shuffle uneasily in his parnella shoes.
+
+"You are not coming to see my mamma again."
+
+The gentleman gave her an ugly look.
+
+"If you do," she said at once, "I shall come straight here and open that
+door you are looking at, and tell your wife."
+
+He dared not swear. His hand--
+
+"If you offer me money," said Grizel, "I shall tell her now."
+
+He muttered something to himself.
+
+"Is it true?" she asked, "that mamma is dying?"
+
+This was a genuine shock to him, for he had not been at Double Dykes
+since winter, and then the Painted Lady was quite well.
+
+"Nonsense!" he said, and his obvious disbelief brought some comfort to
+the girl. But she asked, "Why are there red spots on her cheeks, then?"
+
+"Paint," he answered.
+
+"No," cried Grizel, rocking her arms, "it is not paint now. I thought it
+might be and I tried to rub it off while she was sleeping, but it will
+not come off. And when she coughs there is blood on her handkerchief."
+
+He looked alarmed now, and Grizel's fears came back. "If mamma dies,"
+she said determinedly, "she must be buried in the cemetery."
+
+"She is not dying, I tell you."
+
+"And you must come to the funeral."
+
+"Are you gyte?"
+
+"With crape on your hat."
+
+His mouth formed an emphatic "No."
+
+"You must," said Grizel, firmly, "you shall! If you don't--" She pointed
+to the parlor-door.
+
+Her remaining two visits were to a similar effect, and one of the
+gentlemen came out of the ordeal somewhat less shamefully than the
+first, the other worse, for he blubbered and wanted to kiss her. It is
+questionable whether many young ladies have made such a profound
+impression in a series of morning calls.
+
+The names of these gentlemen are not known, but you shall be told
+presently where they may be found. Every person in Thrums used to know
+the place, and many itched to get at the names, but as yet no one has
+had the nerve to look for them.
+
+Not at this time did Grizel say a word of these interviews to her
+friends, though Tommy had to be told of them later, and she never again
+referred to her mother at the Saturday evenings in the Den. But the
+others began to know a queer thing, nothing less than this, that in
+their absence the lair was sometimes visited by a person or persons
+unknown, who made use of their stock of firewood. It was a startling
+discovery, but when they discussed it in council, Grizel never
+contributed a word. The affair remained a mystery until one Saturday
+evening, when Tommy and Elspeth, reaching the lair first, found in it a
+delicate white shawl. They both recognized in it the pretty thing the
+Painted Lady had pinned across her shoulders on the night they saw her
+steal out of Double Dykes, to meet the man of long ago.
+
+Even while their eyes were saying this, Grizel climbed in without giving
+the password, and they knew from her quick glance around that she had
+come for the shawl. She snatched it out of Tommy's hand with a look
+that prohibited questions.
+
+"It's the pair o' them," Tommy said to Elspeth at the first opportunity,
+"that sometimes comes here at nights and kindles the fire and warms
+themsels at the gloze. And the last time they came they forgot the
+shawl."
+
+"I dinna like to think the Painted Lady has been up here, Tommy."
+
+"But she has. You ken how, when she has a daft fit, she wanders the Den
+trysting the man that never comes. Has she no been seen at all hours o'
+the night, Grizel following a wee bit ahint, like as if to take tent o
+her?"
+
+"They say that, and that Grizel canna get her to go home till the daft
+fit has passed."
+
+"Well, she has that kechering hoast and spit now, and so Grizel brings
+her up here out o' the blasts."
+
+"But how could she be got to come here, if she winna go home?"
+
+"Because frae here she can watch for the man."
+
+Elspeth shuddered. "Do you think she's here often, Tommy?" she asked.
+
+"Just when she has a daft fit on, and they say she's wise sax days in
+seven."
+
+This made the Jacobite meetings eerie events for Elspeth, but Tommy
+liked them the better; and what were they not to Grizel, who ran to them
+with passionate fondness every Saturday night? Sometimes she even
+outdistanced her haunting dreads, for she knew that her mother did not
+think herself seriously ill; and had not the three gentlemen made light
+of that curious cough? So there were nights when the lair saw Grizel go
+riotous with glee, laughing, dancing, and shouting over-much, like one
+trying to make up for a lost childhood. But it was also noticed that
+when the time came to leave the Den she was very loath, and kissed her
+hands to the places where she had been happiest, saying, wistfully, and
+with pretty gestures that were foreign to Thrums, "Good-night, dear
+Cuttle Well! Good-by, sweet, sweet Lair!" as if she knew it could not
+last. These weekly risings in the Den were most real to Tommy, but it
+was Grizel who loved them best.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+A ROMANCE OF TWO OLD MAIDS AND A STOUT BACHELOR
+
+
+Came Gavinia, a burgess of the besieged city, along the south shore of
+the Silent Pool. She was but a maid seeking to know what love might be,
+and as she wandered on, she nibbled dreamily at a hot sweet-smelling
+bridie, whose gravy oozed deliciously through a bursting paper-bag.
+
+It was a fit night for dark deeds.
+
+"Methinks she cometh to her damn!"
+
+The speaker was a masked man who had followed her--he was sniffing
+ecstatically--since she left the city walls.
+
+She seemed to possess a charmed life. He would have had her in Shovel
+Gorge, but just then Ronny-On's Jean and Peter Scrymgeour turned the
+corner.
+
+Suddenly Gavinia felt an exquisite thrill: a man was pursuing her. She
+slipped the paper-bag out of sight, holding it dexterously against her
+side with her arm, so that the gravy should not spurt out, and ran.
+Lights flashed, a kingly voice cried "Now!" and immediately a petticoat
+was flung over her head. (The Lady Griselda looked thin that evening.)
+
+Gavinia was dragged to the Lair, and though many a time they bumped her,
+she still tenderly nursed the paper-bag with her arm, or fondly thought
+she did so, for when unmuffled she discovered that it had been removed,
+as if by painless surgery. And her captors' tongues were sweeping their
+chins for stray crumbs.
+
+The wench was offered her choice of Stroke's gallant fellows, but "Wha
+carries me wears me," said she, promptly, and not only had he to carry
+her from one end of the Den to the other, but he must do it whistling as
+if barely conscious that she was there. So after many attempts (for she
+was always willing to let them have their try) Corp of Corp, speaking
+for Sir Joseph and the others, announced a general retreat.
+
+Instead of taking this prisoner's life, Stroke made her his tool,
+releasing her on condition that every seventh day she appeared at the
+Lair with information concerning the doings in the town. Also, her name
+was Agnes of Kingoldrum, and, if she said it was not, the plank. Bought
+thus, Agnes proved of service, bringing such bags of news that Stroke
+was often occupied now in drawing diagrams of Thrums and its
+strongholds, including the residence of Cathro, with dotted lines to
+show the direction of proposed underground passages.
+
+And presently came by this messenger disquieting rumors indeed. Another
+letter, being the third in six months, had reached the Dovecot,
+addressed, not to Miss Ailie, but to Miss Kitty. Miss Kitty had been
+dead fully six years, and Archie Piatt, the post, swore that this was
+the eighteenth, if not the nineteenth, letter he had delivered to her
+name since that time. They were all in the same hand, a man's, and there
+had been similar letters while she was alive, but of these he kept no
+record. Miss Ailie always took these letters with a trembling hand, and
+then locked herself in her bedroom, leaving the key in such a position
+in its hole that you might just as well go straight back to the kitchen.
+Within a few hours of the arrival of these ghostly letters, tongues were
+wagging about them, but to the two or three persons who (after passing a
+sleepless night) bluntly asked Miss Ailie from whom they came, she only
+replied by pursing her lips. Nothing could be learned at the post-office
+save that Miss Ailie never posted any letters there, except to two
+Misses and a Mrs., all resident in Redlintie. The mysterious letters
+came from Australy or Manchester, or some such part.
+
+What could Stroke make of this? He expressed no opinion, but oh, his
+face was grim. Orders were immediately given to double the sentinels. A
+barrel was placed in the Queen's Bower. Sawdust was introduced at
+immense risk into the Lair. A paper containing this writing, "248xho317
+Oxh4591AWS314dd5," was passed round and then solemnly burned. Nothing
+was left to chance.
+
+Agnes of Kingoldrum (Stroke told her) did not know Miss Ailie, but she
+was commanded to pay special attention to the gossip of the town
+regarding this new move of the enemy. By next Saturday the plot had
+thickened. Previous letters might have reddened Miss Ailie's eyes for an
+hour or two, but they gladdened her as a whole. Now she sat crying all
+evening with this one on her lap; she gave up her daily walk to the
+Berlin wool shop, with all its romantic possibilities; at the clatter of
+the tea-things she would start apprehensively; she had let a red shawl
+lie for two days in the blue-and-white room.
+
+Stroke never blanched. He called his faithful remnant around him, and
+told them the story of Bell the Cat, with its application in the records
+of his race. Did they take his meaning? This Miss Ailie must be watched
+closely. In short, once more, in Scottish history, someone must bell the
+cat. Who would volunteer?
+
+Corp of Corp and Sir Joseph stepped forward as one man.
+
+"Thou couldst not look like Gavinia," the prince said, shaking his head.
+
+"Wha wants him to look like Gavinia?" cried an indignant voice.
+
+"Peace, Agnes!" said Stroke.
+
+"Agnes, why bletherest thou?" said Sir Joseph.
+
+"If onybody's to watch Miss Ailie," insisted the obstinate woman,
+"surely it should be me!"
+
+"Ha!" Stroke sprang to his feet, for something in her voice, or the
+outline of her figure, or perhaps it was her profile, had given him an
+idea. "A torch!" he cried eagerly and with its aid he scanned her face
+until his own shone triumphant.
+
+"He kens a wy, methinks!" exclaimed one of his men.
+
+Sir Joseph was right. It had been among the prince's exploits to make
+his way into Thrums in disguise, and mix with the people as one of
+themselves, and on several of these occasions he had seen Miss Ailie's
+attendant. Agnes's resemblance to her now struck him for the first time.
+It should be Agnes of Kingoldrum's honorable though dangerous part to
+take this Gavinia's place.
+
+But how to obtain possession of Gavinia's person? Agnes made several
+suggestions, but was told to hold her prating peace. It could only be
+done in one way. They must kidnap her. Sir Joseph was ordered to be
+ready to accompany his liege on this perilous enterprise in ten minutes.
+"And mind," said Stroke, gravely, "we carry our lives in our hands."
+
+"In our hands!" gasped Sir Joseph, greatly puzzled, but he dared ask no
+more, and when the two set forth (leaving Agnes of Kingoldrum looking
+very uncomfortable), he was surprised to see that Stroke was carrying
+nothing. Sir Joseph carried in his hand his red hanky, mysteriously
+knotted.
+
+"Where is yours?" he whispered.
+
+"What meanest thou?"
+
+Sir Joseph replied, "Oh, nothing," and thought it best to slip his
+handkerchief into his trouser-pocket, but the affair bothered him for
+long afterwards.
+
+When they returned through the Den, there still seemed (to the
+unpiercing eye) to be but two of them; nevertheless, Stroke re-entered
+the Lair to announce to Agnes and the others that he had left Gavinia
+below in charge of Sir Joseph. She was to walk the plank anon, but first
+she must be stripped that Agnes might don her garments. Stroke was every
+inch a prince, so he kept Agnes by his side, and sent down the Lady
+Griselda and Widow Elspeth to strip the prisoner, Sir Joseph having
+orders to stand back fifty paces. (It is a pleasure to have to record
+this.)
+
+The signal having been given that this delicate task was accomplished,
+Stroke whistled shrilly, and next moment was heard from far below a
+thud, as of a body falling in water, then an agonizing shriek, and then
+again all was still, save for the heavy breathing of Agnes of
+Kingoldrum.
+
+Sir Joseph (very wet) returned to the Lair, and Agnes was commanded to
+take off her clothes in a retired spot and put on those of the deceased,
+which she should find behind a fallen tree.
+
+"I winna be called the deceased," cried Agnes hotly, but she had to do
+as she was bid, and when she emerged, from behind the tree she was the
+very image of the ill-fated Gavinia. Stroke showed her a plan of Miss
+Ailie's backdoor, and also gave her a kitchen key (when he produced
+this, she felt in her pockets and then snatched it from him), after
+which she set out for the Dovecot in a scare about her own identity.
+
+"And now, what doest thou think about it a'?" inquired Sir Joseph
+eagerly, to which Stroke made answer, looking at him fixedly.
+
+"The wind is in the west!"
+
+Sir Joseph should have kept this a secret, but soon Stroke heard
+Inverquharity prating of it, and he called his lieutenant before him.
+Sir Joseph acknowledged humbly that he had been unable to hide it from
+Inverquharity, but he promised not to tell Muckle Kenny, of whose
+loyalty there were doubts. Henceforth, when the faithful fellow was
+Muckle Kenny, he would say doggedly to himself, "Dinna question me,
+Kenny. I ken nocht about it."
+
+Dark indeed were now the fortunes of the Pretender, but they had one
+bright spot. Miss Ailie had been taken in completely by the trick played
+on her, and thus Stroke now got full information of the enemy's doings.
+Cathro having failed to dislodge the Jacobites, the seat of war had been
+changed by Victoria to the Dovecot, whither her despatches were now
+forwarded. That this last one, of which Agnes of Kingoldrum tried in
+vain to obtain possession, doubled the price on the Pretender's head,
+there could be no doubt; but as Miss Ailie was a notorious Hanoverian,
+only the hunted prince himself knew why this should make her cry.
+
+He hinted with a snigger something about an affair he had once had with
+the lady.
+
+The Widow and Sir Joseph accepted this explanation, but it made Lady
+Griselda rock her arms in irritation.
+
+The reports about Miss Ailie's behavior became more and more alarming.
+She walked up and down her bedroom now in the middle of the night. Every
+time the knocker clanked she held herself together with both hands.
+Agnes had orders not to answer the door until her mistress had keeked
+through the window.
+
+"She's expecting a veesitor, methinks," said Corp. This was his bright
+day.
+
+"Ay," answered Agnes, "but is't a man-body, or just a woman-body?"
+
+Leaving the rebels in the Lair stunned by Victoria's latest move, we now
+return to Thrums, where Miss Ailie's excited state had indeed been the
+talk of many. Even the gossips, however, had underestimated her distress
+of mind, almost as much as they misunderstood its cause. You must listen
+now (will you?) to so mild a thing as the long thin romance of two
+maiden ladies and a stout bachelor, all beginning to be old the day the
+three of them first drank tea together, and that was ten years ago.
+
+Miss Ailie and Miss Kitty, you may remember, were not natives of Thrums.
+They had been born and brought up at Redlintie, and on the death of
+their parents they had remained there, the gauger having left them all
+his money, which was just sufficient to enable them to live like ladies,
+if they took tiny Magenta Cottage, and preferred an inexperienced maid.
+At first their life was very quiet, the walk from eleven to one for the
+good of fragile Miss Kitty's health its outstanding feature. When they
+strolled together on the cliffs, Miss Ailie's short thick figure,
+straight as an elvint, cut the wind in two, but Miss Kitty was swayed
+this way and that, and when she shook her curls at the wind, it blew
+them roguishly in her face, and had another shot at them, as soon as
+they were put to rights. If the two walked by the shore (where the
+younger sometimes bathed her feet, the elder keeping a sharp eye on land
+and water), the sea behaved like the wind, dodging Miss Ailie's ankles
+and snapping playfully at Miss Kitty's. Thus even the elements could
+distinguish between the sisters, who nevertheless had so much in common
+that at times Miss Ailie would look into her mirror and sigh to think
+that some day Miss Kitty might be like this. How Miss Ailie adored Miss
+Kitty! She trembled with pleasure if you said Miss Kitty was pretty, and
+she dreamed dreams in which she herself walked as bridesmaid only. And
+just as Miss Ailie could be romantic, Miss Kitty, the romantic, could be
+prim, and the primness was her own as much as the curls, but Miss Ailie
+usually carried it for her, like a cloak in case of rain.
+
+Not often have two sweeter women grown together on one stem. What were
+the men of Redlintie about? The sisters never asked each other this
+question, but there were times when, apparently without cause, Miss
+Ailie hugged Miss Kitty vehemently, as if challenging the world, and
+perhaps Miss Kitty understood.
+
+Thus a year or more passed uneventfully, until the one romance of their
+lives befell them. It began with the reappearance in Redlintie of
+Magerful Tarn, who had come to torment his father into giving him more
+money, but, finding he had come too late, did not harass the sisters.
+This is perhaps the best thing that can be told of him, and, as if he
+knew this, he had often told it himself to Jean Myles, without however
+telling her what followed. For something to his advantage did follow,
+and it was greatly to the credit of Miss Ailie and Miss Kitty, though
+they went about it as timidly as if they were participating in a crime.
+Ever since they learned of the sin which had brought this man into the
+world their lives had been saddened, for on the same day they realized
+what a secret sorrow had long lain at their mother's heart. Alison
+Sibbald was a very simple, gracious lady, who never recovered from the
+shock of discovering that she had married a libertine; yet she had
+pressed her husband to do something for his son, and been greatly pained
+when he refused with a coarse laugh. The daughters were very like her in
+nature, and though the knowledge of what she had suffered increased many
+fold their love for her, so that in her last days their passionate
+devotion to her was the talk of Redlintie, it did not blind them to what
+seemed to them to be their duty to the man. As their father's son, they
+held, he had a right to a third of the gauger's money, and to withhold
+it from him, now that they knew his whereabouts, would have been a form
+of theft. But how to give T. his third? They called him T. from
+delicacy, and they had never spoken to him. When he passed them in the
+streets, they turned pale, and, thinking of their mother, looked another
+way. But they knew he winked.
+
+At last, looking red in one street, and white in another, but resolute
+in all, they took their business to the office of Mr. John McLean, the
+writer, who had once escorted Miss Kitty home from a party without
+anything coming of it, so that it was quite a psychological novel in
+several volumes. Now Mr. John happened to be away at the fishing, and a
+reckless maid showed them into the presence of a strange man, who was no
+other than his brother Ivie, home for a year's holiday from India, and
+naturally this extraordinary occurrence so agitated them that Miss Ailie
+had told half her story before she realized that Miss Kitty was titting
+at her dress. Then indeed she sought to withdraw, but Ivie, with the
+alarming yet not unpleasing audacity of his sex, said he had heard
+enough to convince him that in this matter he was qualified to take his
+brother's place. But he was not, for he announced, "My advice to you is
+not to give T. a halfpenny," which showed that he did not even
+understand what they had come about.
+
+They begged permission to talk to each other behind the door, and
+presently returned, troubled but brave. Miss Kitty whispered "Courage!"
+and this helped Miss Ailie to the deed.
+
+"We have quite made up our minds to let T. have the money," she said,
+"but--but the difficulty is the taking it to him. Must we take it in
+person?"
+
+"Why not?" asked Ivie, bewildered.
+
+"It would be such a painful meeting to us." said Miss Ailie.
+
+"And to him," added simple Miss Kitty.
+
+"You see we have thought it best not to--not to know him," said Miss
+Ailie, faintly.
+
+"Mother--" faltered Miss Kitty, and at the word the eyes of both ladies
+began to fill.
+
+Then, of course, Mr. McLean discovered the object of their visit, and
+promised that his brother should take this delicate task off their
+hands, and as he bowed them out he said, "Ladies, I think you are doing
+a very foolish thing, and I shall respect you for it all my life." At
+least Miss Kitty insisted that respect was the word, Miss Ailie thought
+he said esteem.
+
+That was how it began, and it progressed for nearly a year at a rate
+that will take away your breath. On the very next day he met Miss Kitty
+in High Street, a most awkward encounter for her ("for, you know, Ailie,
+we were never introduced, so how could I decide all in a moment what to
+do?"), and he raised his hat (the Misses Croall were at their window and
+saw the whole thing). But we must gallop, like the friendship. He bowed
+the first two times, the third time he shook hands (by a sort of
+providence Miss Kitty had put on her new mittens), the fourth, fifth,
+and sixth times he conversed, the seventh time he--they replied that
+they really could not trouble him so much, but he said he was going that
+way at any rate; the eighth time, ninth time, and tenth time the figures
+of two ladies and a gentleman might have been observed, etc., and either
+the eleventh or twelfth time ("Fancy our not being sure, Ailie"--"It has
+all come so quickly, Kitty") he took his first dish of tea at Magenta
+Cottage.
+
+There were many more walks after this, often along the cliffs to a
+little fishing village, over which the greatest of magicians once
+stretched his wand, so that it became famous forever, as all the world
+saw except himself; and tea at the cottage followed, when Ivie asked
+Miss Kitty to sing "The Land o' the Leal," and Miss Ailie sat by the
+window, taking in her merino, that it might fit Miss Kitty, cutting her
+sable muff (once Alison Sibbald's) into wristbands for Miss Kitty's
+astrakhan; they did not go quite all the way round, but men are blind.
+
+Ivie was not altogether blind. The sisters, it is to be feared, called
+him the dashing McLean, but he was at this time nearly forty years old,
+an age when bachelors like to take a long rest from thinking of
+matrimony, before beginning again. Fifteen years earlier he had been in
+love, but the girl had not cared to wait for him, and, though in India
+he had often pictured himself returning to Redlintie to gaze wistfully
+at her old home, when he did come back he never went, because the house
+was a little out of the way. But unknown to him two ladies went, to whom
+he had told this as a rather dreary joke. They were ladies he esteemed
+very much, though having a sense of humor he sometimes chuckled on his
+way home from Magenta Cottage, and he thought out many ways of adding
+little pleasures to their lives. It was like him to ask Miss Kitty to
+sing and play, though he disliked music. He understood that it is a hard
+world for single women, and knew himself for a very ordinary sort of
+man. If it ever crossed his head that Miss Kitty would be willing to
+marry him, he felt genuinely sorry at the same time that she had not
+done better long ago. He never flattered himself that he could be
+accepted now, save for the good home he could provide (he was not the
+man to blame women for being influenced by that), for like most of his
+sex he was unaware that a woman is never too old to love or to be loved;
+if they do know it, the mean ones among them make a jest of it, at which
+(God knows why) their wives laugh. Mr. McLean had been acquainted with
+the sisters for months before he was sure even that Miss Kitty was his
+favorite. He found that out one evening when sitting with an old friend,
+whose wife and children were in the room, gathered round a lamp and
+playing at some child's game. Suddenly Ivie McLean envied his friend,
+and at the same moment he thought tenderly of Miss Kitty. But the
+feeling passed. He experienced it next and as suddenly when arriving at
+Bombay, where some women were waiting to greet their husbands.
+
+Before he went away the two gentlewomen knew that he was not to speak.
+They did not tell each other what was in their minds. Miss Kitty was so
+bright during those last days, that she must have deceived anyone who
+did not love her, and Miss Ailie held her mouth very tight, and if
+possible was straighter than ever, but oh, how gentle she was with Miss
+Kitty! Ivie's last two weeks in the old country were spent in London,
+and during that time Miss Kitty liked to go away by herself, and sit on
+a rock and gaze at the sea. Once Miss Ailie followed her and would have
+called him a--
+
+"Don't, Ailie!" said Miss Kitty, imploringly. But that night, when Miss
+Kitty was brushing her hair, she said, courageously, "Ailie, I don't
+think I should wear curls any longer. You know I--I shall be
+thirty-seven in August." And after the elder sister had become calm
+again. Miss Kitty said timidly, "You don't think I have been unladylike,
+do you, Ailie?"
+
+Such a trifle now remains to tell. Miss Kitty was the better business
+woman of the two, and kept the accounts, and understood, as Miss Ailie
+could not understand, how their little income was invested, and even
+knew what consols were, though never quite certain whether it was their
+fall or rise that is matter for congratulation. And after the ship had
+sailed, she told Miss Ailie that nearly all their money was lost, and
+that she had known it for a month.
+
+"And you kept it from me! Why?"
+
+"I thought, Ailie, that you, knowing I am not strong--that you--would
+perhaps tell him."
+
+"And I would!" cried Miss Ailie.
+
+"And then," said Miss Kitty, "perhaps he, out of pity, you know!"
+
+"Well, even if he had!" said Miss Ailie.
+
+"I could not, oh, I could not," replied Miss Kitty, flushing; "it--it
+would not have been ladylike, Ailie."
+
+Thus forced to support themselves, the sisters decided to keep school
+genteelly, and, hearing that there was an opening in Thrums, they
+settled there, and Miss Kitty brushed her hair out now, and with a twist
+and a twirl ran it up her fingers into a net, whence by noon some of it
+had escaped through the little windows and was curls again. She and Miss
+Ailie were happy in Thrums, for time took the pain out of the affair of
+Mr. McLean, until it became not merely a romantic memory, but, with the
+letters he wrote to Miss Kitty and her answers, the great quiet pleasure
+of their lives. They were friendly letters only, but Miss Kitty wrote
+hers out in pencil first and read them to Miss Ailie, who had been
+taking notes for them.
+
+In the last weeks of Miss Kitty's life Miss Ailie conceived a passionate
+unspoken hatred of Mr. McLean, and her intention was to write and tell
+him that he had killed her darling. But owing to the illness into which
+she was flung by Miss Kitty's death, that unjust letter was never
+written.
+
+But why did Mr. McLean continue to write to Miss Kitty?
+
+Well, have pity or be merciless as you choose. For several years Mr.
+McLean's letters had been the one thing the sisters looked forward to,
+and now, when Miss Ailie was without Miss Kitty, must she lose them
+also? She never doubted, though she may have been wrong, that, if Ivie
+knew of Miss Kitty's death, one letter would come in answer, and that
+the last. She could not tell him. In the meantime he wrote twice asking
+the reason of this long silence, and at last Miss Ailie, whose
+handwriting was very like her sister's, wrote him a letter which was
+posted at Tilliedrum and signed "Katherine Cray." The thing seems
+monstrous, but this gentle lady did it, and it was never so difficult to
+do again. Latterly, it had been easy.
+
+This last letter of Mr. McLean's announced to Miss Kitty that he was
+about to start for home "for good," and he spoke in it of coming to
+Thrums to see the sisters, as soon as he reached Redlintie. Poor Miss
+Ailie! After sleepless nights she trudged to the Tilliedrum post-office
+with a full confession of her crime, which would be her welcome home to
+him when he arrived at his brother's house. Many of the words were
+written on damp blobs. After that she could do nothing but wait for the
+storm, and waiting she became so meek, that Gavinia, who loved her
+because she was "that simple," said sorrowfully:
+
+"How is't you never rage at me now, ma'am? I'm sure it keepit you
+lightsome, and I likit to hear the bum o't."
+
+"And instead o' the raging I was prigging for," the soft-hearted maid
+told her friends, "she gave me a flannel petticoat!" Indeed, Miss Ailie
+had taken to giving away her possessions at this time, like a woman who
+thought she was on her death-bed. There was something for each of her
+pupils, including--but the important thing is that there was a gift for
+Tommy, which had the effect of planting the Hanoverian Woman (to whom he
+must have given many uneasy moments) more securely on the British
+Throne.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+A PENNY PASS-BOOK
+
+
+Elspeth conveyed the gift to Tommy in a brown paper wrapping, and when
+it lay revealed as an aging volume of _Mamma's Boy_, a magazine for the
+Home, nothing could have looked more harmless. But, ah, you never know.
+Hungrily Tommy ran his eye through the bill of fare for something choice
+to begin with, and he found it. "The Boy Pirate" it was called. Never
+could have been fairer promise, and down he sat confidently.
+
+It was a paper on the boys who have been undone by reading pernicious
+fiction. It gave their names, and the number of pistols they had bought,
+and what the judge said when he pronounced sentence. It counted the
+sensational tales found beneath the bed, and described the desolation of
+the mothers and sisters. It told the color of the father's hair before
+and afterwards.
+
+Tommy flung the thing from him, picked it up again, and read on
+uneasily, and when at last he rose he was shrinking from himself. In
+hopes that he might sleep it off he went early to bed, but his
+contrition was still with him in the morning. Then Elspeth was shown the
+article which had saved him, and she, too, shuddered at what she had
+been, though her remorse was but a poor display beside his, he was so
+much better at everything than Elspeth. Tommy's distress of mind was so
+genuine and so keen that it had several hours' start of his admiration
+of it; and it was still sincere, though he himself had become gloomy,
+when he told his followers that they were no more. Grizel heard his tale
+with disdain, and said she hated Miss Ailie for giving him the silly
+book, but he reproved these unchristian sentiments, while admitting that
+Miss Ailie had played on him a scurvy trick.
+
+"But you're glad you've repented, Tommy," Elspeth reminded him,
+anxiously.
+
+"Ay, I'm glad," he answered, without heartiness.
+
+"Well, gin you repent I'll repent too," said Corp, always ready to
+accept Tommy without question.
+
+"You'll be happier," replied Tommy, sourly.
+
+"Ay, to be good's the great thing," Corp growled; "but, Tommy, could we
+no have just one michty blatter, methinks, to end up wi'?"
+
+This, of course, could not be, and Saturday forenoon found Tommy
+wandering the streets listlessly, very happy, you know, but inclined to
+kick at any one who came near, such, for instance, as the stranger who
+asked him in the square if he could point out the abode of Miss Ailie
+Cray.
+
+Tommy led the way, casting some converted looks at the gentleman, and
+judging him to be the mysterious unknown in whom the late Captain Stroke
+had taken such a reprehensible interest. He was a stout, red-faced man,
+stepping firmly into the fifties, with a beard that even the most
+converted must envy, and a frown sat on his brows all the way, proving
+him possibly ill-tempered, but also one of the notable few who can think
+hard about one thing for at least five consecutive minutes. Many took a
+glint at him as he passed, but missed the frown, they were wondering so
+much why the fur of his heavy top-coat was on the inside, where it made
+little show, save at blasty corners.
+
+Miss Ailie was in her parlor, trying to give her mind to a blue and
+white note-book, but when she saw who was coming up the garden she
+dropped the little volume and tottered to her bedroom. She was there
+when Gavinia came up to announce that she had shown a gentleman into the
+blue-and-white room, who gave the name of Ivie McLean. "Tell him--I
+shall come down--presently," gasped Miss Ailie, and then Gavinia was
+sure this was the man who was making her mistress so unhappy.
+
+"She's so easily flichtered now," Gavinia told Tommy in the kitchen,
+"that for fear o' starting her I never whistle at my work without
+telling her I'm to do't, and if I fall on the stair, my first thought is
+to jump up and cry, 'It was just me tum'ling.' And now I believe this
+brute'll be the death o' her."
+
+"But what can he do to her?"
+
+"I dinna ken, but she's greeting sair, and yon can hear how he's
+rampaging up and down the blue-and-white room. Listen to his thrawn
+feet! He's raging because she's so long in coming down, and come she
+daurna. Oh, the poor crittur!"
+
+Now, Tommy was very fond of his old school-mistress, and he began to be
+unhappy with Gavinia.
+
+"She hasna a man-body in the world to take care o' her," sobbed the
+girl.
+
+"Has she no?" cried Tommy, fiercely, and under one of the impulses that
+so easily mastered him he marched into the blue-and-white room.
+
+"Well, my young friend, and what may you want?" asked Mr. McLean,
+impatiently.
+
+Tommy sat down and folded his arms. "I'm going to sit here and see what
+you do to Miss Ailie," he said, determinedly.
+
+Mr. McLean said "Oh!" and then seemed favorably impressed, for he added
+quietly: "She is a friend of yours, is she? Well, I have no intention of
+hurting her."
+
+"You had better no," replied Tommy, stoutly.
+
+"Did she send you here?"
+
+"No; I came mysel'."
+
+"To protect her?"
+
+There was the irony in it that so puts up a boy's dander. "Dinna think,"
+said Tommy, hotly, "that I'm fleid at you, though I have no beard--at
+least, I hinna it wi' me."
+
+At this unexpected conclusion a smile crossed Mr. McLean's face, but was
+gone in an instant. "I wish you had laughed," said Tommy, on the watch;
+"once a body laughs he canna be angry no more," which was pretty good
+even for Tommy. It made Mr. McLean ask him why he was so fond of Miss
+Ailie.
+
+"I'm the only man-body she has," he answered.
+
+"Oh? But why are you her man-body?"
+
+The boy could think of no better reason than this: "Because--because
+she's so sair in need o' are." (There were moments when one liked
+Tommy.)
+
+Mr. McLean turned to the window, and perhaps forgot that he was not
+alone. "Well, what are you thinking about so deeply?" he asked by and
+by.
+
+"I was trying to think o' something that would gar you laugh," answered
+Tommy, very earnestly, and was surprised to see that he had nearly done
+it.
+
+The blue and white note-book was lying on the floor where Miss Ailie had
+dropped it. Often in Tommy's presence she had consulted this work, and
+certainly its effect on her was the reverse of laughter; but once he had
+seen Dr. McQueen pick it up and roar over every page. With an
+inspiration Tommy handed the book to Mr. McLean. "It made the doctor
+laugh," he said persuasively.
+
+"Go away," said Ivie, impatiently; "I am in no mood for laughing."
+
+"I tell you what," answered Tommy, "I'll go, if you promise to look at
+it," and to be rid of him the man agreed. For the next quarter of an
+hour Tommy and Gavinia were very near the door of the blue-and-white
+room, Tommy whispering dejectedly, "I hear no laughing," and Gavinia
+replying, "But he has quieted down."
+
+Mr. McLean had a right to be very angry, but God only can say whether he
+had a right to be as angry as he was. The book had been handed to him
+open, and he was laying it down unread when a word underlined caught his
+eye. It was his own name. Nothing in all literature arrests our
+attention quite so much as that. He sat down to the book. It was just
+about this time that Miss Ailie went on her knees to pray.
+
+It was only a penny pass-book. On its blue cover had been pasted a slip
+of white paper, and on the paper was written, in blue ink, "Alison
+Cray," with a date nearly nine years old. The contents were in Miss
+Ailie's prim handwriting; jottings for her own use begun about the time
+when the sisters, trembling at their audacity, had opened school, and
+consulted and added to fitfully ever since. Hours must have been spent
+in erasing the blots and other blemishes so carefully. The tiny volume
+was not yet full, and between its two last written pages lay a piece of
+blue blotting-paper neatly cut to the size of the leaf.
+
+Some of these notes were transcripts from books, some contained the
+advice of friends, others were doubtless the result of talks with Miss
+Kitty (from whom there were signs that the work had been kept a secret),
+many were Miss Ailie's own. An entry of this kind was frequent: "If you
+are uncertain of the answer to a question in arithmetic, it is advisable
+to leave the room on some pretext and work out the sum swiftly in the
+passage." Various pretexts were suggested, and this one (which had an
+insufficient line through it) had been inserted by Dr. McQueen on that
+day when Tommy saw him chuckling, "You pretend that your nose is
+bleeding and putting your handkerchief to it, retire hastily, the
+supposition being that you have gone to put the key of the
+blue-and-white room down your back." Evidently these small deceptions
+troubled Miss Ailie, for she had written, "Such subterfuge is, I hope,
+pardonable, the object being the maintenance of scholastic discipline."
+On another page, where the arithmetic was again troubling her, this
+appeared: "If Kitty were aware that the squealing of the slate-pencils
+gave me such headaches, she would insist on again taking the arithmetic
+class, though it always makes her ill. Surely, then, I am justified in
+saying that the sound does not distress me." To this the doctor had
+added, "You are a brick."
+
+There were two pages headed NEVER, which mentioned ten things that Miss
+Ailie must never do; among them, "_Never_ let the big boys know you are
+afraid of them. To awe them, stamp with the foot, speak in a loud
+ferocious voice, and look them unflinchingly in the face."
+
+"Punishments" was another heading, but she had written it small, as if
+to prevent herself seeing it each time she opened the book. Obviously
+her hope had been to dispose of Punishment in a few lines, but it would
+have none of that, and Mr. McLean found it stalking from page to page.
+Miss Ailie favored the cane in preference to tawse, which, "often flap
+round your neck as yon are about to bring them down." Except in
+desperate cases "it will probably be found sufficient to order the
+offender to bring the cane to you." Then followed a note about rubbing
+the culprit's hand "with sweet butter or dripping" should you have
+struck too hard.
+
+Dispiriting item, that on resuming his seat the chastised one is a hero
+to his fellows for the rest of the day. Item, that Master John James
+Rattray knows she hurts her own hand more than his. Item, that John
+James promised to be good throughout the session if she would let him
+thrash the bad ones. Item, that Master T. Sandys, himself under
+correction, explained to her (the artistic instinct again) how to give
+the cane a waggle when descending, which would double its nip. Item,
+that Elsie Dundas offered to receive Francie Crabb's punishment for two
+snaps. Item, that Master Gavin Dishart, for what he considered the honor
+of his school, though aware he was imperilling his soul, fought Hendry
+Dickie of Cathro's for saying Miss Ailie could not draw blood with one
+stroke.
+
+The effect on Miss Ailie of these mortifying discoveries could be read
+in the paragraph headed A MOTHER'S METHOD, which was copied from a
+newspaper. Mrs. E----, it seems, was the mother of four boys (residing
+at D----), and she subjected them frequently to corporal chastisement
+without permanent spiritual result. Mrs. E----, by the advice of another
+lady, Mrs. K---- (mother of six), then had recourse to the following
+interesting experiment. Instead of punishing her children physically
+when they misbehaved, she now in their presence wounded herself by
+striking her left hand severely with a ruler held in the right. Soon
+their better natures were touched, and the four implored her to desist,
+promising with tears never to offend again. From that hour Mrs.
+E---- had little trouble with her boys.
+
+It was recorded in the blue and white book how Miss Ailie gave this plan
+a fair trial, but her boys must have been darker characters than Mrs.
+E----'s, for it merely set them to watching each other, so that they
+might cry out, "Pandy yourself quick, Miss Ailie; Gavin Dishart's
+drawing the devil on his slate." Nevertheless, when Miss Ailie announced
+a return to more conventional methods, Francie was put up (with threats)
+to say that he suffered agonies of remorse every time she pandied
+herself for him, but the thing had been organized in a hurry and Francie
+was insufficiently primed, and on cross-examination he let out that he
+thought remorse was a swelling of the hands.
+
+Miss Ailie was very humble-minded, and her entries under THE TEACHER
+TAUGHT were all admonitions for herself. Thus she chided herself for
+cowardice because "Delicate private reasons have made me avoid all
+mention of India in the geography classes. Kitty says quite calmly
+that this is fair neither to our pupils nor to I---- M----. The
+courage of Kitty in this matter is a constant rebuke to me." Except
+on a few occasions Mr. McLean found that he was always referred to as
+I---- M----.
+
+Quite early in the volume Miss Ailie knew that her sister's hold on life
+was loosening. "How bright the world suddenly seems," Mr. McLean read,
+"when there is the tiniest improvement in the health of an invalid one
+loves." Is it laughable that such a note as this is appended to a recipe
+for beef-tea? "It is surely not very wicked to pretend to Kitty that I
+keep some of it for myself; she would not take it all if she knew I
+dined on the beef it was made from." Other entries showed too plainly
+that Miss Ailie stinted herself of food to provide delicacies for Miss
+Kitty. No doubt her expenses were alarming her when she wrote this: "An
+interesting article in the _Mentor_ says that nearly all of us eat and
+drink too much. Were we to mortify our stomachs we should be healthier
+animals and more capable of sustained thought. The word animal in this
+connection is coarse, but the article is most impressive, and a
+crushing reply to Dr. McQueen's assertion that the editor drinks. In the
+school-room I have frequently found my thoughts of late wandering from
+classwork, and I hastily ascribed it to sitting up during the night with
+Kitty or to my habit of listening lest she should be calling for me.
+Probably I had over-eaten, and I must mortify the stomach. A glass of
+hot water with half a spoonful of sugar in it is highly recommended as a
+light supper."
+
+"How long ago it may seem since yesterday!" Do you need to be told on
+what dark day Miss Ailie discovered that? "I used to pray that I should
+be taken first, but I was both impious and selfish, for how could
+fragile Kitty have fought on alone?"
+
+In time happiness again returned to Miss Ailie; of all our friends it is
+the one most reluctant to leave us on this side of the grave. It came at
+first disguised, in the form of duties, old and new; and stealthily,
+when Miss Ailie was not looking, it mixed with the small worries and
+joys that had been events while Miss Kitty lived, and these it converted
+once more into events, where Miss Ailie found it lurking, and at first
+she would not take it back to her heart, but it crept in without her
+knowing. And still there were I---- M----'s letters. "They are all I
+have to look forward to," she wrote in self-defence. "I shall never
+write to I---- M---- again," was another entry, but Mr. McLean found on
+the same page, "I have written to I---- M----, but do not intend
+posting it," and beneath that was, "God forgive me, I have posted it."
+
+The troubles with arithmetic were becoming more terrible. "I am never
+_really_ sure about the decimals," she wrote.
+
+A Professor of Memory had appeared at the Muckley, and Miss Ailie admits
+having given him half-a-crown to explain his system to her. But when he
+was gone she could not remember whether you multiplied everything by ten
+before dividing by five and subtracting a hundred, or began by dividing
+and doing something underhand with the cube root. Then Mr. Dishart, who
+had a microscope, wanted his boy to be taught science, and several
+experiments were described at length in the book, one of them dealing
+with a penny, _H_, and a piston, _X Y_, and you do things to the piston
+"and then the penny comes to the surface." "But it never does," Miss
+Ailie wrote sorrowfully; perhaps she was glad when Master Dishart was
+sent to another school.
+
+"Though I teach the girls the pianoforte I find that I cannot stretch my
+fingers as I used to do. Kitty used to take the music, and I often
+remember this suddenly when superintending a lesson. It is a pain to me
+that so many wish to acquire 'The Land o' the Leal,' which Kitty sang so
+often to I---- M---- at Magenta Cottage."
+
+Even the French, of which Miss Ailie had once been very proud, was
+slipping from her. "Kitty and I kept up our French by translating
+I---- M----'s letters and comparing our versions, but now that this
+stimulus is taken away I find that I am forgetting my French. Or is it
+only that I am growing old? too old to keep school?" This dread was
+beginning to haunt Miss Ailie, and the pages between which the
+blotting-paper lay revealed that she had written to the editor of the
+_Mentor_ asking up to what age he thought a needy gentlewoman had a
+right to teach. The answer was not given, but her comment on it told
+everything. "I asked him to be severely truthful, so that I cannot
+resent his reply. But if I take his advice, how am I to live? And if
+I do not take it, I fear I am but a stumbling-block in the way of true
+education."
+
+That is a summary of what Mr. McLean read in the blue and white book;
+remember, you were warned not to expect much. And Tommy and Gavinia
+listened, and Tommy said, "I hear no laughing," and Gavinia answered,
+"But he has quieted down," and upstairs Miss Ailie was on her knees. A
+time came when Mr. McLean could find something to laugh at in that
+little pass-book, but it was not then, not even when he reached the end.
+He left something on the last page instead. At least I think it must
+have been he: Miss Ailie's tears could not have been so long a-drying.
+
+You may rise, now, Miss Ailie; your prayer is granted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+TOMMY REPENTS, AND IS NONE THE WORSE FOR IT
+
+
+Mr. McLean wrote a few reassuring words to Miss Ailie, and having told
+Gavinia to give the note to her walked quietly out of the house; he was
+coming back after he had visited Miss Kitty's grave. Gavinia, however,
+did not knew this, and having delivered the note she returned dolefully
+to the kitchen to say to Tommy, "His letter maun have been as thraun as
+himsel', for as soon as she read it, down she plumped on her knees
+again."
+
+But Tommy was not in the kitchen; he was on the garden-wall watching
+Miss Ailie's persecutor.
+
+"Would it no be easier to watch him frae the gate?" suggested Gavinia,
+who had not the true detective instinct.
+
+Tommy disregarded her womanlike question; a great change had come over
+him since she went upstairs; his bead now wobbled on his shoulders like
+a little balloon that wanted to cut its connection with earth and soar.
+
+"What makes you look so queer?" cried the startled maid. "I thought you
+was converted."
+
+"So I am," he shouted, "I'm more converted than ever, and yet I can do
+it just the same! Gavinia, I've found a wy!"
+
+He was hurrying off on Mr. McLean's trail, but turned to say, "Gavinia,
+do you ken wha that man is?"
+
+"Ower weel I ken," she answered, "it's Mr. McLean."
+
+"McLean!" he echoed scornfully, "ay, I've heard that's one of the names
+he goes by, but hearken, and I'll tell you wha he really is. That's the
+scoundrel Stroke!"
+
+No wonder Gavinia was flabbergasted. "Wha are you then?" she cried.
+
+"I'm the Champion of Dames," he replied loftily, and before she had
+recovered from this he was stalking Mr. McLean in the cemetery.
+
+Miss Kitty sleeps in a beautiful hollow called the Basin, but the stone
+put up to her memory hardly marks the spot now, for with a score of
+others it was blown on its face by the wind that uprooted so many trees
+in the Den, and as it fell it lies. From the Basin to the rough road
+that clings like a belt to the round cemetery dyke is little more than a
+jump, and shortly after Miss Kitty's grave had been pointed out to him.
+Mr. McLean was seen standing there hat in hand by a man on the road.
+This man was Dr. McQueen hobbling home from the Forest Muir; he did not
+hobble as a rule, but hobble everyone must on that misshapen brae,
+except Murdoch Gelatley, who, being short in one leg elsewhere, is here
+the only straight man. McQueen's sharp eyes, however, picked out not
+only the stranger but Tommy crouching behind Haggart's stone, and him
+did the doctor's famous crook staff catch in the neck and whisk across
+the dyke.
+
+"What man is that you're watching, you mysterious loon?" McQueen
+demanded, curiously; but of course Tommy would not divulge so big a
+secret. Now the one weakness of this large-hearted old bachelor (perhaps
+it is a professional virtue) was a devouring inquisitiveness, and he
+would be troubled until he discovered who was the stranger standing in
+such obvious emotion by the side of an old grave. "Well, you must come
+back with me to the surgery, for I want you to run an errand for me," he
+said testily, hoping to pump the boy by the way, but Tommy dived beneath
+his stick and escaped. This rasped the doctor's temper, which was
+unfortunate for Grizel, whom he caught presently peeping in at his
+surgery window. A dozen times of late she had wondered whether she
+should ask him to visit her mamma, and though the Painted Lady had
+screamed in terror at the proposal, being afraid of doctors, Grizel
+would have ventured ere now, had it not been for her mistaken conviction
+that he was a hard man, who would only flout her. It had once come to
+her ears that he had said a woman like her mamma could demoralize a
+whole town, with other harsh remarks, doubtless exaggerated in the
+repetition, and so he was the last man she dared think of going to for
+help, when he should have been the first. Nevertheless she had come now,
+and a soft word from him, such as he gave most readily to all who were
+in distress, would have drawn her pitiful tale from her, but he was in a
+grumpy mood, and had heard none of the rumors about her mother's being
+ill, which indeed were only common among the Monypenny children, and his
+first words checked her confidences. "What are you hanging about my open
+window for?" he cried sharply.
+
+"Did you think I wanted to steal anything?" replied the indignant child.
+
+"I won't say but what I had some such thait."
+
+She turned to leave him, but he hooked her with his staff. "As you're
+here," he said, "will you go an errand for me?"
+
+"No," she told him promptly; "I don't like you."
+
+"There's no love lost between us," he replied, "for I think you're the
+dourest lassie I ever clapped eyes on, but there's no other litlin
+handy, so you must do as you are bid, and take this bottle to
+Ballingall's."
+
+"Is it a medicine bottle?" she asked, with sudden interest.
+
+"Yes, it's medicine. Do you know Ballingall's house in the West town
+end?"
+
+"Ballingall who has the little school?"
+
+"The same, but I doubt he'll keep school no longer."
+
+"Is he dying?"
+
+"I'm afraid there's no doubt of it. Will you go?"
+
+"I should love to go," she cried.
+
+"Love!" he echoed, looking at her with displeasure. "You can't love to
+go, so talk no more nonsense, but go, and I'll give you a bawbee."
+
+"I don't want a bawbee," she said. "Do you think they will let me go in
+to see Ballingall?"
+
+The doctor frowned. "What makes you want to see a dying man?" he
+demanded.
+
+"I should just love to see him!" she exclaimed, and she added
+determinedly, "I won't give up the bottle until they let me in."
+
+He thought her an unpleasant, morbid girl, but "that is no affair of
+mine," he said shrugging his shoulders, and he gave her the bottle to
+deliver. Before taking it to Ballingall's, however, she committed a
+little crime. She bought an empty bottle at the 'Sosh, and poured into
+it some of the contents of the medicine bottle, which she then filled up
+with water. She dared try no other way now of getting medicine for her
+mother, and was too ignorant to know that there are different drugs for
+different ailments.
+
+Grizel not only contrived to get in to see Ballingan but stayed by his
+side for several hours, and when she came out it was night-time. On her
+way home she saw a light moving in the Den, where she had expected to
+play no more, and she could not prevent her legs from running joyously
+toward it. So when Corp, rising out of the darkness, deftly cut her
+throat, she was not so angry as she should have been.
+
+"I'm so glad we are to play again, after all, Corp," she said; but he
+replied grandly, "Thou little kennest wha you're speaking to, my gentle
+jade."
+
+He gave a curious hitch to his breeches, but it only puzzled her. "I
+wear gallowses no more," he explained, lifting his waistcoat to show
+that his braces now encircled him as a belt, but even then she did not
+understand. "Know, then," said Corp, sternly, "I am Ben the Boatswain."
+
+"And am I not the Lady Griselda any more?" she asked.
+
+"I'm no sure," he confessed; "but if you are, there's a price on your
+head."
+
+"What is Tommy?"
+
+"I dinna ken yet, but Gavinia says he telled her he's Champion of Damns.
+I kenna what Elspeth'll say to that."
+
+Grizel was starting for the Lair, but he caught her by the skirt.
+
+"Is he not at the Lair?" she inquired.
+
+"We knowest it not," he answered gravely. "We're looking for't," he
+added with some awe; "we've been looking for't this three year." Then,
+in a louder voice, "If you can guide us to it, my pretty trifle, you'll
+be richly rewarded."
+
+"But where is he? Don't you know?"
+
+"Fine I knowest, but it wouldna be mous to tell you, for I kenna whether
+you be friend or foe. What's that you're carrying?"
+
+"It is a--a medicine bottle."
+
+"Gie me a sook!"
+
+"No."
+
+"Just one," begged Corp, "and I'll tell you where he is."
+
+He got his way, and smacked his lips unctuously.
+
+"Now, where is Tommy?"
+
+"Put your face close to mine," said Corp, and then he whispered
+hoarsely, "He's in a spleet new Lair, writing out bills wi' a' his
+might, offering five hunder crowns reward for Stroke's head, dead or
+alive!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The new haunt was a deserted house, that stood, very damp, near a little
+waterfall to the east of the Den. Bits of it well planted in the marsh
+adhere doggedly together to this day, but even then the roof was off and
+the chimney lay in a heap on the ground, like blankets that have slipped
+off a bed.
+
+This was the good ship Ailie, lying at anchor, man-of-war, thirty guns,
+a cart-wheel to steer it by, T. Sandys, commander.
+
+On the following Saturday, Ben the Boatswain piped all hands, and Mr.
+Sandys delivered a speech, of the bluff, straightforward kind that
+sailors love. Here, unfortunately, it must be condensed. He reminded
+them that three years had passed since their gracious queen (cheers)
+sent them into these seas to hunt down the Pretender (hisses). Their
+ship had been christened the Ailie, because its object was to avenge the
+insults offered by the Pretender to a lady of that name for whom
+everyone of them would willingly die. Like all his race the Pretender,
+or Stroke, as he called himself, was a torment to single women; he had
+not only stolen all this lady's wealth, but now he wanted to make her
+walk the plank, a way of getting rid of enemies the mere mention of
+which set the blood of all honest men boiling (cheers). As yet they had
+not succeeded in finding Stroke's Lair, though they knew it to be in one
+of the adjoining islands, but they had suffered many privations, twice
+their gallant vessel had been burned to the water's edge, once she had
+been sunk, once blown into the air, but had that dismayed them?
+
+Here the Boatswain sent round a whisper, and they all cried loyally,
+"Ay, ay, sir."
+
+He had now news for them that would warm their hearts like grog. He had
+not discovered the Lair, but he had seen Stroke, he had spoken to him!
+Disguised as a boy he had tracked the Jacobite and found him skulking in
+the house of the unhappy Ailie. After blustering for a little Stroke had
+gone on his knees and offered not only to cease persecuting this lady
+but to return to France. Mr. Sandys had kicked him into a standing
+posture and then left him. But this clemency had been ill repaid. Stroke
+had not returned to France. He was staying at the Quharity Arms, a
+Thrums inn, where he called himself McLean. It had gone through the town
+like wildfire that he had written to someone in Redlintie to send him on
+another suit of clothes and four dickies. No one suspected his real
+character, but all noted that he went to the unhappy Ailie's house
+daily, and there was a town about it. Ailie was but a woman, and women
+could not defend themselves "(Boatswain, put Grizel in irons if she
+opens her mouth)," and so the poor thing had been forced to speak to
+him, and even to go walks with him. Her life was in danger, and before
+now Mr. Sandys would have taken him prisoner, but the queen had said
+these words, "Noble Sandys, destroy the Lair," and the best way to
+discover this horrid spot was to follow Stroke night and day until he
+went to it. Then they would burn it to the ground, put him on board the
+Ailie, up with the jib-boom sail, and away to the Tower of London.
+
+At the words "Tower of London," Ben cried "Tumble up there!" which was
+the signal for three such ringing cheers as only British tars are
+capable of. Three? To be exact only two and a half, for the third
+stopped in the middle, as if the lid had suddenly been put on.
+
+What so startled them was the unexpected appearance in their midst of
+the very man Tommy had been talking of. Taking a stroll through the Den,
+Mr. McLean had been drawn toward the ruin by the first cheers, and had
+arrived in time to learn who and what he really was.
+
+"Stroke!" gasped one small voice.
+
+The presumptuous man folded his arms. "So, Sandys," he said, in hollow
+tones, "we meet again!"
+
+Even Grizel got behind Tommy, and perhaps it was this that gave him
+spunk to say tremulously, "Wh-what are you doing her?"
+
+"I have come," replied the ruddy Pretender, "to defy you, ay, proud
+Sandys, to challenge thee to the deed thou pratest of. I go from here to
+my Lair. Follow me, if thou darest!"
+
+He brought his hand down with a bang upon the barrel, laughed
+disdainfully, and springing over the vessel's side was at once lost in
+the darkness. Instead of following, all stood transfixed, gazing at the
+barrel, on which lay five shillings.
+
+"He put them there when he slammed it!"
+
+"Losh behears! there's a shilling to ilka ane o' us."
+
+"I winna touch the siller," said Sandys, moodily.
+
+"What?" cried Gavinia.
+
+"I tell you it's a bribe."
+
+"Do you hear him?" screamed Gavinia. "He says we're no to lay hands
+on't! Corp, where's your tongue?"
+
+But even in that trying moment Corp's trust in Tommy shone out
+beautiful and strong. "Dinna be feared, Gavinia," he whispered, "he'll
+find a wy."
+
+"Lights out and follow Stroke!" was the order, and the crew at once
+scattered in pursuit, Mr. Sandys remaining behind a moment to--to put
+something in his pocket.
+
+Mr. McLean gave them a long chase, walking demurely when lovers were in
+sight, but at other times doubling, jumping, even standing on eminences
+and crowing insultingly, like a cock, and not until he had only breath
+left to chuckle did the stout man vanish from the Den. Elspeth, now a
+cabin-boy, was so shaken by the realism of the night's adventures that
+Gavinia (able seaman) took her home, and when Mr. Sandys and his
+Boatswain met at the Cuttle Well neither could tell where Grizel was.
+
+"She had no business to munt without my leave," Tommy said sulkily.
+
+"No, she hadna. Is she the Lady Griselda yet?"
+
+"Not her, she's the Commander's wife."
+
+Ben shook his head, for this, he felt, was the one thing Tommy could not
+do. "Well, then," growled Tommy, "if she winna be that, she'll have to
+serve before the mast, for I tell you plain I'll have no single women on
+board."
+
+"And what am I, forby Ben the Boatswain?"
+
+"Nothing. Honest men has just one name."
+
+"What! I'm just one single man?" Corp was a little crestfallen. "It's a
+come down," he said, with a sigh, "mind, I dinna grumble, but it's a
+come down."
+
+"And you dinna have 'Methinks' now either," Tommy announced pitilessly.
+
+Corp had dreaded this. "I'll be gey an' lonely without it," he said,
+with some dignity, "and it was the usefulest swear I kent o'.
+'Methinks!' I used to roar at Mason Malcolm's collie, and the crittur
+came in ahint in a swite o' fear. Losh, Tommy, is that you blooding?"
+
+There was indeed an ugly gash on Tommy's hand. "You've been hacking at
+yoursel' again," said the distressed Corp, who knew that in his
+enthusiasm Tommy had more than once drawn blood from himself. "When you
+take it a' so real as that," he said, uncomfortably "I near think we
+should give it up."
+
+Tommy stamped his foot. "Take tent o' yoursel'!" he cried threateningly.
+"When I was tracking Stroke I fell in with one of his men, and we had a
+tussle. He pinked me in the hand, but 'tis only a scratch, bah! He was
+carrying treasure, and I took it from him."
+
+Ben whistled. "Five shillings?" he asked, slapping his knee.
+
+"How did you know?" demanded Tommy, frowning, and then they tried to
+stare each other down.
+
+"I thought I saw you pouching it," Corp ventured to say.
+
+"Boatswain!"
+
+"I mean," explained Corp hurriedly, "I mean that I kent you would find a
+wy. Didest thou kill the Jacobite rebel?"
+
+"He lies but a few paces off," replied Tommy, "and already the vultures
+are picking his bones."
+
+"So perish all Victoria's enemies," said Ben the Boatswain, loyally, but
+a sudden fear made him add, with a complete change of voice, "You dinna
+chance to ken his name?"
+
+"Ay, I had marked him before," answered Tommy, "he was called Corp of
+Corp."
+
+Ben the Boatswain rose, sat down, rose again, "Tommy," he said, wiping
+his brow with his sleeve, "come awa' hame!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE LONGER CATECHISM
+
+
+In the meantime Mr. McLean was walking slowly to the Quharity Arms,
+fanning his face with his hat, and in the West town end he came upon
+some boys who had gathered with offensive cries round a girl in a lustre
+jacket. A wave of his stick put them to flight, but the girl only
+thanked him with a look, and entered a little house the window of which
+showed a brighter light than its neighbors. Dr. McQueen came out of this
+house a moment afterwards, and as the two men now knew each other
+slightly, they walked home together, McLean relating humorously how he
+had spent the evening. "And though Commander Sandys means to incarcerate
+me in the Tower of London," he said, "he did me a good service the other
+day, and I feel an interest in him."
+
+"What did the inventive sacket do?" the doctor asked inquisitively; but
+McLean, who had referred to the incident of the pass-book, affected not
+to hear. "Miss Ailie has told me his history," he said, "and that he
+goes to the University next year."
+
+"Or to the herding," put in McQueen, dryly.
+
+"Yes, I heard that was the alternative, but he should easily carry a
+bursary; he is a remarkable boy."
+
+"Ay, but I'm no sure that it's the remarkable boys who carry the
+bursaries. However, if you have taken a fancy to him you should hear
+what Mr. Cathro has to say on the subject; for my own part I have been
+more taken up with one of his band lately than with himself--a lassie,
+too."
+
+"She who went into that house just before you came out?"
+
+"The same, and she is the most puzzling bit of womankind I ever fell in
+with."
+
+"She looked an ordinary girl enough," said Mr. McLean.
+
+The doctor chuckled. "Man," he said, "in my time I have met all kinds of
+women except ordinary ones. What would you think if I told you that this
+ordinary girl had been spending three or four hours daily in that house
+entirely because there was a man dying in it?"
+
+"Some one she had an affection for?"
+
+"My certie, no! I'm afraid it is long since anybody had an affection for
+shilpit, hirpling, old Ballingall, and as for this lassie Grizel, she
+had never spoken to him until I sent her on an errand to his house a
+week ago. He was a single man (like you and me), without womenfolk, a
+school-master of his own making, and in the smallest way, and his one
+attraction to her was that he was on his death-bed. Most lassies of her
+age skirl to get away from the presence of death, but she prigged, sir,
+fairly prigged, to get into it!"
+
+"Ah, I prefer less uncommon girls," McLean said. "They should not have
+let her have her wish; it can only do her harm."
+
+"That is another curious thing," replied the doctor. "It does not seem
+to have done her harm; rather it has turned her from being a dour,
+silent crittur into a talkative one, and that, I take it, is a sign of
+grace."
+
+He sighed, and added: "Not that I can get her to talk of herself and her
+mother. (There is a mystery about them, you understand.) No, the
+obstinate brat will tell me nothing on that subject; instead of
+answering my questions she asks questions of me--an endless rush of
+questions, and all about Ballingall. How did I know he was dying? When
+you put your fingers on their wrist, what is it you count? which is the
+place where the lungs are? when you tap their chest what do you listen
+for? are they not dying as long as they can rise now and then, and dress
+and go out? when they are really dying do they always know it
+themselves? If they don't know it, is that a sign that they are not so
+ill as you think them? When they don't know they are dying, is it best
+to keep it from them in case they should scream with terror? and so on
+in a spate of questions, till I called her the Longer Catechism."
+
+"And only morbid curiosity prompted her?"
+
+"Nothing else," said the confident doctor; "if there had been anything
+else I should have found it out, you may be sure. However, unhealthily
+minded though she be, the women who took their turn at Ballingall's
+bedside were glad of her help."
+
+"The more shame to them," McLean remarked warmly; but the doctor would
+let no one, save himself, miscall the women of Thrums.
+
+"Ca' canny," he retorted. "The women of this place are as overdriven as
+the men, from the day they have the strength to turn a pirn-wheel to the
+day they crawl over their bed-board for the last time, but never yet
+have I said, 'I need one of you to sit up all night wi' an unweel body,'
+but what there were half a dozen willing to do it. They are a grand
+race, sir, and will remain so till they find it out themselves."
+
+"But of what use could a girl of twelve or fourteen be to them?"
+
+"Use!" McQueen cried. "Man, she has been simply a treasure, and but for
+one thing I would believe it was less a morbid mind than a sort of
+divine instinct for nursing that took her to Ballingall's bedside. The
+women do their best in a rough and ready way; but, sir, it cowed to see
+that lassie easying a pillow for Ballingall's head, or changing a sheet
+without letting in the air, or getting a poultice on his back without
+disturbing the one on his chest. I had just to let her see how to do
+these things once, and after that Ballingall complained if any other
+soul touched him."
+
+"Ah," said McLean, "then perhaps I was uncharitable, and the nurse's
+instinct is the true explanation."
+
+"No, you're wrong again, though I might have been taken in as well as
+you but for the one thing I spoke of. Three days ago Ballingall had a
+ghost of a chance of pulling through, I thought, and I told the lassie
+that if he did, the credit would be mainly hers. You'll scarcely believe
+it, but, upon my word, she looked disappointed rather than pleased, and
+she said to me, quite reproachfully, 'You told me he was sure to die!'
+What do you make of that?"
+
+"It sounds unnatural."
+
+"It does, and so does what followed. Do you know what straiking is?"
+
+"Arraying the corpse for the coffin, laying it out, in short, is it
+not?"
+
+"Ay, ay. Well, it appears that Grizel had prigged with the women to let
+her be present at Ballingall's straiking, and they had refused."
+
+"I should think so," exclaimed McQueen, with a shudder.
+
+"But that's not all. She came to me in her difficulty, and said that if
+I didna promise her this privilege she would nurse Ballingall no more."
+
+"Ugh! That shows at least that pity for him had not influenced her."
+
+"No, she cared not a doit for him. I question if she's the kind that
+could care for anyone. It's plain by her thrawn look when you speak to
+her about her mother that she has no affection even for her. However,
+there she was, prepared to leave Ballingall to his fate if I did not
+grant her request, and I had to yield to her."
+
+"You promised?"
+
+"I did, sore against the grain, but I accept the responsibility. You are
+pained, but you don't know what a good nurse means to a doctor."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, he died after all, and the straiking is going on now. You saw her
+go in."
+
+"I think you could have been excused for breaking your word and turning
+her out."
+
+"To tell the truth," said the doctor, "I had the same idea when I saw
+her enter, and I tried to shoo her to the door, but she cried, 'You
+promised, you _can't_ break a promise!' and the morbid brat that she is
+looked so horrified at the very notion of anybody's breaking a promise
+that I slunk away as if she had right on her side."
+
+"No wonder the little monster is unpopular," was McLean's comment. "The
+children hereabout seem to take to her as little as I do, for I had to
+drive away some who were molesting her. I am sorry I interfered now."
+
+"I can tell you why they t'nead her," replied the doctor, and he
+repeated the little that was known in Thrums of the Painted Lady, "And
+you see the womenfolk are mad because they can find out so little about
+her, where she got her money, for instance, and who are the 'gentlemen'
+that are said to visit her at Double Dykes. They have tried many ways of
+drawing Grizel, from heckle biscuits and parlies to a slap in the face,
+but neither by coaxing nor squeezing will you get an egg out of a sweer
+hen, and so they found. 'The dour little limmer,' they say, 'stalking
+about wi' all her blinds down,' and they are slow to interfere when
+their laddies call her names. It's a pity for herself that she's not
+more communicative, for if she would just satisfy the women's curiosity
+she would find them full of kindness. A terrible thing, Mr. McLean, is
+curiosity. The Bible says that the love of money is the root of all
+evil, but we must ask Mr. Dishart if love of money is not a misprint for
+curiosity. And you won't find men boring their way into other folk's
+concerns; it is a woman's failing, essentially a woman's." This was the
+doctor's pet topic, and he pursued it until they had to part. He had
+opened his door and was about to enter when he saw Gavinia passing on
+her way home from the Den.
+
+"Come here, my lass," he called to her, and then said inquisitively,
+"I'm told Mr. McLean is at his tea with Miss Ailie every day?"
+
+"And it's true," replied Gavinia, in huge delight, "and what's more, she
+has given him some presents."
+
+"You say so, lassie! What were they now?"
+
+"I dinna ken," Gavinia had to admit, dejectedly. "She took them out o'
+the ottoman, and it has aye been kept looked."
+
+McQueen looked very knowingly at her. "Will he, think you?" he asked
+mysteriously.
+
+The maid seemed to understand, for she replied, promptly, "I hope he
+will."
+
+"But he hasna spiered her as yet, you think?"
+
+"No," she said, "no, but he calls her Ailie, and wi' the gentry it's but
+one loup frae that to spiering."
+
+"Maybe," answered the doctor, "but it's a loup they often bogle at. I'se
+uphaud he's close on fifty, Gavinia?"
+
+"There's no denying he is by his best," she said regretfully, and then
+added, with spirit, "but Miss Ailie's no heavy, and in thae grite arms
+o' his he could daidle her as if she were an infant."
+
+This bewildered McQueen, and he asked, "What are you blethering about,
+Gavinia?" to which she replied, regally, "Wha carries me, wears me!" The
+doctor concluded that it must be Den language.
+
+"And I hope he's good enough for her," continued Miss Ailie's
+warm-hearted maid, "for she deserves a good ane."
+
+"She does," McQueen agreed heartily; "ay, and I believe he is, for he
+breathes through his nose instead of through his mouth; and let me tell
+you, Gavinia, that's the one thing to be sure of in a man before you
+take him for better or worse."
+
+The astounded maid replied, "I'll ken better things than that about my
+lad afore I take him," but the doctor assured her that it was the box
+which held them all, "though you maun tell no one, lassie, for it's my
+one discovery in five and thirty years of practice."
+
+Seeing that, despite his bantering tone, he was speaking seriously, she
+pressed him for his meaning, but he only replied sadly, "You're like the
+rest, Gavinia, I see it breaking out on you in spots."
+
+"An illness!" she cried, in alarm.
+
+"Ay, lassie, an illness called curiosity. I had just been telling Mr.
+McLean that curiosity is essentially a woman's ailment, and up you come
+ahint to prove it." He shook a finger at her reprovingly, and was
+probably still reflecting on woman's ways when Grizel walked home at
+midnight breathing through her nose, and Tommy fell asleep with his
+mouth open. For Tommy could never have stood the doctor's test of a man.
+In the painting of him, aged twenty-four, which was exhibited in the
+Royal Academy, his lips meet firmly, but no one knew save himself how he
+gasped after each sitting.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+BUT IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN MISS KITTY
+
+
+The ottoman whence, as Gavinia said, Miss Ailie produced the presents
+she gave to Mr. McLean, stood near the door of the blue-and-white room,
+with a reel of thread between, to keep them apart forever. Except on
+washing days it was of a genteel appearance, for though but a wooden
+kist, it had a gay outer garment with frills, which Gavinia starched,
+and beneath this was apparel of a private character that tied with
+tapes. When Miss Ailie, pins in her mouth, was on her knees arraying the
+ottoman, it might almost have been mistaken for a female child.
+
+The contents of the ottoman were a few trivial articles sewn or knitted
+by Miss Kitty during her last illness, "just to keep me out of languor,"
+she would explain wistfully to her sister. She never told Miss Ailie
+that they were intended for any special person; on the contrary, she
+said, "Perhaps you may find someone they will be useful to," but almost
+without her knowing it they always grew into something that would be
+useful to Ivie McLean.
+
+"The remarkable thing is that they are an exact fit," the man said
+about the slippers, and Miss Ailie nodded, but she did not think it
+remarkable.
+
+There were also two fluffy little bags, and Miss Ailie had to explain
+their use. "If you put your feet into them in bed," she faltered,
+"they--they keep you warm."
+
+McLean turned hastily to something else, a smoking-cap. "I scarcely
+think this can have been meant for me," he said; "you have forgotten how
+she used to chide me for smoking."
+
+Miss Ailie had not forgotten. "But in a way," she replied, flushing a
+little, "we--that is, Kitty--could not help admiring you for smoking.
+There is something so--so dashing about it."
+
+"I was little worthy all the friendship you two gave me, Ailie," he told
+her humbly, and he was nearly saying something to her then that he had
+made up his mind to say. The time came a few days later. They had been
+walking together on the hill, and on their return to the Dovecot he had
+insisted, "in his old imperious way," on coming in to tea. Hearing
+talking in the kitchen Miss Ailie went along the passage to discover
+what company her maid kept; but before she reached the door, which was
+ajar, she turned as if she had heard something dreadful and hurried
+upstairs, signing to Mr. McLean, with imploring eyes, to follow her.
+This at once sent him to the kitchen door.
+
+Gavinia was alone. She was standing in the middle of the floor, with
+one arm crooked as if making believe that another's arm rested on it,
+and over her head was a little muslin window-blind, representing a
+bride's veil. Thus she was two persons, but she was also a third, who
+addressed them in clerical tones.
+
+"Ivie McLean," she said as solemnly as tho' she were the Rev. Mr.
+Dishart, "do you take this woman to be thy lawful wedded wife?" With
+almost indecent haste she answered herself, "I do."
+
+"Alison Cray," she said next, "do you take this man to be thy lawful
+wedded husband?" "I do."
+
+Just then the door shut softly; and Gavinia ran to see who had been
+listening, with the result that she hid herself in the coal-cellar.
+
+While she was there, Miss Ailie and Mr. McLean were sitting in the
+blue-and-white room very self-conscious, and Miss Ailie was speaking
+confusedly of anything and everything, saying more in five minutes than
+had served for the previous hour, and always as she slackened she read
+an intention in his face that started her tongue upon another journey.
+But, "Timid Ailie," he said at last, "do you think you can talk me
+down?" and then she gave him a look of reproach that turned
+treacherously into one of appeal, but he had the hardihood to continue;
+"Ailie, do you need to be told what I want to say?"
+
+Miss Ailie stood quite still now, a stiff, thick figure, with a soft,
+plain face and nervous hands. "Before you speak," she said, nervously,
+"I have something to tell you that--perhaps then you will not say it.
+
+"I have always led you to believe," she began, trembling, "that I am
+forty-nine. I am fifty-one."
+
+He would have spoken, but the look of appeal came back to her face,
+asking him to make it easier for her by saying nothing. She took a pair
+of spectacles from her pocket, and he divined what this meant before she
+spoke. "I have avoided letting you see that I need them," she said.
+"You--men don't like--" She tried to say it all in a rush, but the words
+would not come.
+
+"I am beginning to be a little deaf," she went on. "To deceive you about
+that, I have sometimes answered you without really knowing what you
+said."
+
+"Anything more, Ailie?"
+
+"My accomplishments--they were never great, but Kitty and I thought my
+playing of classical pieces--my fingers are not sufficiently pliable
+now. And I--I forget so many things."
+
+"But, Ailie--"
+
+"Please let me tell you. I was reading a book, a story, last winter, and
+one of the characters, an old maid, was held up to ridicule in it for
+many little peculiarities that--that I recognized as my own. They had
+grown upon me without my knowing that they made me ridiculous, and now
+I--I have tried, but I cannot alter them."
+
+"Is that all, Ailie?"
+
+"No."
+
+The last seemed to be the hardest to say. Dusk had come on, and they
+could not see each other well. She asked him to light the lamp, and his
+back was toward her while he did it, wondering a little at her request.
+When he turned, her hands rose like cowards to hide her head, but she
+pulled them down. "Do you not see?" she said.
+
+"I see that you have done something to your hair," he answered, "I liked
+it best the other way."
+
+Most people would have liked it best the other way. There was still a
+good deal of it, but the "bun" in which it ended had gone strangely
+small. "The rest was false," said Miss Ailie, with a painful effort; "at
+least, it is my own, but it came out when--when Kitty died."
+
+She stopped, but he was silent. "That is all now," she said, softly; and
+she waited for him to speak if he chose. He turned his head away
+sharply, and Miss Ailie mistook his meaning. If she gave one little
+sob--Well, it was but one, and then all the glory of womanhood came
+rushing to her aid, and it unfurled its flag over her, whispering, "Now,
+sweet daughter, now, strike for me," and she raised her head gallantly,
+and for a moment in her life the old school-mistress was a queen. "I
+shall ring for tea," she said, quietly and without a tremor; "do you
+think there is anything so refreshing after a walk as a dish of tea?"
+
+She rang the bell, but its tinkle only made Gavinia secede farther into
+the cellar, and that summons has not been answered to this day, and no
+one seems to care, for while the wires were still vibrating Mr. McLean
+had asked Miss Ailie to forgive him and marry him.
+
+Miss Ailie said she would, but, "Oh," she cried, "ten years ago it might
+have been my Kitty. I would that it had been Kitty!"
+
+Miss Ailie was dear to him now, and ten years is a long time, and men
+are vain. Mr. McLean replied, quite honestly, "I am not sure that I did
+not always like you best," but that hurt her, and he had to unsay the
+words.
+
+"I was a thoughtless fool ten years ago," he said, bitterly, and Miss
+Ailie's answer came strangely from such timid lips. "Yes, you were!" she
+exclaimed, passionately, and all the wrath, long pent up, with very
+different feelings, in her gentle bosom, against the man who should have
+adored her Kitty, leapt at that reproachful cry to her mouth and eyes,
+and so passed out of her forever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+TOMMY THE SCHOLAR
+
+
+So Miss Ailie could be brave, but what a poltroon she was also! Three
+calls did she make on dear friends, ostensibly to ask how a cold was or
+to instruct them in a new device in Shetland wool, but really to
+announce that she did not propose keeping school after the end of the
+term--because--in short, Mr. Ivie McLean and she--that is he--and so on.
+But though she had planned it all out so carefully, with at least three
+capital ways of leading up to it, and knew precisely what they would
+say, and pined to hear them say it, on each occasion shyness conquered
+and she came away with the words unspoken. How she despised herself, and
+how Mr. McLean laughed! He wanted to take the job off her hands by
+telling the news to Dr. McQueen, who could be depended on to spread it
+through the town, and Miss Ailie discovered with horror that his simple
+plan was to say, "How are you, doctor? I just looked in to tell you that
+Miss Ailie and I are to be married. Good afternoon." The audacity of
+this captivated Miss Ailie even while it outraged her sense of decency.
+To Redlintie went Mr. McLean, and returning next day drew from his
+pocket something which he put on Miss Ailie's finger, and then she had
+the idea of taking off her left glove in church, which would have
+announced her engagement as loudly as though Mr. Dishart had included it
+in his pulpit intimations. Religion, however, stopped her when she had
+got the little finger out, and the Misses Finlayson, who sat behind and
+knew she had an itchy something inside her glove, concluded that it was
+her threepenny for the plate. As for Gavinia, like others of her class
+in those days, she had never heard of engagement rings, and so it really
+seemed as if Mr. McLean must call on the doctor after all. But "No,"
+said he, "I hit upon a better notion to-day in the Den," and to explain
+this notion he produced from his pocket a large, vulgar bottle, which
+shocked Miss Ailie, and indeed that bottle had not passed through the
+streets uncommented on.
+
+Mr. McLean having observed this bottle afloat on the Silent Pool, had
+fished it out with his stick, and its contents set him chuckling. They
+consisted of a sheet of paper which stated that the bottle was being
+flung into the sea in lat. 20, long. 40, by T. Sandys, Commander of the
+Ailie, then among the breakers. Sandys had little hope of weathering the
+gale, but he was indifferent to his own fate so long as his enemy did
+not escape, and he called upon whatsoever loyal subjects of the Queen
+should find this document to sail at once to lat. 20, long. 40, and
+there cruise till they had captured the Pretender, _alias_ Stroke, and
+destroyed his Lair. A somewhat unfavorable personal description of
+Stroke was appended, with a map of the coast, and a stern warning to all
+loyal subjects not to delay as one Ailie was in the villain's hands and
+he might kill her any day. Victoria Regina would give five hundred
+pounds for his head. The letter ended in manly style with the writer's
+sending an affecting farewell message to his wife and little children.
+
+"And so while we are playing ourselves," said Mr. McLean to Miss Ailie,
+"your favorite is seeking my blood."
+
+"Our favorite," interposed the school-mistress, and he accepted the
+correction, for neither of them could forget that their present
+relations might have been very different had it not been for Tommy's
+faith in the pass-book. The boy had shown a knowledge of the human
+heart, in Miss Ailie's opinion, that was simply wonderful; inspiration
+she called it, and though Ivie thought it a happy accident, he did not
+call it so to her. Tommy's father had been the instrument in bringing
+these two together originally, and now Tommy had brought them together
+again; there was fate in it, and if the boy was of the right stuff
+McLean meant to reward him.
+
+"I see now," he said to Miss Ailie, "a way of getting rid of our
+fearsome secret and making my peace with Sandys at one fell blow." He
+declined to tell her more, but presently he sought Gavinia, who dreaded
+him nowadays because of his disconcerting way of looking at her
+inquiringly and saying "I do!"
+
+"You don't happen to know, Gavinia," he asked, "whether the good ship
+Ailie weathered the gale of the 15th instant? If it did," he went on,
+"Commander Sandys will learn something to his advantage from a bottle
+that is to be cast into the ocean this evening."
+
+Gavinia thought she heard the chink of another five shillings, and her
+mouth opened so wide that a chaffinch could have built therein. "Is he
+to look for a bottle in the pond?" she asked, eagerly.
+
+"I do," replied McLean with such solemnity that she again retired to the
+coal-cellar.
+
+That evening Mr. McLean cast a bottle into the Silent Pool, and
+subsequently called on Mr. Cathro, to whom he introduced himself as one
+interested in Master Thomas Sandys. He was heartily received, but at the
+name of Tommy, Cathro heaved a sigh that could not pass unnoticed. "I
+see you don't find him an angel," said Mr. McLean, politely.
+
+"'Deed, sir, there are times when I wish he was an angel," the dominie
+replied so viciously that McLean laughed. "And I grudge you that laugh,"
+continued Cathro, "for your Tommy Sandys has taken from me the most
+precious possession a teacher can have--my sense of humor."
+
+"He strikes me as having a considerable sense of humor himself."
+
+"Well he may, Mr. McLean, for he has gone off with all mine. But bide a
+wee till I get in the tumblers, and. I'll tell you the latest about
+him--if what you want to hear is just the plain exasperating truth.
+
+"His humor that you spoke of," resumed the school-master presently,
+addressing his words to the visitor, and his mind to a toddy ladle of
+horn, "is ill to endure in a school where the understanding is that the
+dominie makes all the jokes (except on examination-day, when the
+ministers get their yearly fling), but I think I like your young friend
+worst when he is deadly serious. He is constantly playing some new
+part--playing is hardly the word though, for into each part he puts an
+earnestness that cheats even himself, until he takes to another. I
+suppose you want me to give you some idea of his character, and I could
+tell you what it is at any particular moment; but it changes, sir, I do
+assure you, almost as quickly as the circus-rider flings off his layers
+of waistcoats. A single puff of wind blows him from one character to
+another, and he may be noble and vicious, and a tyrant and a slave, and
+hard as granite and melting as butter in the sun, all in one forenoon.
+All you can be sure of is that whatever he is he will be it in excess."
+
+"But I understood," said McLean, "that at present he is solely engaged
+on a war of extermination in the Den."
+
+"Ah, those exploits, I fancy, are confined to Saturday nights, and
+unfortunately his Saturday debauch does not keep him sober for the rest
+of the week, which we demand of respectable characters in these parts.
+For the last day or two, for instance, he has been in mourning."
+
+"I had not heard of that."
+
+"No, I daresay not, and I'll give you the facts, if you'll fill your
+glass first. But perhaps--" here the dominie's eyes twinkled as if a
+gleam of humor had been left him after all--"perhaps you have been more
+used of late to ginger wine?"
+
+The visitor received the shock impassively as if he did not know he had
+been hit, and Cathro proceeded with his narrative. "Well, for a day or
+two Tommy Sandys has been coming to the school in a black jacket with
+crape on the cuffs, and not only so, he has sat quiet and forlorn-like
+at his desk as if he had lost some near and dear relative. Now I knew
+that he had not, for his only relative is a sister whom you may have
+seen at the Hanky School, and both she and Aaron Latta are hearty. Yet,
+sir (and this shows the effect he has on me), though I was puzzled and
+curious I dared not ask for an explanation."
+
+"But why not?" was the visitor's natural question.
+
+"Because, sir, he is such a mysterious little sacket," replied Cathro,
+testily, "and so clever at leading you into a hole, that it's not
+chancey to meddle with him, and I could see through the corner of my eye
+that, for all this woeful face, he was proud of it, and hoped I was
+taking note. For though sometimes his emotion masters him completely, at
+other times he can step aside as it were, and take an approving look at
+it. That is a characteristic of him, and not the least maddening one."
+
+"But you solved the mystery somehow, I suppose?"
+
+"I got at the truth to-day by an accident, or rather my wife discovered
+it for me. She happened to call in at the school on a domestic matter I
+need not trouble you with (sal, she needna have troubled me with it
+either!), and on her way up the yard she noticed a laddie called Lewis
+Doig playing with other ungodly youths at the game of kickbonnety.
+Lewis's father, a gentleman farmer, was buried jimply a fortnight since,
+and such want of respect for his memory made my wife give the loon a
+dunt on the head with a pound of sugar, which she had just bought at the
+'Sosh. He turned on her, ready to scart or spit or run, as seemed
+wisest, and in a klink her woman's eye saw what mine had overlooked,
+that he was not even wearing a black jacket. Well, she told him what the
+slap was for, and his little countenance cleared at once. 'Oh' says he,
+'that's all right, Tommy and me has arranged it,' and he pointed
+blithely to a corner of the yard where Tommy was hunkering by himself in
+Lewis's jacket, and wiping his mournful eyes with Lewis's hanky. I
+daresay you can jalouse the rest, but I kept Lewis behind after the
+school skailed, and got a full confession out of him. He had tried hard,
+he gave me to understand, to mourn fittingly for his father, but the
+kickbonnety season being on, it was up-hill work, and he was relieved
+when Tommy volunteered to take it off his hands. Tommy's offer was to
+swop jackets every morning for a week or two, and thus properly attired
+to do the mourning for him."
+
+The dominie paused, and regarded his guest quizzically. "Sir," he said
+at length, "laddies are a queer growth; I assure you there was no
+persuading Lewis that it was not a right and honorable compact."
+
+"And what payment," asked McLean, laughing, "did Tommy demand from Lewis
+for this service?"
+
+"Not a farthing, sir--which gives another uncanny glint into his
+character. When he wants money there's none so crafty at getting it, but
+he did this for the pleasure of the thing, or, as he said to Lewis, 'to
+feel what it would be like.' That, I tell you, is the nature of the
+sacket, he has a devouring desire to try on other folk's feelings, as if
+they were so many suits of clothes."
+
+"And from your account he makes them fit him too."
+
+"My certie, he does, and a lippie in the bonnet more than that."
+
+So far the school-master had spoken frankly, even with an occasional grin
+at his own expense, but his words came reluctantly when he had to speak
+of Tommy's prospects at the bursary examinations. "I would rather say
+nothing on that head," he said, almost coaxingly, "for the laddie has a
+year to reform in yet, and it's never safe to prophesy."
+
+"Still I should have thought that you could guess pretty accurately how
+the boys you mean to send up in a year's time are likely to do? You have
+had a long experience, and, I am told, a glorious one."
+
+"'Deed, there's no denying it," answered the dominie, with a pride he
+had won the right to wear. "If all the ministers, for instance, I have
+turned out in this bit school were to come back together, they could
+hold the General Assembly in the square."
+
+He lay back in his big chair, a complacent dominie again. "Guess the
+chances of my laddies!" he cried, forgetting what he had just said, and
+that there was a Tommy to bother him. "I tell you, sir, that's a matter
+on which I'm never deceived, I can tell the results so accurately that a
+wise Senatus would give my lot the bursaries I say they'll carry,
+without setting them down to examination-papers at all." And for the
+next half-hour he was reciting cases in proof of his sagacity.
+
+"Wonderful!" chimed in McLean. "I see it is evident you can tell me how
+Tommy Sandys will do," but at that Cathro's rush of words again subsided
+into a dribble.
+
+"He's the worst Latinist that ever had the impudence to think of
+bursaries," he groaned.
+
+"And his Greek--" asked McLean, helping on the conversation as far as
+possible.
+
+"His Greek, sir, could be packed in a pill-box."
+
+"That does not sound promising. But the best mathematicians are
+sometimes the worst linguists."
+
+"His Greek is better than his mathematics," said Cathro, and he fell
+into lamentation. "I have had no luck lately," he sighed. "The laddies I
+have to prepare for college are second-raters, and the vexing thing is,
+that when a real scholar is reared in Thrums, instead of his being
+handed over to me for the finishing, they send him to Mr. Ogilvy in
+Glenquharity. Did Miss Ailie ever mention Gavin Dishart to you--the
+minister's son? I just craved to get the teaching of that laddie, he was
+the kind you can cram with learning till there's no room left for
+another spoonful, and they bude send him to Mr. Ogilvy, and you'll see
+he'll stand high above my loons in the bursary list. And then Ogilvy
+will put on sic airs that there will be no enduring him. Ogilvy and I,
+sir, we are engaged in an everlasting duel; when we send students to the
+examinations, it is we two who are the real competitors, but what chance
+have I, when he is represented by a Gavin Dishart and my man is Tommy
+Sandys?"
+
+McLean was greatly disappointed. "Why send Tommy up at all if he is so
+backward?" he said. "You are sure you have not exaggerated his
+deficiencies?"
+
+"Well, not much at any rate. But he baffles me; one day I think him a
+perfect numskull, and the next he makes such a show of the small drop
+of scholarship he has that I'm not sure but what he may be a genius."
+
+"That sounds better. Does he study hard?"
+
+"Study! He is the most careless whelp that ever--"
+
+"But if I were to give him an inducement to study?"
+
+"Such as?" asked Cathro, who could at times be as inquisitive as the
+doctor.
+
+"We need not go into that. But suppose it appealed to him?"
+
+Cathro considered. "To be candid," he said, "I don't think he could
+study, in the big meaning of the word. I daresay I'm wrong, but I have a
+feeling that whatever knowledge that boy acquires he will dig out of
+himself. There is something inside him, or so I think at times, that is
+his master, and rebels against book-learning. No, I can't tell what it
+is; when we know that we shall know the real Tommy."
+
+"And yet," said McLean, curiously, "you advise his being allowed to
+compete for a bursary. That, if you will excuse my saying so, sounds
+foolish to me."
+
+"It can't seem so foolish to you," replied Cathro, scratching his head,
+"as it seems to me six days in seven."
+
+"And you know that Aaron Latta has sworn to send him to the herding if
+he does not carry a bursary. Surely the wisest course would be to
+apprentice him now to some trade--"
+
+"What trade would not be the worse of him? He would cut off his fingers
+with a joiner's saw, and smash them with a mason's mell; put him in a
+brot behind a counter, and in some grand, magnanimous mood he would sell
+off his master's things for nothing; make a clerk of him, and he would
+only ravel the figures; send him to the soldiering, and he would have a
+sudden impulse to fight on the wrong side. No, no, Miss Ailie says he
+has a gift for the ministry, and we must cling to that."
+
+In thus sheltering himself behind Miss Ailie, where he had never skulked
+before, the dominie showed how weak he thought his position, and he
+added, with a brazen laugh, "Then if he does distinguish himself at the
+examinations I can take the credit for it, and if he comes back in
+disgrace I shall call you to witness that I only sent him to them at her
+instigation."
+
+"All which," maintained McLean, as he put on his top-coat, "means that
+somehow, against your better judgment, you think he may distinguish
+himself after all."
+
+"You've found me out," answered Cathro, half relieved, half sorry. "I
+had no intention of telling you so much, but as you have found me out
+I'll make a clean breast of it. Unless something unexpected happens to
+the laddie--unless he take to playing at scholarship as if it were a
+Jacobite rebellion, for instance--he shouldna have the ghost of a chance
+of a bursary, and if he were any other boy as ill-prepared I should be
+ashamed to send him up, but he is Tommy Sandys, you see, and--it is a
+terrible thing to say, but it's Gospel truth, it's Gospel truth--I'm
+trusting to the possibility of his diddling the examiners!"
+
+It was a startling confession for a conscientious dominie, and Cathro
+flung out his hands as if to withdraw the words, but his visitor would
+have no tampering with them. "So that sums up Tommy, so far as you know
+him," he said as he bade his host good-night.
+
+"It does," Cathro admitted, grimly, "but if what you wanted was a
+written certificate of character I should like to add this, that never
+did any boy sit on my forms whom I had such a pleasure in thrashing."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+END OF THE JACOBITE RISING
+
+
+In the small hours of the following night the pulse of Thrums stopped
+for a moment, and then went on again, but the only watcher remained
+silent, and the people rose in the morning without knowing that they had
+lost one of their number while they slept. In the same ignorance they
+toiled through a long day.
+
+It was a close October day in the end of a summer that had lingered to
+give the countryside nothing better than a second crop of haws. Beneath
+the beeches leaves lay in yellow heaps like sliced turnip, and over all
+the strath was a pink haze; the fields were singed brown, except where a
+recent ploughing gave them a mourning border. From early morn men, women
+and children (Tommy among them) were in the fields taking up their
+potatoes, half-a-dozen gatherers at first to every drill, and by noon it
+seemed a dozen, though the new-comers were but stout sacks, now able to
+stand alone. By and by heavy-laden carts were trailing into Thrums,
+dog-tired toilers hanging on behind, not to be dragged, but for an
+incentive to keep them trudging, boys and girls falling asleep on top
+of the load, and so neglecting to enjoy the ride which was their
+recompense for lifting. A growing mist mixed with the daylight, and
+still there were a few people out, falling over their feet with fatigue;
+it took silent possession, and then the shadowy forms left in the fields
+were motionless and would remain there until carted to garrets and
+kitchen corners and other winter quarters on Monday morning. There were
+few gad-abouts that Saturday night. Washings were not brought in, though
+Mr. Dishart had preached against the unseemly sight of linen hanging on
+the line on the Sabbath-day. Innes, stravaiging the square and wynds in
+his apple-cart, jingled his weights in vain, unable to shake even
+moneyed children off their stools, and when at last he told his beast to
+go home they took with them all the stir of the town. Family exercise
+came on early in many houses, and as the gude wife handed her man the
+Bible she said entreatingly, "A short ane." After that one might have
+said that no earthly knock could bring them to their doors, yet within
+an hour the town was in a ferment.
+
+When Tommy and Elspeth reached the Den the mist lay so thick that they
+had to feel their way through it to the _Ailie_, where they found
+Gavinia alone and scared. "Was you peeping in, trying to fleg me twa
+three minutes syne?" she asked, eagerly, and when they shook their
+heads, she looked cold with fear.
+
+"As sure as death," she said, "there was some living thing standing
+there; I couldna see it for the rime, but I heard it breathing hard."
+
+Tommy felt Elspeth's hand begin to tremble, and he said "McLean!"
+hastily, though he knew that McLean had not yet left the Quharity Arms.
+Next moment Corp arrived with another story as unnerving.
+
+"Has Grizel no come yet?" he asked, in a troubled voice. "Tommy, hearken
+to this, a light has been burning in Double Dykes and the door swinging
+open a' day! I saw it mysel', and so did Willum Dods."
+
+"Did you go close?"
+
+"Na faags! Willum was hol'ing and I was lifting, so we hadna time in the
+daylight, and wha would venture near the Painted Lady's house on sic a
+night?"
+
+Even Tommy felt uneasy, but when Gavinia cried, "There's something
+uncanny in being out the night; tell us what was in Mr. McLean's bottle,
+Tommy, and syne we'll run hame," he became Commander Sandys again, and
+replied, blankly, "What bottle?"
+
+"The ane I warned you he was to fling into the water; dinna dare tell me
+you hinna got it."
+
+"I know not what thou art speaking about," said Tommy; "but it's a queer
+thing, it's a queer thing, Gavinia"--here he fixed her with his
+terrifying eye--"I happen to have found a--another bottle," and still
+glaring at her he explained that he had found his bottle floating on
+the horizon. It contained a letter to him, which he now read aloud. It
+was signed "The Villain Stroke, his mark," and announced that the
+writer, "tired of this relentless persecution," had determined to reform
+rather than be killed. "Meet me at the Cuttle Well, on Saturday, when
+the eight-o'clock bell is ringing," he wrote, "and I shall there make
+you an offer for my freedom."
+
+The crew received this communication with shouts, Gavinia's cry of "Five
+shillings, if no ten!" expressing the general sentiment, but it would
+not have been like Tommy to think with them. "You poor things," he said,
+"you just believe everything you're telled! How do I know that this is
+not a trick of Stroke's to bring me here when he is some other gait
+working mischief?"
+
+Corp was impressed, but Gavinia said, short-sightedly, "There's no sign
+o't."
+
+"There's ower much sign o't," retorted Tommy. "What's this story about
+Double Dykes? And how do we ken that there hasna been foul work there,
+and this man at the bottom o't? I tell you, before the world's half an
+hour older, I'll find out," and he looked significantly at Corp, who
+answered, quaking, "I winna gang by mysel', no, Tommy, I winna!"
+
+So Tommy had to accompany him, saying, valiantly, "I'm no feared, and
+this rime is fine for hodding in," to which Corp replied, as firmly,
+"Neither am I, and we can aye keep touching cauld iron." Before they
+were half way down the Double Dykes they got a thrill, for they
+realized, simultaneously, that they were being followed. They stopped
+and gripped each other hard, but now they could hear nothing.
+
+"The Painted Lady!" Corp whispered.
+
+"Stroke!" Tommy replied, as cautiously. He was excited rather than
+afraid, and had the pluck to cry, "Wha's that? I see you!"--but no
+answer came back through the mist, and now the boys had a double reason
+for pressing forward.
+
+"Can you see the house, Corp?"
+
+"It should be here about, but it's smored in rime."
+
+"I'm touching the paling. I ken the road to the window now."
+
+"Hark! What's that?"
+
+It sounded like devil's music in front of them, and they fell back until
+Corp remembered, "It maun be the door swinging open, and squealing and
+moaning on its hinges. Tommy, I take ill wi' that. What can it mean?"
+
+"I'm here to find out." They reached the window where Tommy had watched
+once before, and looking in together saw the room plainly by the light
+of a lamp which stood on the spinet. There was no one inside, but
+otherwise Tommy noticed little change. The fire was out, having
+evidently burned itself done, the bed-clothes were in some disorder. To
+avoid the creaking door, the boys passed round the back of the house to
+the window of the other room. This room was without a light, but its
+door stood open and sufficient light came from the kitchen to show that
+it also was untenanted. It seemed to have been used as a lumber-room.
+
+The boys turned to go, passing near the front of the empty house, where
+they shivered and stopped, mastered by a feeling they could not have
+explained. The helpless door, like the staring eyes of a dead person,
+seemed to be calling to them to shut it, and Tommy was about to steal
+forward for this purpose when Corp gripped him and whispered that the
+light had gone out. It was true, though Tommy disbelieved until they had
+returned to the east window to make sure.
+
+"There maun be folk in the hoose, Tommy!"
+
+"You saw it was toom. The lamp had gone out itself, or else--what's
+that?"
+
+It was the unmistakable closing of a door, softly but firmly. "The wind
+has blown it to," they tried to persuade themselves, though aware that
+there was not sufficient wind for this. After a long period of stillness
+they gathered courage to go to the door and shake it. It was not only
+shut, but locked.
+
+On their way back through the Double Dykes they were silent, listening
+painfully but hearing nothing. But when they reached the Coffin Brig
+Tommy said, "Dinna say nothing about this to Elspeth, it would terrify
+her;" he was always so thoughtful for Elspeth.
+
+"But what do you think o't a'?" Corp said, imploringly.
+
+"I winna tell you yet," replied Tommy, cautiously.
+
+When they boarded the _Ailie_, where the two girls were very glad to see
+them again, the eight-o'clock bell had begun to ring, and thus Tommy had
+a reasonable excuse for hurrying his crew to the Cuttle Well without
+saying anything of his expedition to Double Dykes, save that he had not
+seen Grizel. At the Well they had not long to wait before Mr. McLean
+suddenly appeared out of the mist, and to their astonishment Miss Ailie
+was leaning on his arm. She was blushing and smiling too, in a way
+pretty to see, though it spoilt the effect of Stroke's statement.
+
+The first thing Stroke did was to give up his sword to Tommy and to
+apologize for its being an umbrella on account of the unsettled state of
+the weather, and then Corp led three cheers, the captain alone declining
+to join in, for he had an uneasy feeling that he was being ridiculed.
+
+"But I thought there were five of you," Mr. McLean said; "where is the
+fifth?"
+
+"You ken best," replied Tommy, sulkily, and sulky he remained throughout
+the scene, because he knew he was not the chief figure in it. Having
+this knowledge to depress him, it is to his credit that he bore himself
+with dignity throughout, keeping his crew so well in hand that they
+dared not give expression to their natural emotions.
+
+"As you are aware, Mr. Sandys," McLean began solemnly, "I have come
+here to sue for pardon. It is not yours to give, you reply, the Queen
+alone can pardon, and I grant it; but, sir, is it not well known to all
+of us that you can get anything out of her you like?"
+
+Tommy's eyes roved suspiciously, but the suppliant proceeded in the same
+tone. "What are my offences? The first is that I have been bearing arms
+(unwittingly) against the Throne; the second, that I have brought
+trouble to the lady by my side, who has the proud privilege of calling
+you her friend. But, Sandys, such amends as can come from an erring man
+I now offer to make most contritely. Intercede with Her Majesty on my
+behalf, and on my part I promise to war against her no more. I am
+willing to settle down in the neighboring town as a law-abiding citizen,
+whom you can watch with eagle eye. Say, what more wouldst thou of the
+unhappy Stuart?"
+
+But Tommy would say nothing, he only looked doubtfully at Miss Ailie,
+and that set McLean off again. "You ask what reparation I shall make to
+this lady? Sandys, I tell thee that here also thou hast proved too
+strong for me. In the hope that she would plead for me with you, I have
+been driven to offer her my hand in marriage, and she is willing to take
+me if thou grantest thy consent."
+
+At this Gavinia jumped with joy, and then cried, "Up wi' her!" words
+whose bearing the school-mistress fortunately did not understand. All
+save Tommy looked at Miss Ailie, and she put her arm on Mr. McLean's,
+and, yes, it was obvious, Miss Ailie was a lover at the Cuttle Well at
+last, like so many others. She had often said that the Den parade was
+vulgar, but she never said it again.
+
+It was unexpected news to Tommy, but that was not what lowered his head
+in humiliation now. In the general rejoicing he had been nigh forgotten;
+even Elspeth was hanging on Miss Ailie's skirts, Gavinia had eyes for
+none but lovers, Corp was rapturously examining five half-crowns that
+had been dropped into his hands for distribution. Had Tommy given an
+order now, who would have obeyed it? His power was gone, his crew would
+not listen to another word against Mr. McLean.
+
+"Tommy thought Mr. McLean hated you!" said Elspeth to Miss Ailie.
+
+"It was queer you made sic a mistake!" said Corp to Tommy.
+
+"Oh, the tattie-doolie!" cried Gavinia.
+
+So they knew that Mr. McLean had only been speaking sarcastically; of a
+sudden they saw through and despised their captain. Tears of
+mortification rose in Tommy's eyes, and kind-hearted Miss Ailie saw
+them, and she thought it was her lover's irony that made him smart. She
+had said little hitherto, but now she put her hand on his shoulder, and
+told them all that she did indeed owe the supreme joy that had come to
+her to him. "No, Gavinia," she said, blushing, "I will not give you the
+particulars, but I assure you that had it not been for Tommy, Mr. McLean
+would never have asked me to marry him."
+
+Elspeth crossed proudly to the side of her noble brother (who could
+scarcely trust his ears), and Gavinia cried, in wonder, "What did he
+do?"
+
+Now McLean had seen Tommy's tears also, and being a kindly man he
+dropped the satirist and chimed in warmly, "And if I had not asked Miss
+Ailie to marry me I should have lost the great happiness of my life, so
+you may all imagine how beholden I feel to Tommy."
+
+Again Tommy was the centre-piece, and though these words were as
+puzzling to him as to his crew, their sincerity was unmistakable, and
+once more his head began to waggle complacently.
+
+"And to show how grateful we are," said Miss Ailie, "we are to give him
+a--a sort of marriage present. We are to double the value of the bursary
+he wins at the university--" She could get no farther, for now Elspeth
+was hugging her, and Corp cheering frantically, and Mr. McLean thought
+it necessary to add the warning, "If he does carry a bursary, you
+understand, for should he fail I give him nothing."
+
+"Him fail!" exclaimed Corp, with whom Miss Ailie of course agreed. "And
+he can spend the money in whatever way he chooses," she said, "what will
+you do with it, Tommy?"
+
+The lucky boy answered, instantly, "I'll take Elspeth to Aberdeen to
+bide with me," and then Elspeth hugged him, and Miss Ailie said, in a
+delighted aside to Mr. McLean, "I told you so," and he, too, was well
+pleased.
+
+"It was the one thing needed to make him work," the school-mistress
+whispered. "Is not his love for his sister beautiful?"
+
+McLean admitted that it was, but half-banteringly he said to Elspeth:
+"What could you do in lodgings, you excited mite?"
+
+"I can sit and look at Tommy," she answered, quickly.
+
+"But he will be away for hours at his classes."
+
+"I'll sit at the window waiting for him," said she.
+
+"And I'll run back quick," said Tommy.
+
+All this time another problem had been bewildering Gavinia, and now she
+broke in, eagerly: "But what was it he did? I thought he was agin Mr.
+McLean."
+
+"And so did I," said Corp.
+
+"I cheated you grandly," replied Tommy with the audacity he found so
+useful.
+
+"And a' the time you was pretending to be agin him," screamed Gavinia,
+"was you--was you bringing this about on the sly?"
+
+Tommy looked up into Mr. McLean's face, but could get no guidance from
+it, so he said nothing; he only held his head higher than ever. "Oh, the
+clever little curse!" cried Corp, and Elspeth's delight was as ecstatic,
+though differently worded. Yet Gavinia stuck to her problem, "How did
+you do it, what was it you did?" and the cruel McLean said: "You may
+tell her, Tommy; you have my permission."
+
+It would have been an awkward position for most boys, and even
+Tommy--but next moment he said, quite coolly: "I think you and me and
+Miss Ailie should keep it to oursels, Gavinia's sic a gossip."
+
+"Oh, how thoughtful of him!" cried Miss Ailie, the deceived, and McLean
+said: "How very thoughtful!" but now he saw in a flash why Mr. Cathro
+still had hopes that Tommy might carry a bursary.
+
+Thus was the repentant McLean pardoned, and nothing remained for him to
+do save to show the crew his Lair, which they had sworn to destroy. He
+had behaved so splendidly that they had forgotten almost that they were
+the emissaries of justice, but not to destroy the Lair seemed a pity, it
+would be such a striking way of bringing their adventures in the Den to
+a close. The degenerate Stuart read this feeling in their faces, and he
+was ready, he said, to show them his Lair if they would first point it
+out to him; but here was a difficulty, for how could they do that? For a
+moment it seemed as if the negotiations must fall through; but Sandys,
+that captain of resource, invited McLean to step aside for a private
+conference, and when they rejoined the others McLean said, gravely, that
+he now remembered where the Lair was and would guide them to it.
+
+They had only to cross a plank, invisible in the mist until they were
+close to it, and climb a slippery bank strewn with fallen trees. McLean,
+with a mock serious air, led the way, Miss Ailie on his arm. Corp and
+Gavinia followed, weighted and hampered by their new half-crowns, and
+Tommy and Elspeth, in the rear, whispered joyously of the coming life.
+And so, very unprepared for it, they moved toward the tragedy of the
+night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+A LETTER TO GOD
+
+
+"Do you keep a light burning in the Lair?" McLean turned to ask,
+forgetting for the moment that it was not their domicile, but his.
+
+"No, there's no light," replied Corp, equally forgetful, but even as he
+spoke he stopped so suddenly that Elspeth struck against him. For he had
+seen a light. "This is queer!" he cried, and both he and Gavinia fell
+back in consternation. McLean pushed forward alone, and was back in a
+trice, with a new expression on his face. "Are you playing some trick on
+me?" he demanded suspiciously of Tommy. "There is some one there; I
+almost ran against a pair of blazing eyes."
+
+"But there's nobody; there can be nobody there," answered Tommy, in a
+bewilderment that was obviously unfeigned, "unless--unless--" He looked
+at Corp, and the eyes of both finished the sentence. The desolate scene
+at Double Dykes, which the meeting with McLean and Miss Ailie had driven
+from their minds, again confronted them, and they seemed once more to
+hear the whimpering of the Painted Lady's door.
+
+"Unless what?" asked the man, impatiently, but still the two boys only
+stared at each other. "The Den's no mous the night," said Corp at last,
+in a low voice, and his unspoken fears spread to the womankind, so that
+Miss Ailie shuddered and Elspeth gripped Tommy with both hands and
+Gavinia whispered, "Let's away hame, we can come back in the daylight."
+
+But McLean chafed and pressed upward, and next moment a girl's voice was
+heard, crying: "It is no business of yours; I won't let you touch her."
+
+"Grizel!" exclaimed Tommy and his crew, simultaneously, and they had no
+more fear until they were inside the Lair. What they saw had best be
+described very briefly. A fire was burning in a corner of the Lair, and
+in front of it, partly covered with a sheet, lay the Painted Lady, dead.
+Grizel stood beside the body guarding it, her hands clenched, her eyes
+very strange. "You sha'n't touch her!" she cried, passionately, and
+repeated it many times, as if she had lost the power to leave off, but
+Corp crept past her and raised the coverlet.
+
+"She's straikit!" he shouted. "Did you do it yoursel', Grizel? God
+behears, she did it hersel'!"
+
+A very long silence it seemed to be after that.
+
+Miss Ailie would have taken the motherless girl to her arms, but first,
+at Corp's discovery, she had drawn back in uncontrollable repulsion, and
+Grizel, about to go to her, saw it, and turned from her to Tommy. Her
+eyes rested on him beseechingly, with a look he saw only once again in
+them until she was a woman, but his first thought was not for Grizel.
+Elspeth was clinging to him, terrified and sobbing, and he cried to her,
+"Shut your een," and then led her tenderly away. He was always good to
+Elspeth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was no lack of sympathy with Grizel when the news spread through
+the town, and unshod men with their gallowses hanging down, and women
+buttoning as they ran, hurried to the Den. But to all the questions put
+to her and to all the kindly offers made, as the body was carried to
+Double Dykes, she only rocked her arms, crying, "I don't want anything
+to eat. I shall stay all night beside her. I am not frightened at my
+mamma. I won't tell you why she was in the Den. I am not sure how long
+she has been dead. Oh, what do these little things matter?"
+
+The great thing was that her mamma should be buried in the cemetery, and
+not in unconsecrated ground with a stake through her as the boys had
+predicted, and it was only after she was promised this that Grizel told
+her little tale. She had feared for a long time that her mamma was dying
+of consumption, but she told no one, because everybody was against her
+and her mamma. Her mamma never knew that she was dying, and sometimes
+she used to get so much better that Grizel hoped she would live a long
+time, but that hope never lasted long. The reason she sat so much with
+Ballingall was just to find out what doctors did to dying people to make
+them live a little longer, and she watched his straiking to be able to
+do it to her mamma when the time came. She was sure none of the women
+would consent to straik her mamma. On the previous night, she could not
+say at what hour, she had been awakened by a cold wind, and so she knew
+that the door was open. She put out her hand in the darkness and found
+that her mamma was not beside her. It had happened before, and she was
+not frightened. She had hidden the key of the door that night and nailed
+down the window, but her mamma had found the key. Grizel rose, lit the
+lamp, and, having dressed hurriedly, set off with wraps to the Den. Her
+mamma was generally as sensible as anybody in Thrums, but sometimes she
+had shaking fits, and after them she thought it was the time of long
+ago. Then she went to the Den to meet a man who had promised, she said,
+to be there, but he never came, and before daybreak Grizel could usually
+induce her to return home. Latterly she had persuaded her mamma to wait
+for him in the old Lair, because it was less cold there, and she had got
+her to do this last night. Her mamma did not seem very unwell, but she
+fell asleep, and she died sleeping, and then Grizel went back to Double
+Dykes for linen and straiked her.
+
+Some say in Thrums that a spade was found in the Lair, but that is only
+the growth of later years. Grizel had done all she could do, and
+through the long Saturday she sat by the side of the body, helpless and
+unable to cry. She knew that it could not remain there much longer, but
+every time she rose to go and confess, fear of the indignities to which
+the body of her darling mamma might be subjected pulled her back. The
+boys had spoken idly, but hunted Grizel, who knew so much less and so
+much more than any of them, believed it all.
+
+It was she who had stood so near Gavinia in the ruined house. She had
+only gone there to listen to human voices. When she discovered from the
+talk of her friends that she had left a light burning at Double Dykes
+and the door open, fear of the suspicions this might give rise to had
+sent her to the house on the heels of the two boys, and it was she who
+had stolen past them in the mist to put out the light and lock the door.
+Then she had returned to her mamma's side.
+
+The doctor was among the listeners, almost the only dry-eyed one, but he
+was not dry-eyed because he felt the artless story least. Again and
+again he rose from his chair restlessly, and Grizel thought he scowled
+at her when he was really scowling at himself; as soon as she had
+finished he cleared the room brusquely of all intruders, and then he
+turned on her passionately.
+
+"Think shame of yoursel'," he thundered, "for keeping me in the dark,"
+and of course she took his words literally, though their full meaning
+was, "I shall scorn myself from this hour for not having won the poor
+child's confidence."
+
+Oh, he was a hard man, Grizel thought, the hardest of them all. But she
+was used to standing up to hard men, and she answered, defiantly: "I did
+mean to tell you, that day you sent me with the bottle to Ballingall, I
+was waiting at the surgery door to tell you, but you were cruel, you
+said I was a thief, and then how could I tell you?"
+
+This, too, struck home, and the doctor winced, but what he said was,
+"You fooled me for a whole week, and the town knows it; do you think I
+can forgive you for that?"
+
+"I don't care whether you forgive me," replied Grizel at once.
+
+"Nor do I care whether you care," he rapped out, all the time wishing he
+could strike himself; "but I'm the doctor of this place, and when your
+mother was ill you should have come straight to me. What had I done that
+you should be afraid of me?"
+
+"I am not afraid of you," she replied, "I am not afraid of anyone, but
+mamma was afraid of you because she knew you had said cruel things about
+her, and I thought--I won't tell you what I thought." But with a little
+pressing she changed her mind and told him. "I was not sure whether you
+would come to see her, though I asked you, and if you came I knew you
+would tell her she was dying, and that would have made her scream. And
+that is not all, I thought you might tell her that she would be buried
+with a stake through her--"
+
+"Oh, these blackguard laddies!" cried McQueen, clenching his fists.
+
+"And so I dared not tell you," Grizel concluded calmly; "I am not
+frightened at you, but I was frightened you would hurt my dear darling
+mamma," and she went and stood defiantly between him and her mother.
+
+The doctor moved up and down the room, crying, "How did I not know of
+this, why was I not told?" and he knew that the fault had been his own,
+and so was furious when Grizel told him so.
+
+"Yes, it is," she insisted, "you knew mamma was an unhappy lady, and
+that the people shouted things against her and terrified her; and you
+must have known, for everybody knew, that she was sometimes silly and
+wandered about all night, and you are a big strong man, and so you
+should have been sorry for her; and if you had been sorry you would have
+come to see her and been kind to her, and then you would have found it
+all out."
+
+"Have done, lassie!" he said, half angrily, half beseechingly, but she
+did not understand that he was suffering, and she went on, relentlessly:
+"And you knew that bad men used to come to see her at night--they have
+not come for a long time--but you never tried to stop their coming, and
+I could have stopped it if I had known they were bad; but I did not know
+at first, and I was only a little girl, and you should have told me."
+
+"Have done!" It was all that he could say, for like many he had heard of
+men visiting the Painted Lady by stealth, and he had only wondered, with
+other gossips, who they were.
+
+He crossed again to the side of the dead woman, "And Ballingall's was
+the only corpse you ever saw straiked?" he said in wonder, she had done
+her work so well. But he was not doubting her; he knew already that this
+girl was clothed in truthfulness.
+
+"Was it you that kept this house so clean?" he asked, almost irritably,
+for he himself was the one undusted, neglected-looking thing in it, and
+he was suddenly conscious of his frayed wristband and of buttons hanging
+by a thread.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What age are you?"
+
+"I think I am thirteen."
+
+He looked long at her, vindictively she thought, but he was only
+picturing the probable future of a painted lady's child, and he said
+mournfully to himself, "Ay, it does not even end here; and that's the
+crowning pity of it." But Grizel only heard him say, "Poor thing!" and
+she bridled immediately.
+
+"I won't let you pity me," she cried.
+
+"You dour brat!" he retorted. "But you need not think you are to have
+everything your own way still. I must get some Monypenny woman to take
+you till the funeral is over, and after that--"
+
+"I won't go," said Grizel, determinedly, "I shall stay with mamma till
+she is buried."
+
+He was not accustomed to contradiction, and he stamped his foot. "You
+shall do as you are told," he said.
+
+"I won't!" replied Grizel, and she also stamped her foot.
+
+"Very well, then, you thrawn tid, but at any rate I'll send in a woman
+to sleep with you."
+
+"I want no one. Do you think I am afraid?"
+
+"I think you will be afraid when you wake up in the darkness, and find
+yourself alone with--with it."
+
+"I sha'n't, I shall remember at once that she is to be buried nicely in
+the cemetery, and that will make me happy."
+
+"You unnatural--"
+
+"Besides, I sha'n't sleep, I have something to do."
+
+His curiosity again got the better of the doctor. "What can you have to
+do at such a time?" he demanded, and her reply surprised him:
+
+"I am to make a dress."
+
+"You!"
+
+"I have made them before now," she said indignantly.
+
+"But at such a time!"
+
+"It is a black dress," she cried, "I don't have one, I am to make it
+out of mamma's."
+
+He said nothing for some time, then "When did you think of this?"
+
+"I thought of it weeks ago, I bought crape at the corner shop to be
+ready, and--"
+
+She thought he was looking at her in horror, and stopped abruptly. "I
+don't care what you think," she said.
+
+"What I do think," he retorted, taking up his hat, "is, that you are a
+most exasperating lassie. If I bide here another minute I believe you'll
+get round me."
+
+"I don't want to get round you."
+
+"Then what makes you say such things? I question if I'll get an hour's
+sleep to-night for thinking of you!"
+
+"I don't want you to think of me!"
+
+He groaned. "What could an untidy, hardened old single man like me do
+with you in his house?" he said. "Oh, you little limmer, to put such a
+thought into my head."
+
+"I never did!" she exclaimed, indignantly.
+
+"It began, I do believe it began," he sighed, "the first time I saw you
+easying Ballingall's pillows."
+
+"What began?"
+
+"You brat, you wilful brat, don't pretend ignorance. You set a trap to
+catch me, and--"
+
+"Oh!" cried Grizel, and she opened the door quickly. "Go away, you
+horrid man," she said.
+
+He liked her the more for this regal action, and therefore it enraged
+him. Sheer anxiety lest he should succumb to her on the spot was what
+made him bluster as he strode off, and "That brat of a Grizel," or "The
+Painted Lady's most unbearable lassie," or "The dour little besom" was
+his way of referring to her in company for days, but if any one agreed
+with him he roared "Don't be a fool, man, she's a wonder, she's a
+delight," or "You have a dozen yourself, Janet, but I wouldna neifer
+Grizel for the lot of them." And it was he, still denouncing her so long
+as he was contradicted, who persuaded the Auld Licht Minister to
+officiate at the funeral. Then he said to himself, "And now I wash my
+hands of her, I have done all that can be expected of me." He told
+himself this a great many times as if it were a medicine that must be
+taken frequently, and Grizel heard from Tommy, with whom she had some
+strange conversations, that he was going about denouncing her "up hill
+and down dale." But she did not care, she was so--so happy. For a hole
+was dug for the Painted Lady in the cemetery, just as if she had been a
+good woman, and Mr. Dishart conducted the service in Double Dykes before
+the removal of the body, nor did he say one word that could hurt Grizel,
+perhaps because his wife had drawn a promise from him. A large gathering
+of men followed the coffin, three of them because, as yon may remember,
+Grizel had dared them to stay away, but all the others out of sympathy
+with a motherless child who, as the procession started, rocked her arms
+in delight because her mamma was being buried respectably.
+
+Being a woman, she could not attend the funeral, and so the chief
+mourner was Tommy, as you could see by the position he took at the
+grave, and by the white bands Grizel had sewn on his sleeves. He was
+looking very important, as if he had something remarkable in prospect,
+but little attention was given him until the cords were dropped into the
+grave, and a prayer offered up, when he pulled Mr. Dishart's coat and
+muttered something about a paper. Those who had been making ready to
+depart swung round again, and the minister told him if he had anything
+to say to speak out.
+
+"It's a paper," Tommy said, nervous yet elated, and addressing all,
+"that Grizel put in the coffin. She told me to tell you about it when
+the cords fell on the lid."
+
+"What sort of a paper?" asked Mr. Dishart, frowning.
+
+"It's--it's a letter to God," Tommy gasped.
+
+Nothing was to be heard except the shovelling of earth into the grave.
+"Hold your spade, John," the minister said to the gravedigger, and then
+even that sound stopped. "Go on," Mr. Dishart signed to the boy.
+
+"Grizel doesna believe her mother has much chance of getting to heaven,"
+Tommy said, "and she wrote the letter to God, so that when he opens the
+coffins on the last day he will find it and read about them."
+
+"About whom?" asked the stern minister.
+
+"About Grizel's father, for one. She doesna know his name, but the
+Painted Lady wore a locket wi' a picture of him on her breast, and it's
+buried wi' her, and Grizel told God to look at it so as to know him. She
+thinks her mother will be damned for having her, and that it winna be
+fair unless God damns her father too."
+
+"Go on," said Mr. Dishart.
+
+"There was three Thrums men--I think they were gentlemen--" Tommy
+continued, almost blithely, "that used to visit the Painted Lady in the
+night time afore she took ill. They wanted Grizel to promise no to tell
+about their going to Double Dykes, and she promised because she was ower
+innocent to know what they went for--but their names are in the letter."
+
+A movement in the crowd was checked by the minister's uplifted arm. "Go
+on," he cried.
+
+"She wouldna tell me who they were, because it would have been
+breaking her promise," said Tommy, "but"--he looked around him
+inquisitively--"but they're here at the funeral."
+
+The mourners were looking sideways at each other, some breathing hard,
+but none dared to speak before the minister. He stood for a long time in
+doubt, but at last he signed to John to proceed with the filling in of
+the grave. Contrary to custom all remained. Not until the grave was
+again level with the sward did Mr. Dishart speak, and then it was with a
+gesture that appalled his hearers. "This grave," he said, raising his
+arm, "is locked till the day of judgment."
+
+Leaving him standing there, a threatening figure, they broke into groups
+and dispersed, walking slowly at first, and then fast, to tell their
+wives.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+AN ELOPEMENT
+
+
+The solitary child remained at Double Dykes, awaiting the arrival of her
+father, for the Painted Lady's manner of leaving the world had made such
+a stir that the neighbors said he must have heard of it, even though he
+were in London, and if he had the heart of a stone he could not desert
+his bairn. They argued thus among themselves, less as people who were
+sure of it than to escape the perplexing question, what to do with
+Grizel if the man never claimed her? and before her they spoke of his
+coming as a certainty, because it would be so obviously the best thing
+for her. In the meantime they overwhelmed her with offers of everything
+she could need, which was kindly but not essential, for after the
+funeral expenses had been paid (Grizel insisted on paying them herself)
+she had still several gold pieces, found in her mamma's beautiful
+tortoise-shell purse, and there were nearly twenty pounds in the bank.
+
+But day after day passed, and the man had not come. Perhaps he resented
+the Painted Lady's ostentatious death; which, if he was nicely strung,
+must have jarred upon his nerves. He could hardly have acknowledged
+Grizel now without publicity being given to his private concerns. Or he
+may never have heard of the Painted Lady's death, or if he read of it,
+he may not have known which painted lady in particular she was. Or he
+may have married, and told his wife all and she had forgiven him, which
+somehow, according to the plays and the novels, cuts the past adrift
+from a man and enables him to begin again at yesterday. Whatever the
+reason, Grizel's father was in no hurry to reveal himself, and though
+not to her, among themselves the people talked of the probability of his
+not coming at all. She could not remain alone at Double Dykes, they all
+admitted, but where, then, should she go? No fine lady in need of a
+handmaid seemed to think a painted lady's child would suit; indeed,
+Grizel at first sight had not the manner that attracts philanthropists.
+Once only did the problem approach solution; a woman in the Den-head was
+willing to take the child because (she expressed it) as she had seven
+she might as well have eight, but her man said no, he would not have his
+bairns fil't. Others would have taken her cordially for a few weeks or
+months, had they not known that at the end of this time they would be
+blamed, even by themselves, if they let her go. All, in short, were
+eager to show her kindness if one would give her a home, but where was
+that one to be found?
+
+Much of this talk came to Grizel through Tommy, and she told him in the
+house of Double Dykes that people need not trouble themselves about her,
+for she had no wish to stay with them. It was only charity they brought
+her; no one wanted her for herself. "It is because I am a child of
+shame," she told him, dry-eyed.
+
+He fidgeted on his chair, and asked, "What's that?" not very honestly.
+
+"I don't know," she said, "no one will tell me, but it is something you
+can't love."
+
+"You have a terrible wish to be loved," he said in wonder, and she
+nodded her head wistfully. "That is not what I wish for most of all,
+though," she told him, and when he asked what she wished for most of
+all, she said, "To love somebody; oh, it would be sweet!"
+
+To Tommy, most sympathetic of mortals, she seemed a very pathetic little
+figure, and tears came to his eyes as he surveyed her; he could always
+cry very easily.
+
+"If it wasna for Elspeth," he began, stammering, "I could love you, but
+you winna let a body do onything on the sly."
+
+It was a vague offer, but she understood, and became the old Grizel at
+once. "I don't want you to love me," she said indignantly; "I don't
+think you know how to love."
+
+"Neither can you know, then," retorted Tommy, huffily, "for there's
+nobody for you to love."
+
+"Yes, there is," she said, "and I do love her and she loves me."
+
+"But wha is she?"
+
+"That girl." To his amazement she pointed to her own reflection in the
+famous mirror the size of which had scandalized Thrums. Tommy thought
+this affection for herself barely respectable, but he dared not say so
+lest he should be put to the door. "I love her ever so much," Grizel
+went on, "and she is so fond of me, she hates to see me unhappy. Don't
+look so sad, dearest, darlingest," she cried vehemently; "I love you,
+you know, oh, you sweet!" and with each epithet she kissed her
+reflection and looked defiantly at the boy.
+
+"But you canna put your arms round her and hug her," he pointed out
+triumphantly, and so he had the last word after all. Unfortunately
+Grizel kept this side of her, new even to Tommy, hidden from all others,
+and her unresponsiveness lost her many possible friends. Even Miss
+Ailie, who now had a dressmaker in the blue-and-white room, sitting on a
+bedroom chair and sewing for her life (oh, the agony--or is it the
+rapture?--of having to decide whether to marry in gray with beads or
+brown plain to the throat), even sympathetic Miss Ailie, having met with
+several rebuffs, said that Grizel had a most unaffectionate nature, and,
+"Ay, she's hardy," agreed the town, "but it's better, maybe, for
+hersel'." There are none so unpopular as the silent ones.
+
+If only Miss Ailie, or others like her, could have slipped noiselessly
+into Double Dykes at night, they would have found Grizel's pillow wet.
+But she would have heard them long before they reached the door, and
+jumped to the floor in terror, thinking it was her father's step at
+last. For, unknown to anyone, his coming, which the town so anxiously
+desired, was her one dread. She had told Tommy what she should say to
+him if he came, and Tommy had been awed and delighted, they were such
+scathing things; probably, had the necessity arisen, she would have
+found courage to say them, but they were made up in the daytime, and at
+night they brought less comfort. Then she listened fearfully and longed
+for the morning, wild ideas coursing through her head of flying before
+he could seize her; but when morning came it brought other thoughts, as
+of the strange remarks she had heard about her mamma and herself during
+the past few days. To brood over these was the most unhealthy occupation
+she could find, but it was her only birthright. Many of the remarks came
+unguardedly from lips that had no desire to pain her, others fell in a
+rage because she would not tell what were the names in her letter to
+God. The words that troubled her most, perhaps, were the doctor's, "She
+is a brave lass, but it must be in her blood." They were not intended
+for her ears, but she heard. "What did he mean?" she asked Miss Ailie,
+Mrs. Dishart, and others who came to see her, and they replied
+awkwardly, that it had only been a doctor's remark, of no importance to
+people who were well. "Then why are you crying?" she demanded, looking
+them full in the face with eyes there was no deceiving.
+
+"Oh, why is everyone afraid to tell me the truth!" she would cry,
+beating her palms in anguish.
+
+She walked into McQueen's surgery and said, "Could you not cut it out?"
+so abruptly that he wondered what she was speaking about.
+
+"The bad thing that is in my blood," she explained. "Do cut it out, I
+sha'n't scream. I promise not to scream."
+
+He sighed and answered, "If it could be cut out, lassie, I would try to
+do it, though it was the most dangerous of operations."
+
+She looked in anguish at him. "There are cleverer doctors than you,
+aren't there?" she asked, and he was not offended.
+
+"Ay, a hantle cleverer," he told her, "but none so clever as that. God
+help you, bairn, if you have to do it yourself some day."
+
+"Can I do it myself?" she cried, brightening. "I shall do it now. Is it
+done with a knife?"
+
+"With a sharper knife than a surgeon's," he answered, and then,
+regretting he had said so much, he tried to cheer her. But that he could
+not do. "You are afraid to tell me the truth too," she said, and when
+she went away he was very sorry for her, but not so sorry as she was
+for herself. "When I am grown up," she announced dolefully, to Tommy, "I
+shall be a bad woman, just like mamma."
+
+"Not if you try to be good," he said.
+
+"Yes, I shall. There is something in my blood that will make me bad, and
+I so wanted to be good. Oh! oh! oh!"
+
+She told him of the things she had heard people say, but though they
+perplexed him almost as much as her, he was not so hopeless of learning
+their meaning, for here was just the kind of difficulty he liked to
+overcome. "I'll get it out o' Blinder," he said, with confidence in his
+ingenuity, "and then I'll tell you what he says." But however much he
+might strive to do so, Tommy could never repeat anything without giving
+it frills and other adornment of his own making, and Grizel knew this.
+"I must hear what he says myself," she insisted.
+
+"But he winna speak plain afore you."
+
+"Yes, he will, if he does not know I am there."
+
+The plot succeeded, though only partially, for so quick was the blind
+man's sense of hearing that in the middle of the conversation he said,
+sharply, "Somebody's ahint the dyke!" and he caught Grizel by the
+shoulder. "It's the Painted Lady's lassie," he said when she screamed,
+and he stormed against Tommy for taking such advantage of his blindness.
+But to her he said, gently, "I daresay you egged him on to this,
+meaning well, but you maun forget most of what I've said, especially
+about being in the blood. I spoke in haste, it doesna apply to the like
+of you."
+
+"Yes, it does," replied Grizel, and all that had been revealed to her
+she carried hot to the surgery, Tommy stopping at the door in as great
+perturbation as herself. "I know what being in the blood is now," she
+said, tragically, to McQueen, "there is something about it in the Bible.
+I am the child of evil passions, and that means that I was born with
+wickedness in my blood. It is lying sleeping in me just now because I am
+only thirteen, and if I can prevent its waking when I am grown up I
+shall always be good, but a very little thing will waken it; it wants so
+much to be wakened, and if it is once wakened it will run all through
+me, and soon I shall be like mamma."
+
+It was all horribly clear to her, and she would not wait for words of
+comfort that could only obscure the truth. Accompanied by Tommy, who
+said nothing, but often glanced at her fascinated yet alarmed, as if
+expecting to see the ghastly change come over her at any moment--for he
+was as convinced as she, and had the livelier imagination--she returned
+to Monypenny to beg of Blinder to tell her one thing more. And he told
+her, not speaking lightly, but because his words contained a solemn
+warning to a girl who, he thought, might need it.
+
+"What sort of thing would be likeliest to waken the wickedness?" she
+asked, holding her breath for the answer.
+
+"Keeping company wi' ill men," said Blinder, gravely.
+
+"Like the man who made mamma wicked, like my father?"
+
+"Ay," Blinder replied, "fly from the like of him, my lass, though it
+should be to the other end of the world."
+
+She stood quite still, with a most sorrowful face, and then ran away,
+ran so swiftly that when Tommy, who had lingered for a moment, came to
+the door she was already out of sight. Scarcely less excited than she,
+he set off for Double Dykes, his imagination in such a blaze that he
+looked fearfully in the pools of the burn for a black frock. But Grizel
+had not drowned herself; she was standing erect in her home, like one at
+bay, her arms rigid, her hands clenched, and when he pushed open the
+door she screamed.
+
+"Grizel," said the distressed boy, "did you think I was him come for
+you?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Maybe he'll no come. The folk think he winna come."
+
+"But if he does, if he does!"
+
+"Maybe you needna go wi' him unless you're willing?"
+
+"I must, he can compel me, because he is my father. Oh! oh! oh!" She
+lay down on the bed, and on her eyes there slowly formed the little
+wells of water Tommy was to know so well in time. He stood by her side
+in anguish; for though his own tears came at the first call, he could
+never face them in others.
+
+"Grizel," he said impulsively, "there's just one thing for you to do.
+You have money, and you maun run away afore he comes!"
+
+She jumped up at that. "I have thought of it," she answered "I am always
+thinking about it, but how can I, oh, now can I? It would not be
+respectable."
+
+"To run away?"
+
+"To go by myself," said the poor girl, "and I do want to be respectable,
+it would be sweet."
+
+In some ways Tommy was as innocent as she, and her reasoning seemed to
+him to be sound. She was looking at him woefully, and entreaty was on
+her face; all at once he felt what a lonely little crittur she was, and,
+in a burst of manhood,--
+
+"But, dinna prig wi' me to go with you," he said, struggling.
+
+"I have not!" she answered, panting, and she had not in words, but the
+mute appeal was still on her face.
+
+"Grizel," he cried, "I'll come!"
+
+Then she seized his hand and pressed it to her breast, saying, "Oh,
+Tommy, I am so fond of you!"
+
+It was the first time she had admitted it, and his head wagged well
+content, as if saying for him, "I knew you would understand me some
+day." But next moment the haunting shadow that so often overtook him in
+the act of soaring fell cold upon his mind, and "I maun take Elspeth!"
+he announced, as if Elspeth had him by the leg.
+
+"You sha'n't!" said Grizel's face.
+
+"She winna let go," said Tommy's.
+
+Grizel quivered from top to toe. "I hate Elspeth!" she cried, with
+curious passion, and the more moral Tommy was ashamed of her.
+
+"You dinna ken how fond o' her I am," he said.
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"Then you shouldna want me to leave her and go wi' you."
+
+"That is why I want it," Grizel blurted out, and now we are all ashamed
+of her. But fortunately Tommy did not see how much she had admitted in
+that hasty cry, and as neither would give way to the other they parted
+stiffly, his last words being "Mind, it wouldna be respectable to go by
+yoursel'," and hers "I don't care, I'm going." Nevertheless it was she
+who slept easily that night, and he who tossed about almost until
+cockcrow. She had only one ugly dream, of herself wandering from door to
+door in a strange town, asking for lodgings, but the woman who answered
+her weary knocks--there were many doors but it was invariably the same
+woman--always asked, suspiciously, "Is Tommy with you?" and Grizel shook
+her head, and then the woman drove her away, perceiving that she was
+not respectable. This woke her, and she feared the dream would come
+true, but she clenched her fists in the darkness, saying, "I can't help
+it, I am going, and I won't have Elspeth," and after that she slept in
+peace. In the meantime Tommy the imaginative--but that night he was not
+Tommy, rather was he Grizel, for he saw her as we can only see
+ourselves. Now she--or he, if you will--had been caught by her father
+and brought back, and she turned into a painted thing like her mother.
+She brandished a brandy bottle and a stream of foul words ran lightly
+from her mouth and suddenly stopped, because she was wailing "I wanted
+so to be good, it is sweet to be good!" Now a man with a beard was
+whipping her, and Tommy felt each lash on his own body, so that he had
+to strike out, and he started up in bed, and the horrible thing was that
+he had never been asleep. Thus it went on until early morning, when his
+eyes were red and his body was damp with sweat.
+
+But now again he was Tommy, and at first even to think of leaving
+Elspeth was absurd. Yet it would be pleasant to leave Aaron, who
+disliked him so much. To disappear without a word would be a fine
+revenge, for the people would say that Aaron must have ill-treated him,
+and while they searched the pools of the burn for his body, Aaron would
+be looking on trembling, perhaps with a policeman's hand on his
+shoulder. Tommy saw the commotion as vividly as if the searchers were
+already out and he in a tree looking down at them; but in a second he
+also heard Elspeth skirling, and down he flung himself from the tree,
+crying, "I'm here, Elspeth, dinna greet; oh, what a brute I've been!"
+No, he could not leave Elspeth, how wicked of Grizel to expect it of
+him; she was a bad one, Grizel.
+
+But having now decided not to go, his sympathy with the girl who was to
+lose him returned in a rush, and before he went to school he besought
+her to--it amounted to this, to be more like himself; that is, he begged
+her to postpone her departure indefinitely, not to make up her mind
+until to-morrow--or the day after--or the day after that. He produced
+reasons, as that she had only four pounds and some shillings now, while
+by and by she might get the Painted Lady's money, at present in the
+bank; also she ought to wait for the money that would come to her from
+the roup of the furniture. But Grizel waived all argument aside; secure
+in her four pounds and shillings she was determined to go to-night, for
+her father might be here to-morrow; she was going to London because it
+was so big that no one could ever find her there, and she would never,
+never write to Tommy to tell him how she fared, lest the letter put her
+father on her track. He implored her to write once, so that the money
+owing her might be forwarded, but even this bribe did not move her, and
+he set off for school most gloomily.
+
+Cathro was specially aggravating that day, nagged him, said before the
+whole school that he was a numskull, even fell upon him with the tawse,
+and for no earthly reason except that Tommy would not bother his head
+with the _oratio obliqua_. If there is any kind of dominie more
+maddening than another, it is the one who will not leave you alone (ask
+any thoughtful boy). How wretched the lot of him whose life is cast
+among fools not capable of understanding him; what was that saying about
+entertaining angels unawares? London! Grizel had more than sufficient
+money to take two there, and once in London, a wonder such as himself
+was bound to do wondrous things. Now that he thought of it, to become a
+minister was abhorrent to him; to preach would be rather nice, oh, what
+things he should say (he began to make them up, and they were so grand
+that he almost wept), but to be good after the sermon was over, always
+to be good (even when Elspeth was out of the way), never to think queer
+unsayable things, never to say Stroke, never, in short, to "find a
+way"--he was appalled. If it had not been for Elspeth--
+
+So even Elspeth did not need him. When he went home from school,
+thinking only of her, he found that she had gone to the Auld Licht manse
+to play with little Margaret. Very well, if such was her wish, he would
+go. Nobody wanted him except Grizel. Perhaps when news came from London
+of his greatness, they would think more of him. He would send a letter
+to Thrums, asking Mr. McLean to transfer his kindness to Elspeth. That
+would show them what a noble fellow he was. Elspeth would really benefit
+by his disappearance; he was running away for Elspeth's sake. And when
+he was great, which would be in a few years, he would come back for her.
+
+But no, he--. The dash represents Tommy swithering once more, and he was
+at one or other end of the swither all day. When he acted sharply it was
+always on impulse, and as soon as the die was cast he was a philosopher
+with no regrets. But when he had time to reflect, he jumped miserably
+back and forward. So when Grizel was ready to start, he did not know in
+the least what he meant to do.
+
+She was to pass by the Cuttle Well, on her way to Tilliedrum, where she
+would get the London train, he had been told coldly, and he could be
+there at the time--if he liked. The time was seven o'clock in the
+evening on a week-day, when the lovers are not in the Den, and Tommy
+arrived first. When he stole through the small field that separates
+Monypenny from the Den, his decision was--but on reaching the Cuttle
+Well, its nearness to the uncanny Lair chilled his courage, and now he
+had only come to bid her good-by. She was very late, and it suddenly
+struck him that she had already set off. "After getting me to promise to
+go wi' her!" he said to himself at once.
+
+But Grizel came; she was only late because it had taken her such a long
+time to say good-by to the girl in the glass. She was wearing her black
+dress and lustre jacket, and carried in a bundle the few treasures she
+was taking with her, and though she did not ask Tommy if he was coming,
+she cast a quick look round to see if he had a bundle anywhere, and he
+had none. That told her his decision, and she would have liked to sit
+down for a minute and cry, but of course she had too much pride, and she
+bade him farewell so promptly that he thought he had a grievance. "I'm
+coming as far as the toll-house wi' you," he said, sulkily, and so they
+started together.
+
+At the toll-house Grizel stopped. "It's a fine night," said Tommy,
+almost apologetically, "I'll go as far as the quarry o' Benshee."
+
+When they came to the quarry he said, "We're no half-roads yet, I'll go
+wi' you as far as Padanarum." Now she began to wonder and to glance at
+him sideways, which made him more uncomfortable than ever. To prevent
+her asking him a question for which he had no answer, he said, "What
+makes you look so little the day?"
+
+"I am not looking little," she replied, greatly annoyed, "I am looking
+taller than usual. I have let down my frock three inches so as to look
+taller--and older."
+
+"You look younger than ever," he said cruelly.
+
+"I don't! I look fifteen, and when you are fifteen you grow up very
+quickly. Do say I look older!" she entreated anxiously. "It would make
+me feel more respectable."
+
+But he shook his head with surprising obstinacy, and then she began to
+remark on his clothes, which had been exercising her curiosity ever
+since they left the Den.
+
+"How is it that you are looking so stout?" she asked.
+
+"I feel cold, but you are wiping the sweat off your face every minute."
+
+It was true, but he would have preferred not to answer. Grizel's
+questions, however, were all so straight in the face, that there was no
+dodging them. "I have on twa suits o' clothes, and a' my sarks," he had
+to admit, sticky and sullen.
+
+She stopped, but he trudged on doggedly. She ran after him and gave his
+arm an impulsive squeeze with both hands, "Oh, you sweet!" she said.
+
+"No, I'm not," he answered in alarm.
+
+"Yes you are! You are coming with me."
+
+"I'm not!"
+
+"Then why did you put on so many clothes?"
+
+Tommy swithered wretchedly on one foot. "I didna put them on to come wi'
+you," he explained, "I just put them on in case I should come wi' you."
+
+"And are you not coming?"
+
+"How can I ken?"
+
+"But you must decide," Grizel almost screamed.
+
+"I needna," he stammered, "till we're at Tilliedrum. Let's speak about
+some other thing."
+
+She rocked her arms, crying, "It is so easy to make up one's mind."
+
+"It's easy to you that has just one mind," he retorted with spirit, "but
+if you had as many minds as I have--!"
+
+On they went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+THERE IS SOME ONE TO LOVE GRIZEL AT LAST
+
+
+Corp was sitting on the Monypenny dyke, spitting on a candlestick and
+then rubbing it briskly against his orange-colored trousers. The doctor
+passing in his gig, both of them streaked, till they blended, with the
+mud of Look-about-you road (through which you should drive winking
+rapidly all the way), saw him and drew up.
+
+"Well, how is Grizel?" he asked. He had avoided Double Dykes since the
+funeral, but vain had been his attempts to turn its little inmate out of
+his mind; there she was, against his will, and there, he now admitted to
+himself angrily or with a rueful sigh, she seemed likely to remain until
+someone gave her a home. It was an almost ludicrous distrust of himself
+that kept him away from her; he feared that if he went to Double Dykes
+her lonely face would complete his conquest. For oh, he was reluctant to
+be got the better of, as he expressed it to himself. Maggy Ann, his
+maid, was the ideal woman for a bachelor's house. When she saw him
+coming she fled, guiltily concealing the hated duster; when he roared
+at her for announcing that dinner was ready, she left him to eat it half
+cold; when he spilled matches on the floor and then stepped upon them
+and set the rug on fire, she let him tell her that she should be more
+careful; she did not carry off his favorite boots to the cobbler because
+they were down at heel; she did not fling up her arms in horror and cry
+that she had brushed that coat just five minutes ago; nor did she count
+the treasured "dottels" on the mantelpiece to discover how many pipes he
+had smoked since morning; nor point out that he had stepped over the
+door-mat; nor line her shelves with the new _Mentor_; nor give him up
+his foot for sitting half the night with patients who could not pay--in
+short, he knew the ways of the limmers, and Maggy Ann was a jewel. But
+it had taken him a dozen years to bring her to this perfection, and well
+he knew that the curse of Eve, as he called the rage for the duster,
+slumbered in her rather than was extinguished. With the volcanic Grizel
+in the house, Maggy Ann would once more burst into flame, and the
+horrified doctor looked to right of him, to left of him, before him and
+behind him, and everywhere he seemed to see two new brooms bearing down.
+No, the brat, he would not have her; the besom, why did she bother him;
+the witches take her, for putting the idea into his head, nailing it
+into his head indeed. But nevertheless he was forever urging other
+people to adopt her, assuring them that they would find her a treasure,
+and even shaking his staff at them when they refused; and he was so
+uneasy if he did not hear of her several times a day that he made
+Monypenny the way to and from everywhere, so that he might drop into
+artful talk with those who had seen her last. Corp, accordingly, was not
+surprised at his "How is Grizel?" now, and he answered, between two
+spits, "She's fine; she gave me this."
+
+It was one of the Painted Lady's silver candlesticks, and the doctor
+asked sharply why Grizel had given it to him.
+
+"She said because she liked me," Corp replied, wonderingly. "She brought
+it to my auntie's door soon after I loused, and put it into my hand: ay,
+and she had a blue shawl, and she telled me to give it to Gavinia,
+because she liked her too."
+
+"What else did she say?"
+
+Corp tried to think. "I said, 'This cows, Grizel, but thank you
+kindly,'" he answered, much pleased with his effort of memory, but the
+doctor interrupted him rudely. "Nobody wants to hear what you said, you
+dottrel; what more did she say?" And thus encouraged Corp remembered
+that she had said she hoped he would not forget her. "What for should I
+forget her when I see her ilka day?" he asked, and was probably about to
+divulge that this was his reply to her, but without waiting for more,
+McQueen turned his beast's head and drove to the entrance to the Double
+Dykes. Here he alighted and hastened up the path on foot, but before he
+reached the house he met Dite Deuchars taking his ease beneath a tree,
+and Dite could tell him that Grizel was not at home. "But there's
+somebody in Double Dykes," he said, "though I kenna wha could be there
+unless it's the ghost of the Painted Lady hersel'. About an hour syne I
+saw Grizel come out o' the house, carrying a bundle, but she hadna gone
+many yards when she turned round and waved her hand to the east window.
+I couldna see wha was at it, but there maun have been somebody, for
+first the crittur waved to the window and next she kissed her hand to
+it, and syne she went on a bit, and syne she ran back close to the
+window and nodded and flung more kisses, and back and forrit she went a
+curran times as if she could hardly tear hersel' awa'. 'Wha's that
+you're so chief wi'?' I speired when she came by me at last, but she
+just said, 'I won't tell you,' in her dour wy, and she hasna come back
+yet."
+
+Whom could she have been saying good-by to so demonstratively, and
+whither had she gone? With a curiosity that for the moment took the
+place of his uneasiness, McQueen proceeded to the house, the door of
+which was shut but not locked. Two glances convinced him that there was
+no one here, the kitchen was as he had seen it last, except that the
+long mirror had been placed on a chair close to the east window. The
+doctor went to the outside of the window, and looked in, he could see
+nothing but his own reflection in the mirror, and was completely
+puzzled. But it was no time, he felt, for standing there scratching his
+head, when there was reason to fear that the girl had gone. Gone where?
+He saw his selfishness now, in a glaring light, and it fled out of him
+pursued by curses.
+
+He stopped at Aaron's door and called for Tommy, but Tommy had left the
+house an hour ago. "Gone with her, the sacket; he very likely put her up
+to this," the doctor muttered, and the surmise seemed justified when he
+heard that Grizel and Tommy had been seen passing the Fens. That they
+were running away had never struck those who saw them, and McQueen said
+nothing of his suspicions, but off he went in his gig on their track and
+ran them down within a mile of Tilliedrum. Grizel scurried on, thinking
+it was undoubtedly her father, but in a few minutes the three were
+conversing almost amicably, the doctor's first words had been so
+"sweet."
+
+Tommy explained that they were out for a walk, but Grizel could not lie,
+and in a few passionate sentences she told McQueen the truth. He had
+guessed the greater part of it, and while she spoke he looked so sorry
+for her, such a sweet change had come over his manner, that she held his
+hand.
+
+"But you must go no farther," he told her, "I am to take you back with
+me," and that alarmed her. "I won't go back," she said, determinedly,
+"he might come."
+
+"There's little fear of his coming," McQueen assured her, gently, "but
+if he does come I give you my solemn word that I won't let him take you
+away unless you want to go."
+
+Even then she only wavered, but he got her altogether with this: "And
+should he come, just think what a piece of your mind you could give him,
+with me standing by holding your hand."
+
+"Oh, would you do that?" she asked, brightening.
+
+"I would do a good deal to get the chance," he said.
+
+"I should just love it!" she cried. "I shall come now," and she stepped
+light-heartedly into the gig, where the doctor joined her. Tommy, who
+had been in the background all this time, was about to jump up beside
+them, but McQueen waved him back, saying maliciously, "There's just room
+for two, my man, so I won't interfere with your walk."
+
+Tommy, in danger of being left, very hot and stout and sulky, whimpered,
+"What have I done to anger you?"
+
+"You were going with her, you blackguard," replied McQueen, not yet in
+full possession of the facts, for whether Tommy was or was not going
+with her no one can ever know.
+
+"If I was," cried the injured boy, "it wasna because I wanted to go, it
+was because it wouldna have been respectable for her to go by hersel'."
+
+The doctor had already started his shalt, but at these astonishing
+words he drew up sharply. "Say that again," ha said, as if thinking that
+his ears must have deceived him, and Tommy repeated his remark,
+wondering at its effect.
+
+"And you tell me that you were going with her," the doctor repeated, "to
+make her enterprise more respectable?" and he looked from one to the
+other.
+
+"Of course I was," replied Tommy, resenting his surprise at a thing so
+obvious; and "That's why I wanted him to come," chimed in Grizel.
+
+Still McQueen's glance wandered from the boy to the girl and from the
+girl to the boy. "You are a pair!" he said at last, and he signed in
+silence to Tommy to mount the gig. But his manner had alarmed Grizel,
+ever watching herself lest she should stray into the ways of bad ones,
+and she asked anxiously, "There was nothing wrong in it, was there?"
+
+"No," the doctor answered gravely, laying his hand on hers, "no, it was
+just sweet."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What McQueen had to say to her was not for Tommy's ears, and the
+conversation was but a makeshift until they reached Thrums, where he
+sent the boy home, recommending him to hold his tongue about the
+escapade (and Tommy of course saw the advisability of keeping it from
+Elspeth); but he took Grizel into his parlor and set her down on the
+buffet stool by the fire, where he surveyed her in silence at his
+leisure. Then he tried her in his old armchair, then on his sofa; then
+he put the _Mentor_ into her hand and told her to hold it as if it were
+a duster, then he sent her into the passage, with instructions to open
+the door presently and announce "Dinner is ready;" then he told her to
+put some coals on the fire; then he told her to sit at the window, first
+with an open book in her hand, secondly as if she was busy knitting; and
+all these things she did wondering exceedingly, for he gave no
+explanation except the incomprehensible one, "I want to see what it
+would be like."
+
+She had told him in the gig why she had changed the position of the
+mirror at Double Dykes, it was to let "that darling" wave good-by to her
+from the window; and now having experimented with her in his parlor he
+drew her toward his chair, so that she stood between his knees. And he
+asked her if she understood why he had gone to Double Dykes.
+
+"Was it to get me to tell you what were the names in the letter?" she
+said, wistfully. "That is what everyone asks me, but I won't tell, no, I
+won't;" and she closed her mouth hard.
+
+He, too, would have liked to hear the names, and he sighed, it must be
+admitted, at sight of that determined mouth, but he could say
+truthfully, "Your refusal to break your promise is one of the things
+that I admire in you."
+
+Admire! Grizel could scarce believe that this gift was for her. "You
+don't mean that you really like me?" she faltered, but she felt sure all
+the time that he did, and she cried, "Oh, but why, oh, how can you!"
+
+"For one reason," he said, "because you are so good."
+
+"Good! Oh! oh! oh!" She clapped her hands joyously.
+
+"And for another--because you are so brave."
+
+"But I am not really brave," she said anxiously, yet resolved to hide
+nothing, "I only pretend to be brave, I am often frightened, but I just
+don't let on."
+
+That, he told her, is the highest form of bravery, but Grizel was very,
+very tired of being brave, and she insisted impetuously, "I don't want
+to be brave, I want to be afraid, like other girls."
+
+"Ay, it's your right, you little woman," he answered, tenderly, and then
+again he became mysterious. He kicked off his shoes to show her that he
+was wearing socks that did not match. "I just pull on the first that
+come to hand," he said recklessly.
+
+"Oh!" cried Grizel.
+
+On his dusty book-shelves he wrote, with his finger, "Not dusted since
+the year One."
+
+"Oh! oh!" she cried.
+
+He put his fingers through his gray, untidy hair. "That's the only comb
+I have that is at hand when I want it," he went on, regardless of her
+agony.
+
+"All the stud-holes in my shirts," he said, "are now so frayed and
+large that the studs fall out, and I find them in my socks at night."
+
+Oh! oh! he was killing her, he was, but what cared he? "Look at my
+clothes," said the cruel man, "I read when I'm eating, and I spill so
+much gravy that--that we boil my waistcoat once a month, and make soup
+of it!"
+
+To Grizel this was the most tragic picture ever drawn by man, and he saw
+that it was time to desist. "And it's all," he said, looking at her
+sadly, "it's all because I am a lonely old bachelor with no womankind to
+look after him, no little girl to brighten him when he comes home
+dog-tired, no one to care whether his socks are in holes and his comb
+behind the wash-stand, no soft hand to soothe his brow when it aches, no
+one to work for, no one to love, many a one to close the old bachelor's
+eyes when he dies, but none to drop a tear for him, no one to--"
+
+"Oh! oh! oh! That is just like me. Oh! oh!" cried Grizel, and he pulled
+her closer to him, saying, "The more reason we should join thegither;
+Grizel, if you don't take pity on me, and come and bide with me and be
+my little housekeeper, the Lord Almighty only knows what is to become of
+the old doctor."
+
+At this she broke away from him, and stood far back pressing her arms to
+her sides, and she cried, "It is not out of charity you ask me, is it?"
+and then she went a little nearer. "You would not say it if it wasn't
+true, would you?"
+
+"No, my dawtie, it's true," he told her, and if he had been pitying
+himself a little, there was an end of that now.
+
+She remembered something and cried joyously, "And you knew what was in
+my blood before you asked me, so I don't need to tell you, do I? And you
+are not afraid that I shall corrupt you, are you? And you don't think it
+a pity I didn't die when I was a tiny baby, do you? Some people think
+so, I heard them say it."
+
+"What would have become of me?" was all he dared answer in words, but he
+drew her to him again, and when she asked if it was true, as she had
+heard some woman say, that in some matters men were all alike, and did
+what that one man had done to her mamma, he could reply solemnly, "No,
+it is not true; it's a lie that has done more harm than any war in any
+century."
+
+She sat on his knee, telling him many things that had come recently to
+her knowledge but were not so new to him. The fall of woman was the
+subject, a strange topic for a girl of thirteen and a man of sixty. They
+don't become wicked in a moment, he learned; if they are good to begin
+with, it takes quite a long time to make them bad. Her mamma was good to
+begin with. "I know she was good, because when she thought she was the
+girl she used to be, she looked sweet and said lovely things." The way
+the men do is this, they put evil thoughts into the woman's head, and
+say them often to her, till she gets accustomed to them, and thinks they
+cannot be bad when the man she loves likes them, and it is called
+corrupting the mind.
+
+"And then a baby comes to them," Grizel said softly, "and it is called a
+child of shame. I am a child of shame."
+
+He made no reply, so she looked up, and his face was very old and sad.
+"I am sorry too," she whispered, but still he said nothing, and then she
+put her fingers on his eyes to discover if they were wet, and they were
+wet. And so Grizel knew that there was someone who loved her at last.
+
+The mirror was the only article of value that Grizel took with her to
+her new home; everything else was rouped at the door of Double Dykes;
+Tommy, who should have been at his books, acting as auctioneer's clerk
+for sixpence. There are houses in Thrums where you may still be told who
+got the bed and who the rocking-chair, and how Nether Drumgley's wife
+dared him to come home without the spinet; but it is not by the sales
+that the roup is best remembered. Curiosity took many persons into
+Double Dykes that day, and in the room that had never been furnished
+they saw a mournful stack of empty brandy bottles, piled there by the
+auctioneer who had found them in every corner, beneath the bed, in
+presses, in boxes, whither they had been thrust by Grizel's mamma, as
+if to conceal their number from herself. The counting of these bottles
+was a labor, but it is not even by them that the roup is remembered.
+Among them some sacrilegious hands found a bundle of papers with a sad
+blue ribbon round them. They were the Painted Lady's love-letters, the
+letters she had written to the man. Why or how they had come back to her
+no one knew.
+
+Most of them were given to Grizel, but a dozen or more passed without
+her leave into the kists of various people, where often since then they
+have been consulted by swains in need of a pretty phrase; and Tommy's
+school-fellows, the very boys and girls who hooted the Painted Lady,
+were in time--so oddly do things turn out--to be among those whom her
+letters taught how to woo. Where the kists did not let in the damp or
+careless fingers, the paper long remained clean, the ink but little
+faded. Some of the letters were creased, as if they had once been much
+folded, perhaps for slipping into secret hiding-places, but none of them
+bore any address or a date. "To my beloved," was sometimes written on
+the cover, and inside he was darling or beloved again. So no one could
+have arranged them in the order in which they were written, though there
+was a three-cornered one which said it was the first. There was a violet
+in it, clinging to the paper as if they were fond of each other, and
+Grizel's mamma had written, "The violet is me, hiding in a corner
+because I am so happy." The letters were in many moods, playful,
+reflective, sad, despairing, arch, but all were written in an ecstasy of
+the purest love, and most of them were cheerful, so that you seemed to
+see the sun dancing on the paper while she wrote, the same sun that
+afterwards showed up her painted cheeks. Why they came back to her no
+one ever discovered, any more than how she who slipped the violet into
+that three-cornered one and took it out to kiss again and wrote, "It is
+my first love-letter, and I love it so much I am reluctant to let it
+go," became in a few years the derision of the Double Dykes. Some of
+these letters may be in old kists still, but whether that is so or not,
+they alone have passed the Painted Lady's memory from one generation to
+another, and they have purified it, so that what she was died with her
+vile body, and what she might have been lived on, as if it were her true
+self.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+WHO TOLD TOMMY TO SPEAK
+
+
+"Miss Alison Cray presents her compliments to--and requests the favor of
+their company at her marriage with Mr. Ivie McLean, on January 8th, at
+six o'clock."
+
+Tommy in his Sabbath clothes, with a rose from the Dovecot hot-house for
+buttonhole (which he slipped into his pocket when he saw other boys
+approaching), delivered them at the doors of the aristocracy, where, by
+the way, he had been a few weeks earlier, with another circular.
+
+"Miss Alison Cray being about to give up school, has pleasure in stating
+that she has disposed of the good-will of her establishment to Miss
+Jessy Langlands and Miss S. Oram, who will enter upon their scholastic
+duties on January 9th, at Hoods Cottage, where she most cordially," and
+so on.
+
+Here if the writer dared (but you would be so angry) he would introduce
+at the length of a chapter two brand-new characters, the Misses
+Langlands and Oram, who suddenly present themselves to him in the most
+sympathetic light. Miss Ailie has been safely stowed to port, but their
+little boat is only setting sail, and they are such young ones, neither
+out of her teens, that he would fain turn for a time from her to them.
+Twelve pounds they paid for the good-will, and, oh, the exciting
+discussions, oh, the scraping to get the money together! If little Miss
+Langlands had not been so bold, big Miss Oram must have drawn back, but
+if Miss Oram had not had that idea about a paper partition, of what
+avail the boldness of Miss Langlands? How these two trumps of girls
+succeeded in hiring the Painted Lady's spinet from Nether Drumgley--in
+the absence of his wife, who on her way home from buying a cochin-china
+met the spinet in a cart--how the mother of one of them, realizing in a
+klink that she was common no more, henceforth wore black caps instead of
+mutches (but the father dandered on in the old plebeian way), what the
+enterprise meant to a young man in distant Newcastle, whose favorite
+name was Jessy, how the news travelled to still more distant Canada,
+where a family of emigrants which had left its Sarah behind in Thrums,
+could talk of nothing else for weeks--it is hard to have to pass on
+without dwelling on these things, and indeed--but pass on we must.
+
+The chief figure at the wedding of Miss Ailie was undoubtedly Mr. T.
+Sandys. When one remembers his prominence, it is difficult to think that
+the wedding could have taken place without him. It was he (in his
+Sabbath clothes again, and now flaunting his buttonhole brazenly) who
+in insulting language ordered the rabble to stand back there. It was he
+who dashed out to the 'Sosh to get a hundred ha'pennies for the fifty
+pennies Mr. McLean had brought to toss into the air. It was he who went
+round in the carriage to pick up the guests and whisked them in and out,
+and slammed the door, and saw to it that the minister was not kept
+waiting, and warned Miss Ailie that if she did not come now they should
+begin without her. It was he who stood near her with a handkerchief
+ready in his hand lest she took to crying on her new brown silk (Miss
+Ailie was married in brown silk after all). As a crown to his audacity,
+it was he who told Mr. Dishart, in the middle of a noble passage, to
+mind the lamp.
+
+These duties were Dr. McQueen's, the best man, but either demoralized by
+the bridegroom, who went all to pieces at the critical moment and was
+much more nervous than the bride, or in terror lest Grizel, who had sent
+him to the wedding speckless and most beautifully starched, should
+suddenly appear at the door and cry, "Oh, oh, take your fingers off your
+shirt!" he was through other till the knot was tied, and then it was too
+late, for Tommy had made his mark. It was Tommy who led the way to the
+school-room, where the feast was ready, it was Tommy who put the guests
+in their places (even the banker cringed to him), it was. Tommy who
+winked to Mr. Dishart as a sign to say grace. As you will readily
+believe, Miss Ailie could not endure the thought of excluding her
+pupils from the festivities, and they began to arrive as soon as the
+tables had been cleared of all save oranges and tarts and raisins.
+Tommy, waving Gavinia aside, showed them in, and one of them, curious to
+tell, was Corp, in borrowed blacks, and Tommy shook hands with him and
+called him Mr. Shiach, both new experiences to Corp, who knocked over a
+table in his anxiety to behave himself, and roared at intervals "Do you
+see the little deevil!" and bit his warts and then politely swallowed
+the blood.
+
+As if oranges and tarts and raisins were not enough, came the Punch and
+Judy show, Tommy's culminating triumph. All the way to Redlintie had Mr.
+McLean sent for the Punch and Judy show, and nevertheless there was a
+probability of no performance, for Miss Ailie considered the show
+immoral. Most anxious was she to give pleasure to her pupils, and this
+she knew was the best way, but how could she countenance an
+entertainment which was an encouragement to every form of vice and
+crime? To send these children to the Misses Langlands and Oram, fresh
+from an introduction to the comic view of murder! It could not be done,
+now could it? Mr. McLean could make no suggestion. Mr. Dishart thought
+it would be advisable to substitute another entertainment; was there not
+a game called "The Minister's Cat"? Mrs. Dishart thought they should
+have the show and risk the consequences. So also thought Dr. McQueen.
+The banker was consulted, but saw no way out of the difficulty, nor did
+the lawyer, nor did the Misses Finlayson. Then Tommy appeared on the
+scene, and presently retired to find a way.
+
+He found it. The performance took place, and none of the fun was
+omitted, yet neither Miss Ailie--tuts, tuts Mrs. McLean--nor Mr. Dishart
+could disapprove. Punch did chuck his baby out at the window (roars of
+laughter) in his jovial time-honored way, _but_ immediately thereafter
+up popped the showman to say, "Ah, my dear boys and girls, let this be a
+lesson to you never to destroy your offsprings. Oh, shame on Punch, for
+to do the wicked deed; he will be catched in the end and serve him
+right." Then when Mr. Punch had wolloped his wife with the stick, amid
+thunders of applause, up again bobbed the showman, "Ah, my dear boys and
+girls, what a lesson is this we sees, what goings on is this? He have
+bashed the head of her as should ha' been the apple of his eye, and he
+does not care a--he does not care; but mark my words, his home it will
+now be desolate, no more shall she meet him at his door with kindly
+smile, he have done for her quite, and now he is a hunted man. Oh, be
+warned by his sad igsample, and do not bash the head of your loving
+wife." And there was a great deal more of the same, and simple Mrs.
+McLean almost wept tears of joy because her favorite's good heart had
+suggested these improvements.
+
+Grizel was not at the wedding; she was invited, but could not go
+because she was in mourning. But only her parramatty frock was in
+mourning, for already she had been the doctor's housekeeper for two full
+months, and her father had not appeared to plague her (he never did
+appear, it may be told at once), and so how could her face be woeful
+when her heart leapt with gladness? Never had prisoner pined for the
+fields more than this reticent girl to be frank, and she poured out her
+inmost self to the doctor, so that daily he discovered something
+beautiful (and exasperating) about womanhood. And it was his love for
+her that had changed her. "You do love me, don't you?" she would say,
+and his answer might be "I have told you that fifty times already;" to
+which she would reply, gleefully, "That is not often, I say it all day
+to myself."
+
+Exasperating? Yes, that was the word. Long before summer came, the
+doctor knew that he had given himself into the hands of a tyrant. It was
+idle his saying that this irregularity and that carelessness were habits
+that had become part of him; she only rocked her arms impatiently, and
+if he would not stand still to be put to rights, then she would follow
+him along the street, brushing him as he walked, a sight that was
+witnessed several times while he was in the mutinous stage.
+
+"Talk about masterfulness," he would say, when she whipped off his coat
+or made a dart at the mud on his trousers; "you are the most masterful
+little besom I ever clapped eyes on."
+
+But as he said it he perhaps crossed his legs, and she immediately
+cried, "You have missed two holes in lacing your boots!"
+
+Of a morning he would ask her sarcastically to examine him from top to
+toe and see if he would do, and examine him she did, turning him round,
+pointing out that he had been sitting "again" on his tails, that oh, oh,
+he must have cut that buttonhole with his knife. He became most artful
+in hiding deficiencies from her, but her suspicions once roused would
+not sleep, and all subterfuge was vain. "Why have you buttoned your coat
+up tight to the throat to-day?" she would demand sternly.
+
+"It is such a cold morning," he said.
+
+"That is not the reason," she replied at once (she could see through
+broadcloth at a glance), "I believe you have on the old necktie again,
+and you promised to buy a new one."
+
+"I always forget about it when I'm out," he said humbly, and next
+evening he found on his table a new tie, made by Grizel herself out of
+her mamma's rokelay.
+
+It was related by one who had dropped in at the doctor's house
+unexpectedly, that he found Grizel making a new shirt, and forcing the
+doctor to try on the sleeves while they were still in the pin stage.
+
+She soon knew his every want, and just as he was beginning to want it,
+there it was at his elbow. He realized what a study she had made of him
+when he heard her talking of his favorite dishes and his favorite seat,
+and his way of biting his underlip when in thought, and how hard he was
+on his left cuff. It had been one of his boasts that he had no favorite
+dishes, etc., but he saw now that he had been a slave to them for years
+without knowing it.
+
+She discussed him with other mothers as if he were her little boy, and
+he denounced her for it. But all the time she was spoiling him. Formerly
+he had got on very well when nothing was in its place. Now he roared
+helplessly if he mislaid his razor.
+
+He was determined to make a lady of her, which necessitated her being
+sent to school; she preferred hemming, baking and rubbing things till
+they shone, and not both could have had their way (which sounds fatal
+for the man), had they not arranged a compromise, Grizel, for instance,
+to study geography for an hour in the evening with Miss Langlands (go to
+school in the daytime she would not) so long as the doctor shaved every
+morning, but if no shave no geography; the doctor to wipe his pen on the
+blot-sheet instead of on the lining of his coat if she took three
+lessons a week from Miss Oram on the spinet. How happy and proud she
+was! Her glee was a constant source of wonder to McQueen. Perhaps she
+put on airs a little, her walk, said the critical, had become a strut;
+but how could she help that when the new joyousness of living was
+dancing and singing within her?
+
+Had all her fears for the future rolled away like clouds that leave no
+mark behind? The doctor thought so at times, she so seldom spoke of them
+to him; he did not see that when they came she hid them from him because
+she had discovered that they saddened him. And she had so little time to
+brood, being convinced of the sinfulness of sitting still, that if the
+clouds came suddenly, they never stayed long save once, and then it was,
+mayhap, as well. The thunderclap was caused by Tommy, who brought it on
+unintentionally and was almost as much scared by his handiwork as Grizel
+herself. She and he had been very friendly of late, partly because they
+shared with McQueen the secret of the frustrated elopement, partly
+because they both thought that in that curious incident Tommy had
+behaved in a most disinterested and splendid way. Grizel had not been
+sure of it at first, but it had grown on Tommy, he had so thoroughly
+convinced himself of his intention to get into the train with her at
+Tilliedrum that her doubts were dispelled--easily dispelled, you say,
+but the truth must be told, Grizel was very anxious to be rid of them.
+And Tommy's were honest convictions, born full grown of a desire for
+happiness to all. Had Elspeth discovered how nearly he had deserted her,
+the same sentiment would have made him swear to her with tears that
+never should he have gone farther than Tilliedrum, and while he was
+persuading her he would have persuaded himself. Then again, when he met
+Grizel--well, to get him in doubt it would have been necessary to catch
+him on the way between these two girls.
+
+So Tommy and Grizel were friends, and finding that it hurt the doctor to
+speak on a certain subject to him, Grizel gave her confidences to Tommy.
+She had a fear, which he shared on its being explained to him, that she
+might meet a man of the stamp of her father, and grow fond of him before
+she knew the kind he was, and as even Tommy could not suggest an
+infallible test which would lay them bare at the first glance, he
+consented to consult Blinder once more. He found the blind man by his
+fire-side, very difficult to coax into words on the important topic, but
+Tommy's "You've said ower much no to tell a bit more," seemed to impress
+him, and he answered the question,--
+
+"You said a woman should fly frae the like o' Grizel's father though it
+should be to the other end of the world, but how is she to ken that he's
+that kind?"
+
+"She'll ken," Blinder answered after thinking it over, "if she likes him
+and fears him at one breath, and has a sort of secret dread that he's
+getting a power ower her that she canna resist."
+
+These words were a flash of light on a neglected corner to Tommy. "Now I
+see, now I ken," he exclaimed, amazed; "now I ken what my mother meant!
+Blinder, is that no the kind of man that's called masterful?"
+
+"It's what poor women find them and call them to their cost," said
+Blinder.
+
+Tommy's excitement was prodigious. "Now I ken, now I see!" he cried,
+slapping his leg and stamping up and down the room.
+
+"Sit down!" roared his host.
+
+"I canna," retorted the boy. "Oh, to think o't, to think I came to speir
+that question at you, to think her and me has wondered what kind he was,
+and I kent a' the time!" Without staying to tell Blinder what he was
+blethering about, he hurried off to Grizel, who was waiting for him in
+the Den, and to her he poured out his astonishing news.
+
+"I ken all about them, I've kent since afore I came to Thrums, but
+though I generally say the prayer, I've forgot to think o' what it
+means." In a stampede of words he told her all he could remember of his
+mother's story as related to him on a grim night in London so long ago,
+and she listened eagerly. And when that was over, he repeated first his
+prayer and then Elspeth's, "O God, whatever is to be my fate, may I
+never be one of them that bow the knee to masterful man, and if I was
+born like that and canna help it, O take me up to heaven afore I'm
+fil't." Grizel repeated it after him until she had it by heart, and even
+as she said it a strange thing happened, for she began to draw back
+from Tommy, with a look of terror on her face.
+
+"What makes you look at me like that?" he cried.
+
+"I believe--I think--you are masterful," she gasped.
+
+"Me!" he retorted indignantly.
+
+"Now," she went on, waving him back, "now I know why I would not give in
+to you when you wanted me to be Stroke's wife. I was afraid you were
+masterful!"
+
+"Was that it?" cried Tommy.
+
+"Now," she proceeded, too excited to heed his interruptions, "now I know
+why I would not kiss your hand, now I know why I would not say I liked
+you. I was afraid of you, I--"
+
+"Were you?" His eyes began to sparkle, and something very like rapture
+was pushing the indignation from his face. "Oh, Grizel, have I a power
+ower you?"
+
+"No, you have not," she cried passionately. "I was just frightened that
+you might have. Oh, oh, I know you now!"
+
+"To think o't, to think o't!" he crowed, wagging his head, and then she
+clenched her fist, crying, "Oh, you wicked, you should cry with shame!"
+
+But he had his answer ready, "It canna be my wite, for I never kent o't
+till you telled me. Grizel, it has just come about without either of us
+kenning!"
+
+She shuddered at this, and then seized him by the shoulders. "It has
+not come about at all," she said, "I was only frightened that it might
+come, and now it can't come, for I won't let it."
+
+"But can you help yoursel'?"
+
+"Yes, I can. I shall never be friends with you again."
+
+She had such a capacity for keeping her word that this alarmed him, and
+he did his best to extinguish his lights. "I'm no masterful, Grizel," he
+said, "and I dinna want to be, it was just for a minute that I liked the
+thought." She shook her head, but his next words had more effect. "If I
+had been that kind, would I have teached you Elspeth's prayer?"
+
+"N-no, I don't think so," she said slowly, and perhaps he would have
+succeeded in soothing her, had not a sudden thought brought back the
+terror to her face.
+
+"What is 't now?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, oh, oh!" she cried, "and I nearly went away with you!" and without
+another word she fled from the Den. She never told the doctor of this
+incident, and in time it became a mere shadow in the background, so that
+she was again his happy housekeeper, but that was because she had found
+strength to break with Tommy. She was only an eager little girl,
+pathetically ignorant about what she wanted most to understand, but she
+saw how an instinct had been fighting for her, and now it should not
+have to fight alone. How careful she became! All Tommy's wiles were
+vain, she would scarcely answer if he spoke to her; if he had ever
+possessed a power over her it was gone, Elspeth's prayer had saved her.
+
+Jean Myles had told Tommy to teach that prayer to Elspeth; but who had
+told him to repeat it to Grizel?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+THE BRANDING OF TOMMY
+
+
+Grizel's secession had at least one good effect: it gave Tommy more time
+in which to make a scholar of himself. Would you like a picture of Tommy
+trying to make a scholar of himself?
+
+They all helped him in their different ways: Grizel, by declining his
+company; Corp, by being far away at Look-about-you, adding to the inches
+of a farm-house; Aaron Latta, by saying nothing but looking "college or
+the herding;" Mr. McLean, who had settled down with Ailie at the
+Dovecot, by inquiries about his progress; Elspeth by--but did Elspeth's
+talks with him about how they should live in Aberdeen and afterwards
+(when they were in the big house) do more than send his mind a-galloping
+(she holding on behind) along roads that lead not to Aberdeen? What
+drove Tommy oftenest to the weary drudgery was, perhaps, the alarm that
+came over him when he seemed of a sudden to hear the names of the
+bursars proclaimed and no Thomas Sandys among them. Then did he shudder,
+for well he knew that Aaron would keep his threat, and he hastily
+covered the round table with books and sat for hours sorrowfully
+pecking at them, every little while to discover that his mind had soared
+to other things, when he hauled it back, as one draws in a reluctant
+kite. On these occasions Aaron seldom troubled him, except by glances
+that, nevertheless, brought the kite back more quickly than if they had
+been words of warning. If Elspeth was present, the warper might sit
+moodily by the fire, but when the man and the boy were left together,
+one or other of them soon retired, as if this was the only way of
+preserving the peace. Though determined to keep his word to Jean Myles
+liberally, Aaron had never liked Tommy, and Tommy's avoidance of him is
+easily accounted for; he knew that Aaron did not admire him, and unless
+you admired Tommy he was always a boor in your presence, shy and
+self-distrustful. Especially was this so if you were a lady (how
+amazingly he got on in after years with some of you, what agony others
+endured till he went away!), and it is the chief reason why there are
+such contradictory accounts of him to-day.
+
+Sometimes Mr. Cathro had hopes of him other than those that could only
+be revealed in a shameful whisper with the door shut. "Not so bad," he
+might say to Mr. McLean; "if he keeps it up we may squeeze him through
+yet, without trusting to--to what I was fool enough to mention to you.
+The mathematics are his weak point, there's nothing practical about him
+(except when it's needed to carry out his devil's designs) and he cares
+not a doit about the line A B, nor what it's doing in the circle K, but
+there's whiles he surprises me when we're at Homer. He has the spirit
+o't, man, even when he bogles at the sense."
+
+But the next time Ivie called for a report--!
+
+In his great days, so glittering, so brief (the days of the penny Life)
+Tommy, looking back to this year, was sure that he had never really
+tried to work. But he had. He did his very best, doggedly, wearily
+sitting at the round table till Elspeth feared that he was killing
+himself and gave him a melancholy comfort by saying so. An hour
+afterwards he might discover that he had been far away from his books,
+looking on at his affecting death and counting the mourners at the
+funeral.
+
+Had he thought that Grizel's discovery was making her unhappy he would
+have melted at once, but never did she look so proud as when she
+scornfully passed him by, and he wagged his head complacently over her
+coming chagrin when she heard that he had carried the highest bursary.
+Then she would know what she had flung away. This should have helped him
+to another struggle with his lexicon, but it only provided a breeze for
+the kite, which flew so strong that he had to let go the string.
+
+Aaron and the Dominie met one day in the square, and to Aaron's surprise
+Mr. Cathro's despondency about Tommy was more pronounced than before.
+"I wonder at that," the warper said, "for I assure you he has been
+harder 'at it than ever thae last nights. What's more, he used to look
+doleful as he sat at his table, but I notice now that he's as sweer to
+leave off as he's keen to begin, and the face of him is a' eagerness
+too, and he reads ower to himself what he has wrote and wags his head at
+it as if he thought it grand."
+
+"Say you so?" asked Cathro, suspiciously; "does he leave what he writes
+lying about, Aaron?"
+
+"No, but he takes it to you, does he no'?"
+
+"Not him," said the Dominie, emphatically. "I may be mistaken, Aaron,
+but I'm doubting the young whelp is at his tricks again."
+
+The Dominie was right, and before many days passed he discovered what
+was Tommy's new and delicious occupation.
+
+For years Mr. Cathro had been in the habit of writing letters for such
+of the populace as could not guide a pen, and though he often told them
+not to come deaving him he liked the job, unexpected presents of a hen
+or a ham occasionally arriving as his reward, while the personal matters
+thus confided to him, as if he were a safe for the banking of private
+histories, gave him and his wife gossip for winter nights. Of late the
+number of his clients had decreased without his noticing it, so
+confident was he that they could not get on without him, but he
+received a shock at last from Andrew Dickie, who came one Saturday night
+with paper, envelope, a Queen's head, and a request for a letter for
+Bell Birse, now of Tilliedrum.
+
+"You want me to speir in your name whether she'll have you, do you?"
+asked Cathro, with a flourish of his pen.
+
+"It's no just so simple as that," said Andrew, and then he seemed to be
+rather at a loss to say what it was. "I dinna ken," he continued
+presently with a grave face, "whether you've noticed that I'm a gey
+queer deevil? Losh, I think I'm the queerest deevil I ken."
+
+"We are all that," the Dominie assured him. "But what do you want me to
+write?"
+
+"Well, it's like this," said Andrew, "I'm willing to marry her if she's
+agreeable, but I want to make sure that she'll take me afore I speir
+her. I'm a proud man, Dominie."
+
+"You're a sly one!"
+
+"Am I no!" said Andrew, well pleased. "Well, could you put the letter in
+that wy?"
+
+"I wouldna," replied Mr. Cathro, "though I could, and I couldna though I
+would. It would defy the face of clay to do it, you canny lover."
+
+Now, the Dominie had frequently declined to write as he was bidden, and
+had suggested alterations which were invariably accepted, but to his
+astonishment Andrew would not give in. "I'll be stepping, then," he
+said coolly, "for if you hinna the knack o't I ken somebody that has."
+
+"Who?" demanded the irate Dominie.
+
+"I promised no to tell you," replied Andrew, and away he went. Mr.
+Cathro expected him to return presently in humbler mood, but was
+disappointed, and a week or two afterwards he heard Andrew and Mary Jane
+Proctor cried in the parish church. "Did Bell Birse refuse him?" he
+asked the kirk officer, and was informed that Bell had never got a
+chance. "His letter was so cunning," said John, "that without speiring
+her, it drew ane frae her in which she let out that she was centred on
+Davit Allardyce."
+
+"But who wrote Andrew's letter?" asked Mr. Cathro, sharply.
+
+"I thought it had been yoursel'," said John, and the Dominie chafed, and
+lost much of the afternoon service by going over in his mind the names
+of possible rivals. He never thought of Tommy.
+
+Then a week or two later fell a heavier blow. At least twice a year the
+Dominie had written for Meggy Duff to her daughter in Ireland a long
+letter founded on this suggestion, "Dear Kaytherine, if you dinna send
+ten shillings immediately, your puir auld mother will have neither house
+nor hame. I'm crying to you for't, Kaytherine; hearken and you'll hear
+my cry across the cauldriff sea." He met Meggy in the Banker's Close one
+day, and asked her pleasantly if the time was not drawing nigh for
+another appeal.
+
+"I have wrote," replied the old woman, giving her pocket a boastful
+smack, which she thus explained, "And it was the whole ten shillings
+this time, and you never got more for me than five."
+
+"Who wrote the letter for you?" he asked, lowering.
+
+She, too, it seemed, had promised not to tell.
+
+"Did you promise to tell nobody, Meggy, or just no to tell me," he
+pressed her, of a sudden suspecting Tommy.
+
+"Just no to tell you," she answered, and at that.
+
+"Da-a-a," began the Dominie, and then saved his reputation by adding
+"gont." The derivation of the word dagont has puzzled many, but here we
+seem to have it.
+
+It is interesting to know what Tommy wrote. The general opinion was that
+his letter must have been a triumph of eloquent appeal, and indeed he
+had first sketched out several masterpieces, all of some length and in
+different styles, but on the whole not unlike the concoctions of Meggy's
+former secretary; that is, he had dwelt on the duties of daughters, on
+the hardness of the times, on the certainty that if Katherine helped
+this time assistance would never be needed again. This sort of thing had
+always satisfied the Dominie, but Tommy, despite his several attempts,
+had a vague consciousness that there was something second-rate about
+them, and he tapped on his brain till it responded. The letter he
+despatched to Ireland, but had the wisdom not to read aloud even to
+Meggy, contained nothing save her own words, "Dear Kaytherine, if you
+dinna send ten shillings immediately, your puir auld mother will have
+neither house nor hame. I'm crying to you for't, Kaytherine; hearken and
+you'll hear my cry across the cauldriff sea." It was a call from the
+heart which transported Katherine to Thrums in a second of time, she
+seemed to see her mother again, grown frail since last they met--and so
+all was well for Meggy. Tommy did not put all this to himself but he
+felt it, and after that he _could not_ have written the letter
+differently. Happy Tommy! To be an artist is a great thing, but to be an
+artist and not know it is the most glorious plight in the world.
+
+Other fickle clients put their correspondence into the boy's hands, and
+Cathro found it out but said nothing. Dignity kept him in check; he did
+not even let the tawse speak for him. So well did he dissemble that
+Tommy could not decide how much he knew, and dreaded his getting hold of
+some of the letters, yet pined to watch his face while he read them.
+This could not last forever. Mr. Cathro was like a haughty kettle which
+has choked its spout that none may know it has come a-boil, and we all
+know what in that event must happen sooner or later to the lid.
+
+The three boys who had college in the tail of their eye had certain
+privileges not for the herd. It was taken for granted that when
+knowledge came their way they needed no overseer to make them stand
+their ground, and accordingly for great part of the day they had a back
+bench to themselves, with half a dozen hedges of boys and girls between
+them and the Dominie. From his chair Mr. Cathro could not see them, but
+a foot-board was nailed to it, and when he stood on this, as he had an
+aggravating trick of doing, softly and swiftly, they were suddenly in
+view. A large fire had been burning all day and the atmosphere was
+soporific. Mr. Cathro was so sleepy himself that the sight of a nodding
+head enraged him like a caricature, and he was on the foot-board
+frequently for the reason that makes bearded men suck peppermints in
+church. Against his better judgment he took several peeps at Tommy, whom
+he had lately suspected of writing his letters in school or at least of
+gloating over them on that back bench. To-day he was sure of it. However
+absorbing Euclid may be, even the forty-seventh of the first book does
+not make you chuckle and wag your head; you can bring a substantive in
+Virgil back to the verb that has lost it without looking as if you would
+like to exhibit them together in the square. But Tommy was thus elated
+until he gave way to grief of the most affecting kind. Now he looked
+gloomily before him as if all was over, now he buried his face in his
+hands, next his eyes were closed as if in prayer. All this the Dominie
+stood from him, but when at last he began to blubber--
+
+At the blackboard was an arithmetic class, slates in hand, each member
+adding up aloud in turn a row of figures. By and by it was known that
+Cathro had ceased to listen. "Go on," his voice rather than himself
+said, and he accepted Mary Dundas's trembling assertion that four and
+seven make ten. Such was the faith in Cathro that even boys who could
+add promptly turned their eleven into ten, and he did not catch them at
+it. So obviously was his mind as well as his gaze on, something beyond,
+that Sandy Riach, a wit who had been waiting his chance for years,
+snapped at it now, and roared "Ten and eleven, nineteen" ("Go on," said
+Cathro), "and four, twenty," gasped Sandy, "and eight, sixteen," he
+added, gaining courage. "Very good," nmrmured the Dominie, whereupon
+Sandy clenched his reputation forever by saying, in one glorious
+mouthful, "and six, eleven, and two, five, and one, nocht."
+
+There was no laughing at it then (though Sandy held a levee in the
+evening), they were all so stricken with amazement. By one movement they
+swung round to see what had fascinated Cathro, and the other classes
+doing likewise, Tommy became suddenly the centre of observation. Big
+tears were slinking down his face, and falling on some sheets of paper,
+which emotion prevented his concealing. Anon the unusual stillness in
+the school made him look up, but he was dazed, like one uncertain of his
+whereabouts, and he blinked rapidly to clear his eyes, as a bird shakes
+water from its wings.
+
+Mr. Cathro first uttered what was afterward described as a kind of
+throttled skirl, and then he roared "Come here!" whereupon Tommy stepped
+forward heavily, and tried, as commanded, to come to his senses, but it
+was not easy to make so long a journey in a moment, and several times,
+as he seemed about to conquer his fears, a wave of feeling set them
+flowing again.
+
+"Take your time," said Mr. Cathro, grimly, "I can wait," and this had
+such a helpful effect that Tommy was able presently to speak up for his
+misdeeds. They consisted of some letters written at home but brought to
+the school for private reading, and the Dominie got a nasty jar when he
+saw that they were all signed "Betsy Grieve." Miss Betsy Grieve, servant
+to Mr. Duthie, was about to marry, and these letters were
+acknowledgments of wedding presents. Now, Mr. Cathro had written similar
+letters for Betsy only a few days before.
+
+"Did she ask you to write these for her?" he demanded, fuming, and Tommy
+replied demurely that she had. He could not help adding, though he felt
+the unwisdom of it, "She got some other body to do them first, but his
+letters didna satisfy her."
+
+"Oh!" said Mr. Cathro, and it was such a vicious oh that Tommy squeaked
+tremblingly, "I dinna know who he was."
+
+Keeping his mouth shut by gripping his underlip with his teeth, the
+Dominie read the letters, and Tommy gazed eagerly at him, all fear
+forgotten, soul conquering body. The others stood or sat waiting,
+perplexed as to the cause, confident of the issue. The letters were much
+finer productions than Cathro's, he had to admit it to himself as he
+read. Yet the rivals had started fair, for Betsy was a recent immigrant
+from Dunkeld way, and the letters were to people known neither to Tommy
+nor to the Dominie. Also, she had given the same details for the
+guidance of each. A lady had sent a teapot, which affected to be new,
+but was not; Betsy recognized it by a scratch on the lid, and wanted to
+scratch back, but politely. So Tommy wrote, "When you come to see me we
+shall have a cup of tea out of your beautiful present, and it will be
+like a meeting of three old friends." That was perhaps too polite, Betsy
+feared, but Tommy said authoritatively, "No, the politer the nippier."
+
+There was a set of six cups and saucers from Peter something, who had
+loved Betsy in vain. She had shown the Dominie and Tommy the ear-rings
+given her long ago by Peter (they were bought with 'Sosh checks) and the
+poem he had written about them, and she was most anxious to gratify him
+in her reply. All Cathro could do, however, was to wish Peter well in
+some ornate sentences, while Tommy's was a letter that only a tender
+woman's heart could have indited, with such beautiful touches about the
+days which are no more alas forever, that Betsy listened to it with
+heaving breast and felt so sorry for her old swain that, forgetting she
+had never loved him, she all but gave Andrew the go-by and returned to
+Peter. As for Peter, who had been getting over his trouble, he saw now
+for the first time what he had lost, and he carried Betsy's dear letter
+in his oxter pocket and was inconsolable.
+
+But the masterpiece went to Mrs. Dinnie, baker, in return for a flagon
+bun. Long ago her daughter, Janet, and Betsy had agreed to marry on the
+same day, and many a quip had Mrs. Dinnie cast at their romantic
+compact. But Janet died, and so it was a sad letter that Tommy had to
+write to her mother. "I'm doubting you're no auld enough for this ane,"
+soft-hearted Betsy said, but she did not know her man. "Tell me some one
+thing the mother used often to say when she was taking her fun off the
+pair of you," he said, and "Where is she buried?" was a suggestive
+question, with the happy tag, "Is there a tree hanging over the grave?"
+Thus assisted, he composed a letter that had a tear in every sentence.
+Betsy rubbed her eyes red over it, and not all its sentiments were
+allowed to die, for Mrs. Dinnie, touched to the heart, printed the best
+of them in black licorice on short bread for funeral feasts, at which
+they gave rise to solemn reflections as they went down.
+
+Nevertheless, this letter affected none so much as the writer of it. His
+first rough sketch became so damp as he wrote that he had to abandon his
+pen and take to pencil; while he was revising he had often to desist to
+dry his eyes on the coverlet of Aaron's bed, which made Elspeth weep
+also, though she had no notion what he was at. But when the work was
+finished he took her into the secret and read his letter to her, and he
+almost choked as he did so. Yet he smiled rapturously through his woe,
+and she knew no better than to be proud of him, and he woke next morning
+with a cold, brought on you can see how, but his triumph was worth its
+price.
+
+Having read the letter in an uncanny silence, Mr. Cathro unbottled Tommy
+for the details, and out they came with a rush, blowing away the cork
+discretion. Yet was the Dominie slow to strike; he seemed to find more
+satisfaction in surveying his young friend with a wondering gaze that
+had a dash of admiration in it, which Tommy was the first to note.
+
+"I don't mind admitting before the whole school," said Mr. Cathro,
+slowly, "that if these letters had been addressed to me they would have
+taken me in."
+
+Tommy tried to look modest, but his chest would have its way.
+
+"You little sacket," cried the Dominie, "how did you manage it?"
+
+"I think I thought I was Betsy at the time," Tommy answered, with proper
+awe.
+
+"She told me nothing about the weeping-willow at the grave," said the
+Dominie, perhaps in self-defence.
+
+"You hadna speired if there was one," retorted Tommy, jealously.
+
+"What made you think of it?"
+
+"I saw it might come in neat." (He had said in the letter that the
+weeping-willow reminded him of the days when Janet's bonny hair hung
+down kissing her waist just as the willow kissed the grave.)
+
+"Willows don't hang so low as you seem to think," said the Dominie.
+
+"Yes, they do," replied Tommy, "I walked three miles to see one to make
+sure. I was near putting in another beautiful bit about
+weeping-willows."
+
+"Well, why didn't you?"
+
+Tommy looked up with an impudent snigger. "You could never guess," he
+said.
+
+"Answer me at once," thundered his preceptor. "Was it because--"
+
+"No," interrupted Tommy, so conscious of Mr. Cathro's inferiority that
+to let him go on seemed waste of time. "It was because, though it is a
+beautiful thing in itself, I felt a servant lassie wouldna have thought
+o't. I was sweer," he admitted, with a sigh; then firmly, "but I cut it
+out."
+
+Again Cathro admired, reluctantly. The hack does feel the difference
+between himself and the artist. Cathro might possibly have had the idea,
+he could not have cut it out.
+
+_But_ the hack is sometimes, or usually, or nearly always the artist's
+master, and can make him suffer for his dem'd superiority.
+
+"What made you snivel when you read the pathetic bits?" asked Cathro,
+with itching fingers.
+
+"I was so sorry for Peter and Mrs. Dinnie," Tommy answered, a little
+puzzled himself now. "I saw them so clear."
+
+"And yet until Betsy came to you, you had never heard tell of them?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And on reflection you don't care a doit about them?"
+
+"N-no."
+
+"And you care as little for Betsy?"
+
+"No now, but at the time I a kind of thought I was to be married to
+Andrew."
+
+"And even while you blubbered you were saying to yourself, 'What a
+clever billie I am!'"
+
+Mr. Cathro had certainly intended to end the scene with the strap, but
+as he stretched out his hand for it he had another idea. "Do you know
+why Nether Drumgley's sheep are branded with the letters N.D.?" he asked
+his pupils, and a dozen replied, "So as all may ken wha they belong to."
+
+"Precisely," said Mr. Cathro, "and similarly they used to brand a letter
+on a felon, so that all might know whom _he_ belonged to." He crossed to
+the fireplace, and, picking up a charred stick, wrote with it on the
+forehead of startled Tommy the letters "S.T."
+
+"Now," said the Dominie complacently, "we know to whom Tommy belongs."
+
+All were so taken aback that for some seconds nothing could be heard
+save Tommy indignantly wiping his brow; then "Wha is he?" cried one, the
+mouthpiece of half a hundred.
+
+"He is one of the two proprietors we have just been speaking of,"
+replied Cathro, dryly, and turning again to Tommy, he said, "Wipe away,
+Sentimental Tommy, try hot water, try cold water, try a knife, but you
+will never get those letters off you; you are branded for ever and
+ever."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+OF FOUR MINISTERS WHO AFTERWARDS BOASTED THAT THEY HAD KNOWN TOMMY
+SANDYS
+
+
+Bursary examination time had come, and to the siege of Aberdeen marched
+a hungry half-dozen--three of them from Thrums, two from the Glenuharity
+school. The sixth was Tod Lindertis, a ploughman from the Dubb of
+Prosen, his place of study the bothy after lousing time (Do you hear the
+klink of quoits?) or a one-roomed house near it, his tutor a dogged
+little woman, who knew not the accusative from the dative, but never
+tired of holding the book while Tod recited. Him someone greets with the
+good-natured jeer, "It's your fourth try, is it no, Tod?" and he answers
+cheerily, "It is, my lathie, and I'll keep kick, kick, kicking away to
+the _n_th time."
+
+"Which means till the door flies open," says the dogged little woman,
+who is the gallant Tod's no less gallant wife, and already the mother of
+two. I hope Tod will succeed this time.
+
+The competitors, who were to travel part of the way on their shanks, met
+soon after daybreak in Cathro's yard, where a little crowd awaited them,
+parents trying to look humble, Mr. Duthie and Ramsay Cameron thinking
+of the morning when they set off on the same errand--but the results
+were different, and Mr. Duthie is now a minister, and Ramsay is in the
+middle of another wob. Both dominies were present, hating each other,
+for that day only, up to the mouth, where their icy politeness was a
+thing to shudder at, and each was drilling his detachment to the last
+moment, but by different methods; for while Mr. Cathro entreated Joe
+Meldrum for God's sake to mind that about the genitive, and Willie
+Simpson to keep his mouth shut and drink even water sparingly, Mr.
+Ogilvy cracked jokes with Gav Dishart and explained them to Lauchlan
+McLauchlan. "Think of anything now but what is before you," was Mr.
+Ogilvy's advice. "Think of nothing else," roared Mr. Cathro. But though
+Mr. Ogilvy seemed outwardly calm it was base pretence; his dickie
+gradually wriggled through the opening of his waistcoat, as if bearing a
+protest from his inward parts, and he let it hang crumpled and
+conspicuous, while Grizel, on the outskirts of the crowd, yearned to put
+it right.
+
+Grizel was not there, she told several people, including herself, to say
+good-by to Tommy, and oh, how she scorned Elspeth, for looking as if
+life would not be endurable without him. Knowing what Elspeth was, Tommy
+had decided that she should not accompany him to the yard (of course she
+was to follow him to Aberdeen if he distinguished himself--Mr. McLean
+had promised to bring her), but she told him of her dream that he headed
+the bursary list, and as this dream coincided with some dreams of his
+own, though not with all, it seemed to give her such fortitude that he
+let her come. An expressionless face was Tommy's, so that not even the
+experienced dominie of Glenquharity, covertly scanning his rival's lot,
+could tell whether he was gloomy or uplifted; he did not seem to be in
+need of a long sleep like Willie Simpson, nor were his eyes glazed like
+Gav Dishart's, who carried all the problems of Euclid before him on an
+invisible blackboard and dared not even wink lest he displaced them, nor
+did he, like Tod Lindertis, answer questions about his money pocket or
+where he had stowed his bread and cheese with
+
+"After envy, spare, obey,
+The dative put, remember, pray."
+
+Mr. Ogilvy noticed that Cathro tapped his forehead doubtfully every time
+his eyes fell on Tommy, but otherwise shunned him, and he asked "What
+are his chances?"
+
+"That's the laddie," replied Mr. Cathro, "who, when you took her
+ladyship to see Corp Shiach years ago impersona--"
+
+"I know," Mr. Ogilvy interrupted him hastily, "but how will he stand,
+think you?"
+
+Mr. Cathro coughed. "We'll see," he said guardedly.
+
+Nevertheless Tommy was not to get round the corner without betraying a
+little of himself, for Elspeth having borne up magnificently when he
+shook hands, screamed at the tragedy of his back and fell into the arms
+of Tod's wife, whereupon Tommy first tried to brazen it out and then
+kissed her in the presence of a score of witnesses, including Grizel,
+who stamped her foot, though what right had she to be so angry? "I'm
+sure," Elspeth sobbed, "that the professor would let me sit beside you;
+I would just hunker on the floor and hold your foot and no say a word."
+Tommy gave Tod's wife an imploring look, and she managed to comfort
+Elspeth with predictions of his coming triumph and the reunion to
+follow. Grateful Elspeth in return asked Tommy to help Tod when the
+professors were not looking, and he promised, after which she had no
+more fear for Tod.
+
+And now, ye drums that we all carry in our breasts, beat your best over
+the bravest sight ever seen in a small Scotch town of an autumn morning,
+the departure of its fighting lads for the lists at Aberdeen. Let the
+tune be the sweet familiar one you found somewhere in the Bible long
+ago, "The mothers we leave behind us"--leave behind us on their knees.
+May it dirl through your bones, brave boys, to the end, as you hope not
+to be damned. And now, quick march.
+
+A week has elapsed, and now--there is no call for music now, for these
+are but the vanquished crawling back, Joe Meldrum and--and another. No,
+it is not Tod, he stays on in Aberdeen, for he is a twelve-pound tenner.
+The two were within a mile of Thrums at three o'clock, but after that
+they lagged, waiting for the gloaming, when they stole to their homes,
+ducking as they passed windows without the blinds down. Elspeth ran to
+Tommy when he appeared in the doorway, and then she got quickly between
+him and Aaron. The warper was sitting by the fire at his evening meal,
+and he gave the wanderer a long steady look, then without a word
+returned to his porridge and porter. It was a less hearty welcome home
+even than Joe's; his mother was among those who had wept to lose her
+son, but when he came back to her she gave him a whack on the head with
+the thieval.
+
+Aaron asked not a question about those days in Aberdeen, but he heard a
+little about them from Elspeth. Tommy had not excused himself to
+Elspeth, he had let her do as she liked with his head (this was a great
+treat to her), and while it lay pressed against hers, she made remarks
+about Aberdeen professors which it would have done them good to hear.
+These she repeated to Aaron, who was about to answer roughly, and then
+suddenly put her on his knee instead.
+
+"They didna ask the right questions," she told him, and when the warper
+asked if Tommy had said so, she declared that he had refused to say a
+word against them, which seemed to her to cover him with glory. "But he
+doubted they would make that mistake afore he started, she said
+brightly, so you see he saw through them afore ever he set eyes on
+them."
+
+Corp would have replied admiringly to this "Oh, the little deevil!"
+(when he heard of Tommy's failure he wanted to fight Gav Dishart and
+Willie Simpson), but Aaron was another kind of confidant, and even when
+she explained on Tommy's authority that there are two kinds of
+cleverness, the kind you learn from books and a kind that is inside
+yourself, which latter was Tommy's kind, he only replied,
+
+"He can take it wi' him to the herding, then, and see if it'll keep the
+cattle frae stravaiging."
+
+"It's no that kind of cleverness either," said Elspeth, quaking, and
+quaked also Tommy, who had gone to the garret, to listen through the
+floor.
+
+"No? I would like to ken what use his cleverness can be put to, then,"
+said Aaron, and Elspeth answered nothing, and Tommy only sighed, for
+that indeed was the problem. But though to these three and to Cathro,
+and to Mr. and Mrs. McLean and to others more mildly interested, it
+seemed a problem beyond solution, there was one in Thrums who rocked her
+arms at their denseness, a girl growing so long in the legs that twice
+within the last year she had found it necessary to let down her
+parramatty frock. As soon as she heard that Tommy had come home
+vanquished, she put on the quaint blue bonnet with the white strings,
+in which she fondly believed she looked ever so old (her period of
+mourning was at an end, but she still wore her black dress) and
+forgetting all except that he was unhappy, she ran to a certain little
+house to comfort him. But she did not go in, for through the window she
+saw Elspeth petting him, and that somehow annoyed her. In the evening,
+however, she called on Mr. Cathro.
+
+Perhaps you want to know why she, who at last saw Sentimental Tommy in
+his true light and spurned him accordingly, now exerted herself in his
+behalf instead of going on with the papering of the surgery. Well, that
+was the reason. She had put the question to herself before--not, indeed,
+before going to Monypenny but before calling on the Dominie--and decided
+that she wanted to send Tommy to college, because she disliked him so
+much that she could not endure the prospect of his remaining in Thrums.
+Now, are you satisfied?
+
+She could scarcely take time to say good-evening to Mr. Cathro before
+telling him the object of her visit. "The letters Tommy has been writing
+for people are very clever, are they not?" she began.
+
+"You've heard of them, have you?"
+
+"Everybody has heard of them," she said injudiciously, and he groaned
+and asked if she had come to tell him this. But he admitted their
+cleverness, whereupon she asked, "Well, if he is clever at writing
+letters, would he not be clever at writing an essay?"
+
+"I wager my head against a snuff mull that he would be, but what are you
+driving at?"
+
+"I was wondering whether he could not win the prize I heard Dr. McQueen
+speaking about, the--is it not called the Hugh Blackadder?"
+
+"My head against a buckie that he could! Sit down, Grizel, I see what
+you mean now. Ay, but the pity is he's not eligible for the Hugh
+Blackadder. Oh, that he was, oh, that he was! It would make Ogilvy of
+Glenquharity sing small at last! His loons have carried the Blackadder
+for the last seven years without a break. The Hugh Blackadder
+Mortification, the bequest is called, and, 'deed, it has been a sore
+mortification to me!"
+
+Calming down, he told her the story of the bequest. Hugh Blackadder was
+a Thrums man who made a fortune in America, and bequeathed the interest
+of three hundred pounds of it to be competed for yearly by the youth of
+his native place. He had grown fond of Thrums and all its ways over
+there, and left directions that the prize should be given for the best
+essay in the Scots tongue, the ministers of the town and glens to be the
+judges, the competitors to be boys who were going to college, but had
+not without it the wherewithal to support themselves. The ministers took
+this to mean that those who carried small bursaries were eligible, and
+indeed it had usually gone to a bursar.
+
+"Sentimental Tommy would not have been able to compete if he had got a
+bursary," Mr. Cathro explained, "because however small it was Mr. McLean
+meant to double it; and he can't compete without it, for McLean refuses
+to help him now (he was here an hour since, saying the laddie was
+obviously hopeless), so I never thought of entering Tommy for the
+Blackadder. No, it will go to Ogilvy's Lauchlan McLauchlan, who is a
+twelve-pounder, and, as there can be no competitors, he'll get it
+without the trouble of coming back to write the essay."
+
+"But suppose Mr. McLean were willing to do what he promised if Tommy won
+the Blackadder?"
+
+"It's useless to appeal to McLean. He's hard set against the laddie now
+and washes his hands of him, saying that Aaron Latta is right after all.
+He may soften, and get Tommy into a trade to save him from the herding,
+but send him to college he won't, and indeed he's right, the laddie's
+a fool."
+
+"Not at writing let--"
+
+"And what is the effect of his letter-writing, but to make me
+ridiculous? Me! I wonder you can expect me to move a finger for him, he
+has been my torment ever since his inscrutable face appeared at my
+door."
+
+"Never mind him," said Grizel, cunningly. "But think what a triumph it
+would be to you if your boy beat Mr. Ogilvy's."
+
+The Dominie rose in his excitement and slammed the table, "My certie,
+lassie, but it would!" he cried, "Ogilvy looks on the Blackadder as his
+perquisite, and he's surer of it than ever this year. And there's no
+doubt but Tommy would carry it. My head to a buckie preen he would carry
+it, and then, oh, for a sight of Ogilvy's face, oh, for--" He broke off
+abruptly. "But what's the good of thinking of it?" he said, dolefully,
+"Mr. McLean's a firm man when he makes up his mind."
+
+Nevertheless, though McLean, who had a Scotchman's faith in the verdict
+of professors, and had been bitterly disappointed by Tommy's failure,
+refused to be converted by the Dominie's entreaties, he yielded to them
+when they were voiced by Ailie (brought into the plot _vice_ Grizel
+retired), and Elspeth got round Aaron, and so it came about that with
+his usual luck, Tommy was given another chance, present at the
+competition, which took place in the Thrums school, the Rev. Mr. Duthie,
+the Rev. Mr. Dishart, the Rev. Mr. Gloag of Noran Side, the Rev. Mr.
+Lorrimer of Glenquharity (these on hair-bottomed chairs), and Mr. Cathro
+and Mr. Ogilvy (cane); present also to a less extent (that is to say,
+their faces at the windows), Corp and others, who applauded the local
+champion when he entered and derided McLauchlan. The subject of the
+essay was changed yearly, this time "A Day in Church" was announced,
+and immediately Lauchlan McLauchlan, who had not missed a service since
+his scarlet fever year (and too few then), smote his red head in agony,
+while Tommy, who had missed as many as possible, looked calmly
+confident. For two hours the competitors were put into a small room
+communicating with the larger one, and Tommy began at once with a
+confident smirk that presently gave way to a most holy expression; while
+Lauchlan gaped at him and at last got started also, but had to pause
+occasionally to rub his face on his sleeve, for like Corp he was one of
+the kind who cannot think without perspiring. In the large room the
+ministers gossiped about eternal punishment, and of the two dominies one
+sat at his ease, like a passenger who knows that the coach will reach
+the goal without any exertion on his part, while the other paced the
+floor, with many a despondent glance through the open door whence the
+scraping proceeded; and the one was pleasantly cool; and the other in a
+plot of heat; and the one made genial remarks about every-day matters,
+and the answers of the other stood on their heads. It was a familiar
+comedy to Mr. Ogilvy, hardly a variation on what had happened five times
+in six for many years: the same scene, the same scraping in the little
+room, the same background of ministers (black-aviced Mr. Lorrimer had
+begun to bark again), the same dominies; everything was as it had so
+often been, except that he and Cathro had changed places; it was Cathro
+who sat smiling now and Mr. Ogilvy who dolefully paced the floor.
+
+To be able to write! Throughout Mr. Ogilvy's life, save when he was
+about one and twenty, this had seemed the great thing, and he ever
+approached the thought reverently, as if it were a maid of more than
+mortal purity. And it is, and because he knew this she let him see her
+face, which shall ever be hidden from those who look not for the soul,
+and to help him nearer to her came assistance in strange guise, the loss
+of loved ones, dolour unutterable; but still she was beyond his reach.
+Night by night, when the only light in the glen was the school-house
+lamp, of use at least as a landmark to solitary travellers--who miss it
+nowadays, for it burns no more--she hovered over him, nor did she deride
+his hopeless efforts, but rather, as she saw him go from black to gray
+and from gray to white in her service, were her luminous eyes sorrowful
+because she was not for him, and she bent impulsively toward him, so
+that once or twice in a long life he touched her fingers, and a heavenly
+spark was lit, for he had risen higher than himself, and that is
+literature.
+
+He knew that oblivion was at hand, ready to sweep away his pages almost
+as soon as they were filled (Do we not all hear her besom when we pause
+to dip?), but he had done his best and he had a sense of humor, and
+perhaps some day would come a pupil of whom he could make what he had
+failed to make of himself. That prodigy never did come, though it was
+not for want of nursing, and there came at least, in succession most
+maddening to Mr. Cathro, a row of youths who could be trained to carry
+the Hugh Blackadder. Mr. Ogilvy's many triumphs in this competition had
+not dulled his appetite for more, and depressed he was at the prospect
+of a reverse. That it was coming now he could not doubt. McLauchlan, who
+was to be Rev., had a flow of words (which would prevent his perspiring
+much in the pulpit), but he could no more describe a familiar scene with
+the pen than a milkmaid can draw a cow. The Thrums representatives were
+sometimes as little gifted, it is true, and never were they so well
+exercised, but this Tommy had the knack of it, as Mr. Ogilvy could not
+doubt, for the story of his letter-writing had been through the glens.
+
+"Keep up your spirits," Mr. Lorrimer had said to Mm as they walked
+together to the fray, "Cathro's loon may compose the better of the two,
+but, as I understand, the first years of his life were spent in London,
+and so he may bogle at the Scotch."
+
+But the Dominie replied, "Don't buoy me up on a soap bubble. If there's
+as much in him as I fear, that should be a help to him instead of a
+hindrance, for it will have set him a-thinking about the words he uses."
+
+And the satisfaction on Tommy's face when the subject of the essay was
+given out, with the business-like way in which he set to work, had
+added to the Dominie's misgivings; if anything was required to
+dishearten him utterly it was provided by Cathro's confident smile. The
+two Thrums ministers were naturally desirous that Tommy should win, but
+the younger of them was very fond of Mr. Ogilvy, and noticing his
+unhappy peeps through the door dividing the rooms, proposed that it
+should be closed. He shut it himself, and as he did so he observed that
+Tommy was biting his pen and frowning, while McLauchlan, having ceased
+to think, was getting on nicely. But it did not strike Mr. Dishart that
+this was worth commenting on.
+
+"Are you not satisfied with the honors you have already got, you greedy
+man?" he said, laying his hand affectionately on Mr. Ogilvy, who only
+sighed for reply.
+
+"It is well that the prize should go to different localities, for in
+that way its sphere of usefulness is extended," remarked pompous Mr.
+Gloag, who could be impartial, as there was no candidate from Noran
+Side. He was a minister much in request for church soirees, where he
+amused the congregations so greatly with personal anecdote about himself
+that they never thought much of him afterwards. There is one such
+minister in every presbytery.
+
+"And to have carried the Hugh Blackadder seven times running is surely
+enough for any one locality, even though it be Glenquharity," said Mr.
+Lorrimer, preparing for defeat.
+
+"There's consolation for you, sir," said Mr. Cathro, sarcastically, to
+his rival, who tried to take snuff in sheer bravado, but let it slip
+through his fingers, and after that, until the two hours were up, the
+talk was chiefly of how Tommy would get on at Aberdeen. But it was
+confined to the four ministers and one dominie. Mr. Ogilvy still hovered
+about the door of communication, and his face fell more and more, making
+Mr. Dishart quite unhappy.
+
+"I'm an old fool," the Dominie admitted, "but I can't help being cast
+down. The fact is that--I have only heard the scrape of one pen for
+nearly an hour."
+
+"Poor Lauchlan!" exclaimed Mr. Cathro, rubbing his hands gleefully, and
+indeed it was such a shameless exhibition that the Auld Licht minister
+said reproachfully, "You forget yourself, Mr. Cathro, let us not be
+unseemly exalted in the hour of our triumph."
+
+Then Mr. Cathro sat upon his hands as the best way of keeping them
+apart, but the moment Mr. Dishart's back presented itself, he winked at
+Mr. Ogilvy. He winked a good deal more presently. For after all--how to
+tell it! Tommy was ignominiously beaten, making such a beggarly show
+that the judges thought it unnecessary to take the essays home with them
+for leisurely consideration before pronouncing Mr. Lauchlan McLauchlan
+winner. There was quite a commotion in the school-room. At the end of
+the allotted time the two competitors had been told to hand in their
+essays, and how Mr. McLauchlan was sniggering is not worth recording, so
+dumfounded, confused, and raging was Tommy. He clung to his papers,
+crying fiercely that the two hours could not be up yet, and Lauchlan
+having tried to keep the laugh in too long it exploded in his mouth,
+whereupon, said he, with a guffaw, "He hasna written a word for near an
+hour!"
+
+"What! It was you I heard!" cried Mr. Ogilvy gleaming, while the unhappy
+Cathro tore the essay from Tommy's hands. Essay! It was no more an essay
+than a twig is a tree, for the gowk had stuck in the middle of his
+second page. Yes, stuck is the right expression, as his chagrined
+teacher had to admit when the boy was cross-examined. He had not been
+"up to some of his tricks," he had stuck, and his explanations, as you
+will admit, merely emphasized his incapacity.
+
+He had brought himself to public scorn for lack of a word. What word?
+they asked testily, but even now he could not tell. He had wanted a
+Scotch word that would signify how many people were in church, and it
+was on the tip of his tongue but would come no farther. Puckle was
+nearly the word, but it did not mean so many people as he meant. The
+hour had gone by just like winking; he had forgotten all about time
+while searching his mind for the word.
+
+When Mr. Ogilvy heard this he seemed to be much impressed, repeatedly he
+nodded his head as some beat time to music, and he muttered to himself,
+"The right word--yes, that's everything," and "'the time went by like
+winking'--exactly, precisely," and he would have liked to examine
+Tommy's bumps, but did not, nor said a word aloud, for was he not there
+in McLauchlan's interest?
+
+The other five were furious; even Mr. Lorrimer, though his man had won,
+could not smile in face of such imbecility. "You little tattie doolie,"
+Cathro roared, "were there not a dozen words to wile from if you had an
+ill-will to puckle? What ailed you at manzy, or--"
+
+"I thought of manzy," replied Tommy, woefully, for he was ashamed of
+himself, "but--but a manse's a swarm. It would mean that the folk in the
+kirk were buzzing thegither like bees, instead of sitting still."
+
+"Even if it does mean that," said Mr. Duthie, with impatience, "what was
+the need of being so particular? Surely the art of essay-writing
+consists in using the first word that comes and hurrying on."
+
+"That's how I did," said the proud McLauchlan, who is now leader of a
+party in the church, and a figure in Edinburgh during the month of May.
+
+"I see," interposed Mr. Gloag, "that McLauchlan speaks of there being a
+mask of people in the church. Mask is a fine Scotch word."
+
+"Admirable," assented Mr. Dishart. "I thought of mask," whimpered Tommy,
+"but that would mean the kirk was crammed, and I just meant it to be
+middling full."
+
+"Flow would have done," suggested Mr. Lorrimer.
+
+"Flow's but a handful," said Tommy.
+
+"Curran, then, you jackanapes!"
+
+"Curran's no enough."
+
+Mr. Lorrimer flung up his hands in despair.
+
+"I wanted something between curran and mask," said Tommy, dogged, yet
+almost at the crying.
+
+Mr. Ogilvy, who had been hiding his admiration with difficulty, spread a
+net for him. "You said you wanted a word that meant middling full. Well,
+why did you not say middling full--or fell mask?"
+
+"Yes, why not?" demanded the ministers, unconsciously caught in the net.
+
+"I wanted one word," replied Tommy, unconsciously avoiding it.
+
+"You jewel!" muttered Mr. Ogilvy under his breath, but Mr. Cathro would
+have banged the boy's head had not the ministers interfered.
+
+"It is so easy, too, to find the right word," said Mr. Gloag.
+
+"It's no; it's as difficult as to hit a squirrel," cried Tommy, and
+again Mr. Ogilvy nodded approval.
+
+But the ministers were only pained.
+
+"The lad is merely a numskull," said Mr. Dishart, kindly.
+
+"And no teacher could have turned him into anything else," said Mr.
+Duthie.
+
+"And so, Cathro, you need not feel sore over your defeat," added Mr.
+Gloag; but nevertheless Cathro took Tommy by the neck and ran him out of
+the parish school of Thrums. When he returned to the others he found the
+ministers congratulating McLauchlan, whose nose was in the air, and
+complimenting Mr. Ogilvy, who listened to their formal phrases solemnly
+and accepted their hand-shakes with a dry chuckle.
+
+"Ay, grin away, sir," the mortified dominie of Thrums said to him
+sourly, "the joke is on your side."
+
+"You are right, sir," replied Mr. Ogilvy, mysteriously, "the joke is on
+my side, and the best of it is that not one of you knows what the joke
+is!"
+
+And then an odd thing happened. As they were preparing to leave the
+school, the door opened a little and there appeared in the aperture the
+face of Tommy, tear-stained but excited. "I ken the word now," he cried,
+"it came to me a' at once; it is hantle!"
+
+The door closed with a victorious bang, just in time to prevent Cathro--
+
+"Oh, the sumph!" exclaimed Mr. Lauchlan McLauchlan, "as if it mattered
+what the word is now!"
+
+And said Mr. Dishart, "Cathro, you had better tell Aaron Latta that the
+sooner he sends this nincompoop to the herding the better."
+
+But Mr. Ogilvy giving his Lauchlan a push that nearly sent him
+sprawling, said in an ecstasy to himself, "He _had_ to think of it till
+he got it--and he got it. The laddie is a genius!" They were about to
+tear up Tommy's essay, but he snatched it from them and put it in his
+oxter pocket. "I am a collector of curiosities," he explained, "and this
+paper may be worth money yet."
+
+"Well," said Cathro, savagely, "I have one satisfaction, I ran him out
+of my school."
+
+"Who knows," replied Mr. Ogilvy, "but what you may be proud to dust a
+chair for him when he comes back?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+THE END OF A BOYHOOD
+
+
+Convinced of his own worthlessness, Tommy was sufficiently humble now,
+but Aaron Latta, nevertheless, marched to the square on the following
+market day and came back with the boy's sentence, Elspeth being happily
+absent.
+
+"I say nothing about the disgrace you have brought on this house," the
+warper began without emotion, "for it has been a shamed house since
+afore you were born, and it's a small offence to skail on a clarty
+floor. But now I've done more for you than I promised Jean Myles to do,
+and you had your pick atween college and the herding, and the herding
+you've chosen twice. I call you no names, you ken best what you're
+fitted for, but I've seen the farmer of the Dubb of Prosen the day, and
+he was short-handed through the loss of Tod Lindertis, so you're fee'd
+to him. Dinna think you get Tod's place, it'll be years afore you rise
+to that, but it's right and proper that as he steps up, you should step
+down."
+
+"The Dubb of Prosen!" cried Tommy in dismay. "It's fifteen miles frae
+here."
+
+"It's a' that."
+
+"But--but--but Elspeth and me never thought of my being so far away that
+she couldna see me. We thought of a farmer near Thrums."
+
+"The farther you're frae her the better," said Aaron, uneasily, yet
+honestly believing what he said.
+
+"It'll kill her," Tommy cried fiercely. With only his own suffering to
+consider he would probably have nursed it into a play through which he
+stalked as the noble child of misfortune, but in his anxiety for Elspeth
+he could still forget himself. "Fine you ken she canna do without me,"
+he screamed.
+
+"She maun be weaned," replied the warper, with a show of temper; he was
+convinced that the sooner Elspeth learned to do without Tommy the better
+it would be for herself in the end, but in his way of regarding the boy
+there was also a touch of jealousy, pathetic rather than forbidding. To
+him he left the task of breaking the news to Elspeth; and Tommy,
+terrified lest she should swoon under it, was almost offended when she
+remained calm. But, alas, the reason was that she thought she was going
+with him.
+
+"Will we have to walk all the way to the Dubb of Prosen?" she asked,
+quite brightly, and at that Tommy twisted about in misery. "You are
+no--you canna--" he began, and then dodged the telling. "We--we may get
+a lift in a cart," he said weakly.
+
+"And I'll sit aside you in the fields, and make chains o' the gowans,
+will I no? Speak, Tommy!"
+
+"Ay--ay, will you," he groaned.
+
+"And we'll have a wee, wee room to oursels, and--"
+
+He broke down, "Oh, Elspeth," he cried, "it was ill-done of me no to
+stick to my books, and get a bursary, and it was waur o' me to bother
+about that word. I'm a scoundrel, I am, I'm a black, I'm a--"
+
+But she put her hand on his mouth, saying, "I'm fonder o' you than ever,
+Tommy, and I'll like the Dubb o' Prosen fine, and what does it matter
+where we are when we're thegither?" which was poor comfort for him, but
+still he could not tell her the truth, and so in the end Aaron had to
+tell her. It struck her down, and the doctor had to be called in during
+the night to stop her hysterics. When at last she fell asleep Tommy's
+arm was beneath her, and by and by it was in agony, but he set his teeth
+and kept it there rather than risk waking her.
+
+When Tommy was out of the way, Aaron did his clumsy best to soothe her,
+sometimes half shamefacedly pressing her cheek to his, and she did not
+repel him, but there was no response. "Dinna take on in that way,
+dawtie," he would say, "I'll be good to you."
+
+"But you're no Tommy," Elspeth answered.
+
+"I'm not, I'm but a stunted tree, blasted in my youth, but for a' that I
+would like to have somebody to care for me, and there's none to do't,
+Elspeth, if you winna. I'll gang walks wi' you, I'll take you to the
+fishing, I'll come to the garret at night to hap you up, I'll--I'll
+teach you the games I used to play mysel'. I'm no sure but what you
+might make something o' me yet, bairn, if you tried hard."
+
+"But you're no Tommy," Elspeth wailed again, and when he advised her to
+put Tommy out of her mind for a little and speak of other things, she
+only answered innocently, "What else is there to speak about?"
+
+Mr. McLean had sent Tommy a pound, and so was done with him, but Ailie
+still thought him a dear, though no longer a wonder, and Elspeth took a
+strange confession to her, how one night she was so angry with God that
+she had gone to bed without saying her prayers. She had just meant to
+keep Him in suspense for a little, and then say them, but she fell
+asleep. And that was not the worst, for when she woke in the morning,
+and saw that she was still living, she was glad she had not said them.
+But next night she said them twice.
+
+And this, too, is another flash into her dark character. Tommy, who
+never missed saying his prayers and could say them with surprising
+quickness, told her, "God is fonder of lonely lassies than of any other
+kind, and every time you greet it makes Him greet, and when you're
+cheerful it makes Him cheerful too." This was meant to dry her eyes, but
+it had not that effect, for, said Elspeth, vindictively, "Well, then,
+I'll just make Him as miserable as I can."
+
+When Tommy was merely concerned with his own affairs he did not think
+much about God, but he knew that no other could console Elspeth, and his
+love for her usually told him the right things to say, and while he said
+them, he was quite carried away by his sentiments and even wept over
+them, but within the hour he might be leering. They were beautiful, and
+were repeated of course to Mrs. McLean, who told her husband of them,
+declaring that this boy's love for his sister made her a better woman.
+
+"But nevertheless," said Ivie, "Mr. Cathro assures me--"
+
+"He is prejudiced," retorted Mrs. McLean warmly, prejudice being a
+failing which all women marvel at. "Just listen to what the boy said to
+Elspeth to-day. He said to her, 'When I am away, try for a whole day to
+be better than you ever were before, and think of nothing else, and then
+when prayer-time comes you will see that you have been happy without
+knowing it.' Fancy his finding out that."
+
+"I wonder if he ever tried it himself?" said Mr. McLean.
+
+"Ivie, think shame of yourself!"
+
+"Well, even Cathro admits that he has a kind of cleverness, but--"
+
+"Cleverness!" exclaimed Ailie, indignantly, "that is not cleverness, it
+is holiness;" and leaving the cynic she sought Elspeth, and did her good
+by pointing out that a girl who had such a brother should try to save
+him pain. "He is very miserable, dear," she said, "because you are so
+unhappy. If you looked brighter, think how that would help him, and it
+would show that you are worthy of him." So Elspeth went home trying hard
+to look brighter, but made a sad mess of it.
+
+"Think of getting letters frae me every time the post comes in!" said
+Tommy, and then indeed her face shone.
+
+And then Elspeth could write to him--yes, as often as ever she liked!
+This pleased her even more. It was such an exquisite thought that she
+could not wait, but wrote the first one before he started, and he
+answered it across the table. And Mrs. McLean made a letter bag, with
+two strings to it, and showed her how to carry it about with her in a
+safer place than a pocket.
+
+Then a cheering thing occurred. Came Corp, with the astounding news
+that, in the Glenquharity dominie's opinion, Tommy should have got the
+Hugh Blackadder.
+
+"He says he is glad he wasna judge, because he would have had to give
+you the prize, and he laughs like to split at the ministers for giving
+it to Lauchlan McLauchlan."
+
+Now, great was the repute of Mr. Ogilvy, and Tommy gaped incredulous.
+"He had no word of that at the time," he said.
+
+"No likely! He says if the ministers was so doited as to think his loon
+did best, it wasna for him to conter them."
+
+"Man, Corp, you ca'me me aff my feet! How do you ken this?"
+
+Corp had promised not to tell, and he thought he did not tell, but Tommy
+was too clever for him. Grizel, it appeared, had heard Mr. Ogilvy saying
+this strange thing to the doctor, and she burned to pass it on to Tommy,
+but she could not carry it to him herself, because--Why was it? Oh, yes,
+because she hated him. So she made a messenger of Corp, and warned him
+against telling who had sent him with the news.
+
+Half enlightened, Tommy began to strut again. "You see there's something
+in me for all they say," he told Elspeth. "Listen to this. At the
+bursary examinations there was some English we had to turn into Latin,
+and it said, 'No man ever attained supreme eminence who worked for mere
+lucre; such efforts must ever be bounded by base mediocrity. None shall
+climb high but he who climbs for love, for in truth where the heart is,
+there alone shall the treasure be found.' Elspeth, it came ower me in a
+clink how true that was, and I sat saying it to myself, though I saw Gav
+Dishart and Willie Simpson and the rest beginning to put it into Latin
+at once, as little ta'en up wi' the words as if they had been about auld
+Hannibal. I aye kent, Elspeth, that I could never do much at the
+learning, but I didna see the reason till I read that. Syne I kent that
+playing so real-like in the Den, and telling about my fits when it wasna
+me that had them but Corp, and mourning for Lewis Doig's father, and
+writing letters for folk so grandly, and a' my other queer ploys that
+ended in Cathro's calling me Sentimental Tommy, was what my heart was
+in, and I saw in a jiffy that if thae things were work, I should soon
+rise to supreme eminence."
+
+"But they're no," said Elspeth, sadly.
+
+"No," he admitted, his face falling, "but, Elspeth, if I was to hear
+some day of work I could put my heart into as if it were a game! I
+wouldna be laug in finding the treasure syne. Oh, the blatter I would
+make!"
+
+"I doubt there's no sic work," she answered, but he told her not to be
+so sure. "I thought there wasna mysel'," he said, "till now, but sure as
+death my heart was as ta'en up wi' hunting for the right word as if it
+had been a game, and that was how the time slipped by so quick. Yet it
+was paying work, for the way I did it made Mr. Ogilvy see I should have
+got the prize, and a' body kens there's more cleverness in him than in
+a cart-load o' ministers."
+
+"But, but there are no more Hugh Blackadders to try for, Tommy?"
+
+"That's nothing, there maun be other work o' the same kind. Elspeth,
+cheer up, I tell you, I'll find a wy!"
+
+"But you didna ken yoursel' that you should have got the Hugh
+Blackadder?"
+
+He would not let this depress him. "I ken now," he said. Nevertheless,
+why he should have got it was a mystery which he longed to fathom. Mr.
+Ogilvy had returned to Glenquharity, so that an explanation could not be
+drawn from him even if he were willing to supply it, which was
+improbable; but Tommy caught Grizel in the Banker's Close and compelled
+her to speak.
+
+"I won't tell you a word of what Mr. Ogilvy said," she insisted, in her
+obstinate way, and, oh, how she despised Corp for breaking his promise.
+
+"Corp didna ken he telled me," said Tommy, less to clear Corp than to
+exalt himself, "I wriggled it out o' him;" but even this did not bring
+Grizel to a proper frame of mind, so he said, to annoy her,
+
+"At any rate you're fond o' me."
+
+"I am not," she replied, stamping; "I think you are horrid."
+
+"What else made you send Corp to me?"
+
+"I did that because I heard you were calling yourself a blockhead."
+
+"Oho," said he, "so you have been speiring about me though you winna
+speak to me!"
+
+Grizel looked alarmed, and thinking to weaken his case, said, hastily,
+"I very nearly kept it from you, I said often to myself 'I won't tell
+him.'"
+
+"So you have been thinking a lot about me!" was his prompt comment.
+
+"If I have," she retorted, "I did not think nice things. And what is
+more, I was angry with myself for telling Corp to tell you."
+
+Surely this was crushing, but apparently Tommy did not think so, for he
+said, "You did it against your will! That means I hare a power over you
+that you canna resist. Oho, oho!"
+
+Had she become more friendly so should he, had she shed one tear he
+would have melted immediately; but she only looked him up and down
+disdainfully, and it hardened him. He said with a leer, "I ken what
+makes you hold your hands so tight, it's to keep your arms frae
+wagging;" and then her cry, "How do you know?" convicted her. He had not
+succeeded in his mission, but on his way home he muttered, triumphantly,
+"I did her, I did her!" and once he stopped to ask himself the question,
+"Was it because my heart was in it?" It was their last meeting till they
+were man and woman.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A blazing sun had come out on top of heavy showers, and the land reeked
+and smelled as of the wash-tub. The smaller girls of Monypenny were
+sitting in passages playing at fivey, just as Sappho for instance used
+to play it; but they heard the Dubb of Prosen cart draw up at Aaron
+Latta's door, and they followed it to see the last of Tommy Sandys. Corp
+was already there, calling in at the door every time he heard a sob;
+"Dinna, Elspeth, dinna, he'll find a wy," but Grizel had refused to
+come, though Tommy knew that she had been asking when he started and
+which road the cart would take. Well, he was not giving her a thought at
+any rate; his box was in the cart now, and his face was streaked with
+tears that were all for Elspeth. She should not have come to the door,
+but she came, and--it was such a pitiable sight that Aaron Latta could
+not look on. He went hurriedly to his workshop, but not to warp, and
+even the carter was touched and he said to Tommy, "I tell you what, man,
+I have to go round by Causeway End smiddy, and you and the crittur have
+time, if you like, to take the short cut and meet me at the far corner
+o' Caddam wood."
+
+So Tommy and Elspeth, holding each other's hands, took the short cut and
+they came to the far end of Caddam, and Elspeth thought they had better
+say it here before the cart came; but Tommy said he would walk back with
+her through the wood as far as the Toom Well, and they could say it
+there. They tried to say it at the Well, but--Elspeth was still with him
+when he returned to the far corner of Caddam, where the cart was now
+awaiting him. The carter was sitting on the shaft, and he told them he
+was in no hurry, and what is more, he had the delicacy to turn his back
+on them and struck his horse with the reins for looking round at the
+sorrowful pair. They should have said it now, but first Tommy walked
+back a little bit of the way with Elspeth, and then she came back with
+him, and that was to be the last time, but he could not leave her, and
+so, there they were in the wood, looking woefully at each other, and it
+was not said yet.
+
+They had said it now, and all was over; they were several paces apart.
+Elspeth smiled, she had promised to smile because Tommy said it would
+kill him if she was greeting at the very end. But what a smile it was!
+Tommy whistled, he had promised to whistle to show that he was happy as
+long as Elspeth could smile. She stood still, but he went on, turning
+round every few yards to--to whistle. "Never forget, day nor night, what
+I said to you," he called to her. "You're the only one I love, and I
+care not a hair for Grizel."
+
+But when he disappeared, shouting to her, "I'll find a wy, I'll find a
+wy," she screamed and ran after him. He was already in the cart, and it
+had started. He stood up in it and waved his hand to her, and she stood
+on the dyke and waved to him, and thus they stood waving till a hollow
+in the road swallowed cart and man and boy. Then Elspeth put her hands
+to her eyes and went sobbing homeward.
+
+When she was gone, a girl who had heard all that passed between them
+rose from among the broom of Caddam and took Elspeth's place on the
+dyke, where she stood motionless waiting for the cart to reappear as it
+climbed the other side of the hollow. She wore a black frock and a blue
+bonnet with white strings, but the cart was far away, and Tommy thought
+she was Elspeth, and springing to his feet again in the cart he waved
+and waved. At first she did not respond, for had she not heard him say,
+"You're the only one I love, and I care not a hair for Grizel?" And she
+knew he was mistaking her for Elspeth. But by and by it struck her that
+he would be more unhappy if he thought Elspeth was too overcome by grief
+to wave to him. Her arms rocked passionately; no, no, she would not lift
+them to wave to him, he could be as unhappy as he chose. Then in a
+spirit of self-abnegation that surely raised her high among the
+daughters of men, though she was but a painted lady's child, she waved
+to him to save him pain, and he, still erect in the cart, waved back
+until nothing could be seen by either of them save wood and fields and a
+long, deserted road.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sentimental Tommy, by J. M. Barrie
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+    <title>
+      Sentimental Tommy, by J. M. Barrie
+    </title>
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+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sentimental Tommy, by J. M. Barrie
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Sentimental Tommy
+       The Story of His Boyhood
+
+Author: J. M. Barrie
+
+Release Date: February 7, 2005 [EBook #14961]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SENTIMENTAL TOMMY ***
+
+
+
+
+Etext produced by Charles Aldarondo, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+HTML file produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      SENTIMENTAL TOMMY
+    </h1>
+    <h3>
+      The Story Of His Boyhood
+    </h3>
+    <h2>
+      By J. M. Barrie
+    </h2>
+    <h4>
+      Author Of "The Little Minister," "A Window In Thrums," Etc.
+    </h4>
+    <h3>
+      1896
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> SENTIMENTAL TOMMY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I &mdash; TOMMY CONTRIVES TO KEEP ONE OUT
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II &mdash; BUT THE OTHER GETS IN </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III &mdash; SHOWING HOW TOMMY WAS
+      SUDDENLY TRANSFORMED INTO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV &mdash; THE END OF AN IDYLL </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V &mdash; THE GIRL WITH TWO MOTHERS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI &mdash; THE ENCHANTED STREET </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII &mdash; COMIC OVERTURE TO A TRAGEDY
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII &mdash; THE BOY WITH TWO MOTHERS
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX &mdash; AULD LANG SYNE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X &mdash; THE FAVORITE OF THE LADIES </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI &mdash; AARON LATTA </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII &mdash; A CHILD'S TRAGEDY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII &mdash; SHOWS HOW TOMMY TOOK CARE OF
+      ELSPETH </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV &mdash; THE HANKY SCHOOL </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV &mdash; THE MAN WHO NEVER CAME </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI &mdash; THE PAINTED LADY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII &mdash; IN WHICH TOMMY SOLVES THE
+      WOMAN PROBLEM </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII &mdash; THE MUCKLEY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX &mdash; CORP IS BROUGHT TO HEEL&mdash;GRIZEL
+      DEFIANT </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX &mdash; THE SHADOW OF SIR WALTER </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXI &mdash; THE LAST JACOBITE RISING </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXII &mdash; THE SIEGE OF THRUMS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXIII &mdash; GRIZEL PAYS THREE VISITS
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIV &mdash; A ROMANCE OF TWO OLD MAIDS
+      AND A STOUT BACHELOR </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXV &mdash; A PENNY PASS-BOOK </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER XXVI &mdash; TOMMY REPENTS, AND IS NONE
+      THE WORSE FOR IT </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER XXVII &mdash; THE LONGER CATECHISM </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER XXVIII &mdash; BUT IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN
+      MISS KITTY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0029"> CHAPTER XXIX &mdash; TOMMY THE SCHOLAR </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER XXX &mdash; END OF THE JACOBITE RISING
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0031"> CHAPTER XXXI &mdash; A LETTER TO GOD </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0032"> CHAPTER XXXII &mdash; AN ELOPEMENT </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0033"> CHAPTER XXXIII &mdash; THERE IS SOME ONE TO LOVE
+      GRIZEL AT LAST </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0034"> CHAPTER XXXIV &mdash; WHO TOLD TOMMY TO SPEAK
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0035"> CHAPTER XXXV &mdash; THE BRANDING OF TOMMY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0036"> CHAPTER XXXVI &mdash; OF FOUR MINISTERS WHO
+      AFTERWARDS BOASTED THAT THEY HAD KNOWN TOMMY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0037"> CHAPTER XXXVII &mdash; THE END OF A BOYHOOD </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      SENTIMENTAL TOMMY
+    </h1>
+    <h3>
+      THE STORY OF HIS BOYHOOD
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I &mdash; TOMMY CONTRIVES TO KEEP ONE OUT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The celebrated Tommy first comes into view on a dirty London stair, and he
+      was in sexless garments, which were all he had, and he was five, and so
+      though we are looking at him, we must do it sideways, lest he sit down
+      hurriedly to hide them. That inscrutable face, which made the clubmen of
+      his later days uneasy and even puzzled the ladies while he was making love
+      to them, was already his, except when he smiled at one of his pretty
+      thoughts or stopped at an open door to sniff a potful. On his way up and
+      down the stair he often paused to sniff, but he never asked for anything;
+      his mother had warned him against it, and he carried out her injunction
+      with almost unnecessary spirit, declining offers before they were made, as
+      when passing a room, whence came the smell of fried fish, he might call
+      in, "I don't not want none of your fish," or "My mother says I don't not
+      want the littlest bit," or wistfully, "I ain't hungry," or more wistfully
+      still, "My mother says I ain't hungry." His mother heard of this and was
+      angry, crying that he had let the neighbors know something she was anxious
+      to conceal, but what he had revealed to them Tommy could not make out, and
+      when he questioned her artlessly, she took him with sudden passion to her
+      flat breast, and often after that she looked at him long and woefully and
+      wrung her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only other pleasant smell known to Tommy was when the water-carts
+      passed the mouth of his little street. His street, which ended in a dead
+      wall, was near the river, but on the doleful south side of it, opening off
+      a longer street where the cabs of Waterloo station sometimes found
+      themselves when they took the wrong turning; his home was at the top of a
+      house of four floors, each with accommodation for at least two families,
+      and here he had lived with his mother since his father's death six months
+      ago. There was oil-cloth on the stair as far as the second floor; there
+      had been oil-cloth between the second floor and the third&mdash;Tommy
+      could point out pieces of it still adhering to the wood like remnants of a
+      plaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This stair was nursery to all the children whose homes opened on it, not
+      so safe as nurseries in the part of London that is chiefly inhabited by
+      boys in sailor suits, but preferable as a centre of adventure, and here on
+      an afternoon sat two. They were very busy boasting, but only the smaller
+      had imagination, and as he used it recklessly, their positions soon
+      changed; sexless garments was now prone on a step, breeches sitting on
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shovel, a man of seven, had said, "None on your lip. You weren't never at
+      Thrums yourself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy's reply was, "Ain't my mother a Thrums woman?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shovel, who had but one eye, and that bloodshot, fixed it on him
+      threateningly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Thames is in London," he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Cos they wouldn't not have it in Thrums," replied Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Amstead 'Eath's in London, I tell yer," Shovel said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The cemetery is in Thrums," said Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There ain't no queens in Thrums, anyhow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's the auld licht minister."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, then, if you jest seed Trafalgar Square!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you jest seed the Thrums town-house!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "St. Paul's ain't in Thrums."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It would like to be."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After reflecting, Shovel said in desperation, "Well, then, my father were
+      once at a hanging."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy replied instantly, "It were my father what was hanged."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no possible answer to this save a knock-down blow, but though
+      Tommy was vanquished in body, his spirit remained stanch; he raised his
+      head and gasped, "You should see how they knock down in Thrums!" It was
+      then that Shovel sat on him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was their position when an odd figure in that house, a gentleman,
+      passed them without a word, so desirous was he to make a breath taken at
+      the foot of the close stair last him to the top. Tommy merely gaped after
+      this fine sight, but Shovel had experience, and "It's a kid or a coffin."
+      he said sharply, knowing that only birth or death brought a doctor here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Watching the doctor's ascent, the two boys strained their necks over the
+      rickety banisters, which had been polished black by trousers of the past,
+      and sometimes they lost him, and then they saw his legs again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hello, it's your old woman!" cried Shovel. "Is she a deader?" he asked,
+      brightening, for funerals made a pleasant stir on the stair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The question had no meaning for bewildered Tommy, but he saw that if his
+      mother was a deader, whatever that might be, he had grown great in his
+      companion's eye. So he hoped she was a deader.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If it's only a kid," Shovel began, with such scorn that Tommy at once
+      screamed, "It ain't!" and, cross-examined, he swore eagerly that his
+      mother was in bed when he left her in the morning, that she was still in
+      bed at dinner-time, also that the sheet was over her face, also that she
+      was cold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she was a deader and had attained distinction in the only way
+      possible in that street. Shovel did not shake Tommy's hand warmly, the
+      forms of congratulation varying in different parts of London, but he
+      looked his admiration so plainly that Tommy's head waggled proudly.
+      Evidently, whatever his mother had done redounded to his glory as well as
+      to hers, and somehow he had become a boy of mark. He said from his
+      elevation that he hoped Shovel would believe his tales about Thrums now,
+      and Shovel, who had often cuffed Tommy for sticking to him so closely,
+      cringed in the most snobbish manner, craving permission to be seen in his
+      company for the next three days. Tommy, the upstart, did not see his way
+      to grant this favor for nothing, and Shovel offered a knife, but did not
+      have it with him; it was his sister Ameliar's knife, and he would take it
+      from her, help his davy. Tommy would wait there till Shovel fetched it.
+      Shovel, baffled, wanted to know what Tommy was putting on hairs for. Tommy
+      smiled, and asked whose mother was a deader. Then Shovel collapsed, and
+      his wind passed into Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reign of Thomas Sandys, nevertheless, was among the shortest, for with
+      this question was he overthrown: "How did yer know she were cold?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because," replied Tommy, triumphantly, "she tell me herself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shovel only looked at him, but one eye can be so much more terrible than
+      two, that plop, plop, plop came the balloon softly down the steps of the
+      throne and at the foot shrank pitifully, as if with Ameliar's knife in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's only a kid arter all!" screamed Shovel, furiously. Disappointment
+      gave him eloquence, and Tommy cowered under his sneers, not understanding
+      them, but they seemed to amount to this, that in having a baby he had
+      disgraced the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I think," he said, with diffidence, "I think I were once one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then all Shovel could say was that he had better keep it dark on that
+      stair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy squeezed his fist into one eye, and the tears came out at the other.
+      A good-natured impulse was about to make Shovel say that though kids are
+      undoubtedly humiliations, mothers and boys get used to them in time, and
+      go on as brazenly as before, but it was checked by Tommy's unfortunate
+      question, "Shovel, when will it come?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shovel, speaking from local experience, replied truthfully that they
+      usually came very soon after the doctor, and at times before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It ain't come before him," Tommy said, confidently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do yer know?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Cos it weren't there at dinner-time, and I been here since dinner-time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words meant that Tommy thought it could only enter by way of the
+      stair, and Shovel quivered with delight. "H'st!" he cried, dramatically,
+      and to his joy Tommy looked anxiously down the stair, instead of up it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you hear it?" Tommy whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before he could control himself Shovel blurted out: "Do you think as they
+      come on their feet?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How then?" demanded Tommy; but Shovel had exhausted his knowledge of the
+      subject. Tommy, who had begun to descend to hold the door, turned and
+      climbed upwards, and his tears were now but the drop left in a cup too
+      hurriedly dried. Where was he off to? Shovel called after him; and he
+      answered, in a determined whisper: "To shove of it out if it tries to come
+      in at the winder."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was enough for the more knowing urchin, now so full of good things
+      that with another added he must spill, and away he ran for an audience,
+      which could also help him to bait Tommy, that being a game most sportive
+      when there are several to fling at once. At the door he knocked over, and
+      was done with, a laughing little girl who had strayed from a more
+      fashionable street. She rose solemnly, and kissing her muff, to reassure
+      it if it had got a fright, toddled in at the first open door to be out of
+      the way of unmannerly boys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy, climbing courageously, heard the door slam, and looking down he saw&mdash;a
+      strange child. He climbed no higher. It had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a long time he was one flight of stairs nearer it. It was making
+      itself at home on the bottom step; resting, doubtless, before it came
+      hopping up. Another dozen steps, and&mdash;It was beautifully dressed in
+      one piece of yellow and brown that reached almost to its feet, with a bit
+      left at the top to form a hood, out of which its pert face peeped
+      impudently; oho, so they came in their Sunday clothes. He drew so near
+      that he could hear it cooing: thought itself as good as upstairs, did it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He bounced upon her sharply, thinking to carry all with a high hand. "Out
+      you go!" he cried, with the action of one heaving coals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She whisked round, and, "Oo boy or oo girl?" she inquired, puzzled by his
+      dress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "None of your cheek!" roared insulted manhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oo boy," she said, decisively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the effrontery of them when they are young, she made room for him on
+      her step, but he declined the invitation, knowing that her design was to
+      skip up the stair the moment he was off his guard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You don't needn't think as we'll have you," he announced, firmly. "You
+      had best go away to&mdash;go to&mdash;" His imagination failed him. "You
+      had best go back," he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not budge, however, and his next attempt was craftier. "My
+      mother," he assured her, "ain't living here now;" but mother was a new
+      word to the girl, and she asked gleefully, "Oo have mother?" expecting him
+      to produce it from his pocket. To coax him to give her a sight of it she
+      said, plaintively, "Me no have mother."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You won't not get mine," replied Tommy doggedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She pretended not to understand what was troubling him, and it passed
+      through his head that she had to wait there till the doctor came down for
+      her. He might come at any moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A boy does not put his hand into his pocket until every other means of
+      gaining his end has failed, but to that extremity had Tommy now come. For
+      months his only splendid possession had been a penny despised by trade
+      because of a large round hole in it, as if (to quote Shovel) some previous
+      owner had cut a farthing out of it. To tell the escapades of this penny
+      (there are no adventurers like coin of the realm) would be one way of
+      exhibiting Tommy to the curious, but it would be a hard-hearted way. At
+      present the penny was doubly dear to him, having been long lost and lately
+      found. In a noble moment he had dropped it into a charity box hanging
+      forlorn against the wall of a shop, where it lay very lonely by itself, so
+      that when Tommy was that way he could hear it respond if he shook the box,
+      as acquaintances give each other the time of day in passing. Thus at
+      comparatively small outlay did he spread his benevolence over weeks and
+      feel a glow therefrom, until the glow went, when he and Shovel recaptured
+      the penny with a thread and a bent pin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This treasure he sadly presented to the girl, and she accepted it with
+      glee, putting it on her finger, as if it were a ring, but instead of
+      saying that she would go now she asked him, coolly,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oo know tories?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stories!" he exclaimed, "I'll&mdash;I'll tell you about Thrums," and was
+      about to do it for love, but stopped in time. "This ain't a good stair for
+      stories," he said, cunningly. "I can't not tell stories on this stair, but
+      I&mdash;I know a good stair for stories."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ninny of a girl was completely hoodwinked; and see, there they go,
+      each with a hand in the muff, the one leering, oh, so triumphantly; the
+      other trusting and gleeful. There was an exuberance of vitality about her
+      as if she lived too quickly in her gladness, which you may remember in
+      some child who visited the earth for but a little while.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How superbly Tommy had done it! It had been another keen brain pitted
+      against his, and at first he was not winning. Then up came Thrums, and&mdash;But
+      the thing has happened before; in a word, Blücher. Nevertheless, Tommy
+      just managed it, for he got the girl out of the street and on to another
+      stair no more than in time to escape a ragged rabble, headed by Shovel,
+      who, finding their quarry gone, turned on their leader viciously, and had
+      gloomy views of life till his cap was kicked down a sewer, which made the
+      world bright again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the tales told by Tommy that day in words Scotch and cockney, of
+      Thrums, home of heroes and the arts, where the lamps are lit by a magician
+      called Leerie-leerie-licht-the-lamps (but he is also friendly, and you can
+      fling stones at him), and the merest children are allowed to set the
+      spinning-wheels a-whirling, and dagont is the swear, and the stairs are so
+      fine that the houses wear them outside for show, and you drop a pail at
+      the end of a rope down a hole, and sometimes it comes up full of water,
+      and sometimes full of fairies&mdash;of these and other wonders, if you
+      would know, ask not a dull historian, nor even go to Thrums, but to those
+      rather who have been boys and girls there and now are exiles. Such a one
+      Tommy knows, an unhappy woman, foolish, not very lovable, flung like a
+      stone out of the red quarry upon a land where it cannot grip, and tearing
+      her heart for a sight of the home she shall see no more. From her Tommy
+      had his pictures, and he colored them rarely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never before had he such a listener. "Oh, dagont, dagont!" he would cry in
+      ecstasy over these fair scenes, and she, awed or gurgling with mirth
+      according to the nature of the last, demanded "'Nother, 'nother!" whereat
+      he remembered who and what she was, and showing her a morsel of the new
+      one, drew her to more distant parts, until they were so far from his
+      street that he thought she would never be able to find the way back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His intention had been, on reaching such a spot, to desert her promptly,
+      but she gave him her hand in the muff so confidingly that against his
+      judgment he fell a-pitying the trustful mite who was wandering the world
+      in search of a mother, and so easily diddled on the whole that the chances
+      were against her finding one before morning. Almost unconsciously he began
+      to look about him for a suitable one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were now in a street much nearer to his own home than the spurts from
+      spot to spot had led him to suppose. It was new to him, but he recognized
+      it as the acme of fashion by those two sure signs; railings with most of
+      their spikes in place, and cards scored with, the word "Apartments." He
+      had discovered such streets as this before when in Shovel's company, and
+      they had watched the toffs go out and in, and it was a lordly sight, for
+      first the toff waggled a rail that was loose at the top and then a girl,
+      called the servant, peeped at him from below, and then he pulled the rail
+      again, and then the door opened from the inside, and you had a glimpse of
+      wonder-land with a place for hanging hats on. He had not contemplated
+      doing anything so handsome for the girl as this, but why should he not
+      establish her here? There were many possible mothers in view, and
+      thrilling with a sense of his generosity he had almost fixed on one but
+      mistrusted the glint in her eye and on another when she saved herself by
+      tripping and showing an undarned heel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was still of an open mind when the girl of a sudden cried, gleefully,
+      "Ma-ma, ma-ma!" and pointed, with her muff, across the street. The word
+      was as meaningless to Tommy as mother had been to her, but he saw that she
+      was drawing his attention to a woman some thirty yards away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Man&mdash;man!" he echoed, chiding her ignorance; "no, no, you blether,
+      that ain't a man, that's a woman; that's woman&mdash;woman."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ooman&mdash;ooman," the girl repeated, docilely, but when she looked
+      again, "Ma-ma, ma-ma," she insisted, and this was Tommy's first lesson
+      that however young you catch them they will never listen to reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She seemed of a mind to trip off to this woman, and as long as his own
+      mother was safe, it did not greatly matter to Tommy whom she chose, but if
+      it was this one, she was going the wrong way about it. You cannot snap
+      them up in the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The proper course was to track her to her house, which he proceeded to do,
+      and his quarry, who was looking about her anxiously, as if she had lost
+      something, gave him but a short chase. In the next street to the one in
+      which they had first seen her, a street so like it that Tommy might have
+      admired her for knowing the difference, she opened the door with a key and
+      entered, shutting the door behind her. Odd to tell, the child had pointed
+      to this door as the one she would stop at, which surprised Tommy very
+      much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the steps he gave her his final instructions, and she dimpled and
+      gurgled, obviously full of admiration for him, which was a thing he
+      approved of, but he would have liked to see her a little more serious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is the door. Well, then, I'll waggle the rail as makes the bell
+      ring, and then I'll run."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was all, and he wished she had not giggled most of the time. She was
+      sniggering, as if she thought him a very funny boy, even when he rang the
+      bell and bolted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From a safe place he watched the opening of the door, and saw the
+      frivolous thing lose a valuable second in waving the muff to him. "In you
+      go!" he screamed beneath his breath. Then she entered and the door closed.
+      He waited an hour, or two minutes, or thereabout, and she had not been
+      ejected. Triumph!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a drum beating inside him Tommy strutted home, where, alas, a boy was
+      waiting to put his foot through it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II &mdash; BUT THE OTHER GETS IN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      To Tommy, a swaggerer, came Shovel sour-visaged; having now no cap of his
+      own, he exchanged with Tommy, would also have bled the blooming mouth of
+      him, but knew of a revenge that saves the knuckles: announced, with jeers
+      and offensive finger exercise, that "it" had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shovel was a liar. If he only knowed what Tommy knowed!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Tommy only heard what Shovel had heard!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy was of opinion that Shovel hadn't not heard anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shovel believed as Tommy didn't know nuthin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy wouldn't listen to what Shovel had heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither would Shovel listen to what Tommy knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Shovel would tell what he had heard, Tommy would tell what he knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, then, Shovel had listened at the door, and heard it mewling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy knowed it well, and it never mewled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How could Tommy know it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'Cos he had been with it a long time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gosh! Why, it had only comed a minute ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This made Tommy uneasy, and he asked a leading question cunningly. A boy,
+      wasn't it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, Shovel's old woman had been up helping to hold it, and she said it
+      were a girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shutting his mouth tightly; which was never natural to him, the startled
+      Tommy mounted the stair, listened and was convinced. He did not enter his
+      dishonored home. He had no intention of ever entering it again. With one
+      salt tear he renounced&mdash;a child, a mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On his way downstairs he was received by Shovel and party, who planted
+      their arrows neatly. Kids cried steadily, he was told, for the first year.
+      A boy one was bad enough, but a girl one was oh lawks. He must never again
+      expect to get playing with blokes like what they was. Already she had got
+      round his old gal who would care for him no more. What would they say
+      about this in Thrums?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shovel even insisted on returning him his cap, and for some queer reason,
+      this cut deepest. Tommy about to charge, with his head down, now walked
+      away so quietly that Shovel, who could not help liking the funny little
+      cuss, felt a twinge of remorse, and nearly followed him with a magnanimous
+      offer: to treat him as if he were still respectable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy lay down on a distant stair, one of the very stairs where <i>she</i>
+      had sat with him. Ladies, don't you dare to pity him now, for he won't
+      stand it. Rage was what he felt, and a man in a rage (as you may know if
+      you are married) is only to be soothed by the sight of all womankind in
+      terror of him. But you may look upon your handiwork, and gloat, an you
+      will, on the wreck you have made. A young gentleman trusted one of you;
+      behold the result. O! O! O! O! now do you understand why we men cannot
+      abide you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If she had told him flat that his mother, and his alone, she would have,
+      and so there was an end of it. Ah, catch them taking a straight road. But
+      to put on those airs of helplessness, to wave him that gay good-by, and
+      then the moment his back was turned, to be off through the air on&mdash;perhaps
+      on her muff, to the home he had thought to lure her from. In a word, to be
+      diddled by a girl when one flatters himself he is diddling! S'death, a
+      dashing fellow finds it hard to bear. Nevertheless, he has to bear it, for
+      oh, Tommy, Tommy, 'tis the common lot of man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His hand sought his pocket for the penny that had brought him comfort in
+      dark hours before now; but, alack, she had deprived him even of it. Never
+      again should his pinkie finger go through that warm hole, and at the
+      thought a sense of his forlornness choked him and he cried. You may pity
+      him a little now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Darkness came and hid him even from himself. He is not found again until a
+      time of the night that is not marked on ornamental clocks, but has an hour
+      to itself on the watch which a hundred thousand or so of London women
+      carry in their breasts; the hour when men steal homewards trickling at the
+      mouth and drawing back from their own shadows to the wives they once went
+      a-maying with, or the mothers who had such travail at the bearing of them,
+      as if for great ends. Out of this, the drunkard's hour, rose the wan face
+      of Tommy, who had waked up somewhere clammy cold and quaking, and he was a
+      very little boy, so he ran to his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a shabby dark room it was, but it was home, such a weary worn woman
+      in the bed, but he was her son, and she had been wringing her hands
+      because he was so long in coming, and do you think he hurt her when he
+      pressed his head on her poor breast, and do you think she grudged the heat
+      his cold hands drew from her warm face? He squeezed her with a violence
+      that put more heat into her blood than he took out of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he was very considerate, too: not a word of reproach in him, though he
+      knew very well what that bundle in the back of the bed was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She guessed that he had heard the news and stayed away through jealousy of
+      his sister, and by and by she said, with a faint smile, "I have a present
+      for you, laddie." In the great world without, she used few Thrums words
+      now; you would have known she was Scotch by her accent only, but when she
+      and Tommy were together in that room, with the door shut, she always spoke
+      as if her window still looked out on the bonny Marywellbrae. It is not
+      really bonny, it is gey an' mean an' bleak, and you must not come to see
+      it. It is just a steep wind-swept street, old and wrinkled, like your
+      mother's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had a present for him, she said, and Tommy replied, "I knows," with
+      averted face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Such a bonny thing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bonny enough," he said bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look at her, laddie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he shrank from the ordeal, crying, "No, no, keep her covered up!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little traitor seemed to be asleep, and so he ventured to say,
+      eagerly, "It wouldn't not take long to carry all our things to another
+      house, would it? Me and Shovel could near do it ourselves."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And that's God's truth," the woman said, with a look round the room. "But
+      what for should we do that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you no see, mother?" he whispered excitedly. "Then you and me could
+      slip away, and&mdash;and leave her&mdash;in the press."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The feeble smile with which his mother received this he interpreted thus,
+      "Wherever we go'd to she would be there before us."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The little besom!" he cried helplessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His mother saw that mischievous boys had been mounting him on his horse,
+      which needed only one slap to make it go a mile; but she was a spiritless
+      woman, and replied indifferently, "You're a funny litlin."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently a dry sob broke from her, and thinking the child was the cause,
+      soft-hearted Tommy said, "It can't not be helped, mother; don't cry,
+      mother, I'm fond on yer yet, mother; I&mdash;I took her away. I found
+      another woman&mdash;but she would come."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She's God's gift, man," his mother said, but she added, in a different
+      tone, "Ay, but he hasna sent her keep."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "God's gift!" Tommy shuddered, but he said sourly, "I wish he would take
+      her back. Do you wish that, too, mother?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The weary woman almost said she did, but her arms&mdash;they gripped the
+      baby as if frightened that he had sent for it. Jealous Tommy, suddenly
+      deprived of his mother's hand, cried, "It's true what Shovel says, you
+      don't not love me never again; you jest loves that little limmer!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Na, na," the mother answered, passionate at last, "she can never be to me
+      what you hae been, my laddie, for you came to me when my hame was in hell,
+      and we tholed it thegither, you and me."'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This bewildered though it comforted him. He thought his mother might be
+      speaking about the room in which they had lived until six months ago, when
+      his father was put into the black box, but when he asked her if this were
+      so, she told him to sleep, for she was dog-tired. She always evaded him in
+      this way when he questioned her about his past, but at times his mind
+      would wander backwards unbidden to those distant days, and then he saw
+      flitting dimly through them the elusive form of a child. He knew it was
+      himself, and for moments he could see it clearly, but when he moved a step
+      nearer it was not there. So does the child we once were play hide and seek
+      with us among the mists of infancy, until one day he trips and falls into
+      the daylight. Then we seize him, and with that touch we two are one. It is
+      the birth of self-consciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hitherto he had slept at the back of his mother's bed, but to-night she
+      could not have him there, the place being occupied, and rather sulkily he
+      consented to lie crosswise at her feet, undressing by the feeble fire and
+      taking care, as he got into bed, not to look at the usurper. His mother
+      watched him furtively, and was relieved to read in his face that he had no
+      recollection of ever having slept at the foot of a bed before. But soon
+      after he fell asleep he awoke, and was afraid to move lest his father
+      should kick him. He opened his eyes stealthily, and this was neither the
+      room nor the bed he had expected to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The floor was bare save for a sheepskin beside the bed. Tommy always stood
+      on the sheepskin while he was dressing because it was warm to the feet,
+      though risky, as your toes sometimes caught in knots in it. There was a
+      deal table in the middle of the floor with some dirty crockery on it and a
+      kettle that would leave a mark, but they had been left there by Shovel's
+      old girl, for Mrs. Sandys usually kept her house clean. The chairs were of
+      the commonest, and the press door would not remain shut unless you stuck a
+      knife between its halves; but there, was a gay blue wardrobe, spotted
+      white where Tommy's mother had scraped off the mud that had once
+      bespattered it during a lengthy sojourn at the door of a shop; and on the
+      mantelpiece was a clock in a little brown and yellow house, and on the
+      clock a Bible that had been in Thrums. But what Tommy was proudest of was
+      his mother's kist, to which the chests of Londoners are not to be
+      compared, though like it in appearance. On the inside of the lid of this
+      kist was pasted, after a Thrums custom, something that his mother called
+      her marriage lines, which she forced Shovel's mother to come up and look
+      at one day, when that lady had made an innuendo Tommy did not understand,
+      and Shovel's mother had looked, and though she could not read, was
+      convinced, knowing them by the shape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy lay at the foot of the bed looking at this room, which was his home
+      now, and trying to think of the other one, and by and by the fire helped
+      him by falling to ashes, when darkness came in, and packing the furniture
+      in grotesque cloths, removed it piece by piece, all but the clock. Then
+      the room took a new shape. The fireplace was over there instead of here,
+      the torn yellow blind gave way to one made of spars of green wood, that
+      were bunched up at one side, like a lady out for a walk. On a round table
+      there was a beautiful blue cloth, with very few gravy marks, and here a
+      man ate beef when a woman and a boy ate bread, and near the fire was the
+      man's big soft chair, out of which you could pull hairs, just as if it
+      were Shovel's sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of this man who was his father he could get no hold. He could feel his
+      presence, but never see him. Yet he had a face. It sometimes pressed
+      Tommy's face against it in order to hurt him, which it could do, being all
+      short needles at the chin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once in those days Tommy and his mother ran away and hid from some one. He
+      did not know from whom nor for how long, though it was but for a week, and
+      it left only two impressions on his mind, the one that he often asked, "Is
+      this starving now, mother?" the other that before turning a corner she
+      always peered round it fearfully. Then they went back again to the man and
+      he laughed when he saw them, but did not take his feet off the
+      mantelpiece. There came a time when the man was always in bed, but still
+      Tommy could not see his face. What he did see was the man's clothes lying
+      on the large chair just as he had placed them there when he undressed for
+      the last time. The black coat and worsted waistcoat which he could take
+      off together were on the seat, and the light trousers hung over the side,
+      the legs on the hearthrug, with the red socks still sticking in them: a
+      man without a body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the boy had one vivid recollection of how his mother received the news
+      of his father's death. An old man with a white beard and gentle ways, who
+      often came to give the invalid physic, was standing at the bedside, and
+      Tommy and his mother were sitting on the fender. The old man came to her
+      and said, "It is all over," and put her softly into the big chair. She
+      covered her face with her hands, and he must have thought she was crying,
+      for he tried to comfort her. But as soon as he was gone she rose, with
+      such a queer face, and went on tiptoe to the bed, and looked intently at
+      her husband, and then she clapped her hands joyously three times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Tommy fell asleep with his mouth open, which is the most important
+      thing that has been told of him as yet, and while he slept day came and
+      restored the furniture that night had stolen. But when the boy woke he did
+      not even notice the change; his brain traversed the hours it had lost
+      since he lay down as quickly as you may put on a stopped clock, and with
+      his first tick he was thinking of nothing but the deceiver in the back of
+      the bed. He raised his head, but could only see that she had crawled under
+      the coverlet to escape his wrath. His mother was asleep. Tommy sat up and
+      peeped over the edge of the bed, then he let his eyes wander round the
+      room; he was looking for the girl's clothes, but they were nowhere to be
+      seen. It is distressing to have to tell that what was in his mind was
+      merely the recovery of his penny. Perhaps as they were Sunday clothes she
+      had hung them up in the wardrobe? He slipped on to the floor and crossed
+      to the wardrobe, but not even the muff could he find. Had she been tired,
+      and gone to bed in them? Very softly he crawled over his mother, and
+      pulling the coverlet off the child's face, got the great shock of his
+      childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was another one!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III &mdash; SHOWING HOW TOMMY WAS SUDDENLY TRANSFORMED INTO A
+      YOUNG GENTLEMAN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It would have fared ill with Mrs. Sandys now, had her standoffishness to
+      her neighbors been repaid in the same coin, but they were full of
+      sympathy, especially Shovel's old girl, from whom she had often drawn back
+      offensively on the stair, but who nevertheless waddled up several times a
+      day with savory messes, explaining, when Mrs. Sandys sniffed, that it was
+      not the tapiocar but merely the cup that smelt of gin. When Tommy returned
+      the cups she noticed not only that they were suspiciously clean, but that
+      minute particles of the mess were adhering to his nose and chin (perched
+      there like shipwrecked mariners on a rock, just out of reach of the
+      devouring element), and after this discovery she brought two cupfuls at a
+      time. She was an Irish, woman who could have led the House of Commons, and
+      in walking she seldom raised her carpet shoes from the ground, perhaps
+      because of her weight, for she had an expansive figure that bulged in all
+      directions, and there were always bits of her here and there that she had
+      forgotten to lace. Round the corner was a delightful eating-house, through
+      whose window you were allowed to gaze at the great sweating dumplings, and
+      Tommy thought Shovel's mother was rather like a dumpling that had not been
+      a complete success. If he ever knew her name he forgot it. Shovel, who
+      probably had another name also, called her his old girl or his old woman
+      or his old lady, and it was a sight to see her chasing him across the
+      street when she was in liquor, and boastful was Shovel of the way she
+      could lay on, and he was partial to her too, and once when she was giving
+      it to him pretty strong with the tongs, his father (who followed many
+      professions, among them that of finding lost dogs), had struck her and
+      told her to drop it, and then Shovel sauced his father for interfering,
+      saying she should lick him as long as she blooming well liked, which made
+      his father go for him with a dog-collar; and that was how Shovel lost his
+      eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For reasons less unselfish than his old girl's Shovel also was willing to
+      make up to Tommy at this humiliating time. It might be said of these two
+      boys that Shovel knew everything but Tommy knew other things, and as the
+      other things are best worth hearing of Shovel liked to listen to them,
+      even when they were about Thrums, as they usually were. The very first
+      time Tommy told him of the wondrous spot, Shovel had drawn a great breath,
+      and said, thoughtfully:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I allers knowed as there were sich a beauty place, but I didn't jest know
+      its name."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How could yer know?" Tommy asked jealously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ain't sure," said Shovel, "p'raps I dreamed on it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's it," Tommy cried. "I tell yer, everybody dreams on it!" and Tommy
+      was right; everybody dreams of it, though not all call it Thrums.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the whole, then, the coming of the kid, who turned out to be called
+      Elspeth, did not ostracize Tommy, but he wished that he had let the other
+      girl in, for he never doubted that her admittance would have kept this one
+      out. He told neither his mother nor his friend of the other girl, fearing
+      that his mother would be angry with him when she learned what she had
+      missed, and that Shovel would crow over his blundering, but occasionally
+      he took a side glance at the victorious infant, and a poorer affair, he
+      thought, he had never set eyes on. Sometimes it was she who looked at him,
+      and then her chuckle of triumph was hard to bear. As long as his mother
+      was there, however, he endured in silence, but the first day she went out
+      in a vain search for work (it is about as difficult to get washing as to
+      get into the Cabinet), he gave the infant a piece of his mind, poking up
+      her head with a stick so that she was bound to listen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You thinks as it was clever on you, does yer? Oh, if I had been on the
+      stair!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You needn't not try to get round me. I likes the other one five times
+      better; yes, three times better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thievey, thievey, thief, that's her place you is lying in. What?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you puts out your tongue at me again&mdash;! What do yer say?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She was twice bigger than you. You ain't got no hair, nor yet no teeth.
+      You're the littlest I ever seed. Eh? Don't not speak then, sulks!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Prudence had kept him away from the other girl, but he was feeling a great
+      want: someone to applaud him. When we grow older we call it sympathy. How
+      Reddy (as he called her because she had beautiful red-brown hair) had
+      appreciated him! She had a way he liked of opening her eyes very wide when
+      she looked at him. Oh, what a difference from that thing in the back of
+      the bed!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not the mere selfish desire to see her again, however, would take him in
+      quest of Reddy. He was one of those superior characters, was Tommy, who
+      got his pleasure in giving it, and therefore gave it. Now, Reddy was a
+      worthy girl. In suspecting her of overreaching him he had maligned her:
+      she had taken what he offered, and been thankful. It was fitting that he
+      should give her a treat: let her see him again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His mother was at last re-engaged by her old employers, her supplanter
+      having proved unsatisfactory, and as the work lay in a distant street, she
+      usually took the kid with her, thus leaving no one to spy on Tammy's
+      movements. Reddy's reward for not playing him false, however, did not
+      reach her as soon as doubtless she would have liked, because the first two
+      or three times he saw her she was walking with the lady of his choice, and
+      of course he was not such a fool as to show himself. But he walked behind
+      them and noted with satisfaction that the lady seemed to be reconciled to
+      her lot and inclined to let bygones be bygones; when at length Reddy and
+      her patron met, Tommy thought this a good sign too, that Ma-ma (as she
+      would call the lady) had told her not to go farther away than the
+      lamp-post, lest she should get lost again. So evidently she had got lost
+      once already, and the lady had been sorry. He asked Reddy many shrewd
+      questions about how Ma-ma treated her, and if she got the top of the
+      Sunday egg and had the licking of the pan and wore flannel underneath and
+      slept at the back; and the more he inquired, the more clearly he saw that
+      he had got her one of the right kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy arranged with her that she should always be on the outlook for him
+      at the window, and he would come sometimes, and after that they met
+      frequently, and she proved a credit to him, gurgling with mirth at his
+      tales of Thrums, and pinching him when he had finished, to make sure that
+      he was really made just like common human beings. He was a thin, pale boy,
+      while she looked like a baby rose full blown in a night because her time
+      was short; and his movements were sluggish, but if she was not walking she
+      must be dancing, and sometimes when there were few people in the street,
+      the little armful of delight that she was jumped up and down like a ball,
+      while Tommy kept the time, singing "Thrummy, Thrummy, Thrum Thrum
+      Thrummy." They must have seemed a quaint pair to the lady as she sat at
+      her window watching them and beckoning to Tommy to come in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day he went in, but only because she had come up behind and taken his
+      hand before he could run. Then did Tommy quake, for he knew from Reddy how
+      the day after the mother-making episode, Ma-ma and she had sought in vain
+      for his door, and he saw that the object had been to call down curses on
+      his head. So that head was hanging limply now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You think that Tommy is to be worsted at last, but don't be too sure; you
+      just wait and see. Ma-ma and Reddy (who was clucking rather heartlessly)
+      first took him into a room prettier even than the one he had lived in long
+      ago (but there was no bed in it), and then, because someone they were in
+      search of was not there, into another room without a bed (where on earth
+      did they sleep?) whose walls were lined with books. Never having seen rows
+      of books before except on sale in the streets, Tommy at once looked about
+      him for the barrow. The table was strewn with sheets of paper of the size
+      that they roll a quarter of butter in, and it was an amazing thick table,
+      a solid square of wood, save for a narrow lane down the centre for the man
+      to put his legs in&mdash;if he had legs, which unfortunately there was
+      reason to doubt. He was a formidable man, whose beard licked the table
+      while he wrote, and he wore something like a brown blanket, with a rope
+      tied round it at the middle. Even more uncanny than himself were three
+      busts on a shelf, which Tommy took to be deaders, and he feared the
+      blanket might blow open and show that the man also ended at the waist. But
+      he did not, for presently he turned round to see who had come in (the seat
+      of his chair turning with him in the most startling way) and then Tommy
+      was relieved to notice two big feet far away at the end of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is the boy, dear," the lady said. "I had to bring him in by force."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy raised his arm instinctively to protect his face, this being the
+      kind of man who could hit hard. But presently he was confused, and also,
+      alas, leering a little. You may remember that Reddy had told him she must
+      not go beyond the lamp-post, lest she should be lost again. She had given
+      him no details of the adventure, but he learned now from Ma-ma and Papa
+      (the man's name was Papa) that she had strayed when Ma-ma was in a shop
+      and that some good kind boy had found her and brought her home; and what
+      do you say to this, they thought Tommy was that boy! In his amazement he
+      very nearly blurted out that he was the other boy, but just then the lady
+      asked Papa if he had a shilling, and this abruptly closed Tommy's mouth.
+      Ever afterwards he remembered Papa as the man that was not sure whether he
+      had a shilling until he felt his pockets&mdash;a new kind of mortal to
+      Tommy, who grabbed the shilling when it was offered to him, and then
+      looked at Reddy imploringly, he was so afraid she would tell. But she
+      behaved splendidly, and never even shook her head at him. After this, as
+      hardly need be told, his one desire was to get out of the house with his
+      shilling before they discovered their mistake, and it was well that they
+      were unsuspicious people, for he was making strange hissing sounds in his
+      throat, the result of trying hard to keep his sniggers under control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were many ways in which Tommy could have disposed of his shilling.
+      He might have been a good boy and returned it next day to Papa. He might
+      have given Reddy half of it for not telling. It could have carried him
+      over the winter. He might have stalked with it into the shop where the
+      greasy puddings were and come rolling out hours afterwards. Some of these
+      schemes did cross his little mind, but he decided to spend the whole
+      shilling on a present to his mother, and it was to be something useful. He
+      devoted much thought to what she was most in need of, and at last he
+      bought her a colored picture of Lord Byron swimming the Hellespont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He told her that he got his shilling from two toffs for playing with a
+      little girl, and the explanation satisfied her; but she could have cried
+      at the waste of the money, which would have been such a God-send to her.
+      He cried altogether, however, at sight of her face, having expected it to
+      look so pleased, and then she told him, with caresses, that the picture
+      was the one thing she had been longing for ever since she came to London.
+      How had he known this, she asked, and he clapped his hands gleefully, and
+      said he just knowed when he saw it in the shop window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was noble of you," she said, "to spend all your siller on me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wasn't it, mother?" he crowed "I'm thinking there ain't many as noble as
+      I is!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not say why he had been so good to her, but it was because she had
+      written no letters to Thrums since the intrusion of Elspeth; a strange
+      reason for a boy whose greatest glory at one time had been to sit on the
+      fender and exultingly watch his mother write down words that would be read
+      aloud in the wonderful place. She was a long time in writing a letter, but
+      that only made the whole evening romantic, and he found an arduous
+      employment in keeping his tongue wet in preparation for the licking of the
+      stamp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she could not write to the Thrums folk now without telling them of
+      Elspeth, who was at present sleeping the sleep of the shameless in the
+      hollow of the bed, and so for his sake, Tommy thought, she meant to write
+      no more. For his sake, mark you, not for her own. She had often told him
+      that some day he should go to Thrums, but not with her; she would be far
+      away from him then in a dark place she was awid to be lying in. Thus it
+      seemed, to Tommy that she denied herself the pleasure of writing to Thrums
+      lest the sorry news of Elspeth's advent should spoil his reception when he
+      went north.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So grateful Tommy gave her the picture, hoping that it would fill the
+      void. But it did not. She put it on the mantelpiece so that she might just
+      sit and look at it, she said, and he grinned at it from every part of the
+      room, but when he returned to her, he saw that she was neither looking at
+      it nor thinking of it. She was looking straight before her, and sometimes
+      her lips twitched, and then she drew them into her mouth to keep them
+      still. It is a kind of dry weeping that sometimes comes to miserable ones
+      when their minds stray into the happy past, and Tommy sat and watched her
+      silently for a long time, never doubting that the cause of all her woe was
+      that she could not write to Thrums.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had seldom seen tears on his mother's face, but he saw one now. They
+      had been reluctant to come for many a day, and this one formed itself
+      beneath her eye and sat there like a blob of blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His own began to come more freely. But she needn't not expect him to tell
+      her to write nor to say that he didn't care what Thrums thought of him so
+      long as she was happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tear rolled down his mother's thin cheek and fell on the grey shawl
+      that had come from Thrums.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not hear her boy as he dragged a chair to the press and standing
+      on it got something down from the top shelf. She had forgotten him, and
+      she started when presently the pen was slipped into her hand and Tommy
+      said, "You can do it, mother, I wants yer to do it, mother, I won't not
+      greet, mother!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she saw what he wanted her to do she patted his face approvingly, but
+      without realizing the extent of his sacrifice. She knew that he had some
+      maggot in his head that made him regard Elspeth as a sore on the family
+      honor, but ascribing his views to jealousy she had never tried seriously
+      to change them. Her main reason for sending no news to Thrums of late had
+      been but the cost of the stamp, though she was also a little
+      conscience-stricken at the kind of letters she wrote, and the sight of the
+      materials lying ready for her proved sufficient to draw her to the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it to your grandmother you is writing the letter?" Tommy asked, for
+      her grandmother had brought Mrs. Sandys up and was her only surviving
+      relative. This was all Tommy knew of his mother's life in Thrums, though
+      she had told him much about other Thrums folk, and not till long
+      afterwards did he see that there must be something queer about herself,
+      which she was hiding from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This letter was not for her granny, however, and Tommy asked next, "Is it
+      to Aaron Latta?" which so startled her that she dropped the pen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Whaur heard you that name?" she said sharply. "I never spoke it to you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I've heard you saying it when you was sleeping, mother."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did I say onything but the name? Quick, tell me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You said, 'Oh, Aaron Latta, oh, Aaron, little did we think, Aaron,' and
+      things like that. Are you angry with me, mother?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," she said, relieved, but it was some time before the desire to write
+      came back to her. Then she told him "The letter is to a woman that was gey
+      cruel to me," adding, with a complacent pursing of her lips, the curious
+      remark, "That's the kind I like to write to best."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pen went scrape, scrape, but Tommy did not weary, though he often
+      sighed, because his mother would never read aloud to him what she wrote.
+      The Thrums people never answered her letters, for the reason, she said,
+      that those she wrote to could not write, which seemed to simple Tommy to
+      be a sufficient explanation. So he had never heard the inside of a letter
+      talking, though a postman lived in the house, and even Shovel's old girl
+      got letters; once when her uncle died she got a telegram, which Shovel
+      proudly wheeled up and down the street in a barrow, other blokes keeping
+      guard at the side. To give a letter to a woman who had been cruel to you
+      struck Tommy as the height of nobility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She'll be uplifted when she gets it!" he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She'll be mad when she gets it," answered his mother, without looking up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the letter:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "MY DEAR ESTHER,&mdash;I send you these few scrapes to let you see I have
+      not forgot you, though my way is now grand by yours. A spleet new black
+      silk, Esther, being the second in a twelvemonth, as I'm a living woman.
+      The other is no none tashed yet, but my gudeman fair insisted on buying a
+      new one, for says he 'Rich folk like as can afford to be mislaird, and
+      nothing's ower braw for my bonny Jean.' Tell Aaron Latta that. When I'm
+      sailing in my silks, Esther, I sometimes picture you turning your wincey
+      again, for I'se uphaud that's all the new frock you've ha'en the year. I
+      dinna want to give you a scunner of your man, Esther, more by token they
+      said if your mither had not took him in hand you would never have kent the
+      color of his nightcap, but when you are wraxing ower your kail-pot in a
+      plot of heat, just picture me ringing the bell for my servant, and saying,
+      with a wave of my hand, 'Servant, lay the dinner.' And ony bonny afternoon
+      when your man is cleaning out stables and you're at the tub in a short
+      gown, picture my man taking me and the children out a ride in a carriage,
+      and I sair doubt your bairns was never in nothing more genteel than a coal
+      cart. For bairns is yours, Esther, and children is mine, and that's a burn
+      without a brig till't.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Deary me, Esther, what with one thing and another, namely buying a sofa,
+      thirty shillings as I'm a sinner, I have forgot to tell you about my
+      second, and it's a girl this time, my man saying he would like a change.
+      We have christened her Elspeth after my grandmamma, and if my auld
+      granny's aye living, you can tell her that's her. My man is terrible windy
+      of his two beautiful children, but he says he would have been the happiest
+      gentleman in London though he had just had me, and really his fondness for
+      me, it cows, Esther, sitting aside me on the bed, two pounds without the
+      blankets, about the time Elspeth was born, and feeding me with the fat of
+      the land, namely, tapiocas and sherry wine. Tell Aaron Latta that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I pity you from the bottom of my heart, Esther, for having to bide in
+      Thrums, but you have never seen no better, your man having neither the
+      siller nor the desire to take yon jaunts, and I'm thinking that is just as
+      well, for if you saw how the like of me lives it might disgust you with
+      your own bit house. I often laugh, Esther, to think that I was once like
+      you, and looked upon Thrums as a bonny place. How is the old hole? My son
+      makes grand sport of the onfortunate bairns as has to bide in Thrums, and
+      I see him doing it the now to his favorite companion, which is a young
+      gentleman of ladylike manners, as bides in our terrace. So no more at
+      present, for my man is sitting ganting for my society, and I daresay yours
+      is crying to you to darn his old socks. Mind and tell Aaron Latta."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This letter was posted next day by Tommy, with the assistance of Shovel,
+      who seems to have been the young gentleman of ladylike manners referred to
+      in the text.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV &mdash; THE END OF AN IDYLL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Tommy never saw Reddy again owing to a fright he got about this time, for
+      which she was really to blame, though a woman who lived in his house was
+      the instrument.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is, perhaps, idle to attempt a summary of those who lived in that
+      house, as one at least will be off, and another in his place, while we are
+      giving them a line apiece. They were usually this kind who lived through
+      the wall from Mrs. Sandys, but beneath her were the two rooms of Hankey,
+      the postman, and his lodger, the dreariest of middle-aged clerks except
+      when telling wistfully of his ambition, which was to get out of the tea
+      department into the coffee department, where there is an easier way of
+      counting up the figures. Shovel and family were also on this floor, and in
+      the rooms under them was a newly married couple. When the husband was away
+      at his work, his wife would make some change in the furniture, taking the
+      picture from this wall, for instance, and hanging it on that wall, or
+      wheeling the funny chair she had lain in before she could walk without a
+      crutch, to the other side of the fireplace, or putting a skirt of yellow
+      paper round the flower pot, and when he returned he always jumped back in
+      wonder and exclaimed: "What an immense improvement!" These two were so
+      fond of one another that Tommy asked them the reason, and they gave it by
+      pointing to the chair with the wheels, which seemed to him to be no reason
+      at all. What was this young husband's trade Tommy never knew, but he was
+      the only prettily dressed man in the house, and he could be heard roaring
+      in his sleep, "<i>And</i> the next article?" The meanest looking man lived
+      next door to him. Every morning this man put on a clean white shirt, which
+      sounds like a splendid beginning, but his other clothes were of the
+      seediest, and he came and went shivering, raising his shoulders to his
+      ears and spreading his hands over his chest as if anxious to hide his
+      shirt rather than to display it. He and the happy husband were nicknamed
+      Before and After, they were so like the pictorial advertisement of Man
+      before and after he has tried Someone's lozenges. But it is rash to judge
+      by outsides; Tommy and Shovel one day tracked Before to his place of
+      business, and it proved to be a palatial eating-house, long, narrow,
+      padded with red cushions; through the door they saw the once despised, now
+      in beautiful black clothes, the waistcoat a mere nothing, as if to give
+      his shirt a chance at last, a towel over his arm, and to and fro he
+      darted, saying "Yessirquitesosir" to the toffs on the seats, shouting
+      "Twovegonebeef&mdash;onebeeronetartinahurry" to someone invisible, and
+      pocketing twopences all day long, just like a lord. On the same floor as
+      Before and After lived the large family of little Pikes, who quarrelled at
+      night for the middle place in the bed, and then chips of ceiling fell into
+      the room below, tenant Jim Ricketts and parents, lodger the young woman we
+      have been trying all these doors for. Her the police snapped up on a
+      charge; that made Tommy want to hide himself&mdash;child-desertion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shovel was the person best worth listening to on the subject (observe him,
+      the centre of half a dozen boys), and at first he was for the defence,
+      being a great stickler for the rights of mothers. But when the case
+      against the girl leaked out, she need not look to him for help. The police
+      had found the child in a basket down an area, and being knowing ones they
+      pinched it to make it cry, and then they pretended to go away. Soon the
+      mother, who was watching hard by to see if it fell into kind hands, stole
+      to her baby to comfort it, "and just as she were a kissing on it and
+      blubbering, the perlice copped her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The slut!" said disgusted Shovel, "what did she hang about for?" and in
+      answer to a trembling question from Tommy he replied, decisively, "Six
+      months hard."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Next case" was probably called immediately, but Tommy vanished, as if he
+      had been sentenced and removed to the cells.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never again, unless he wanted six months hard, must he go near Reddy's
+      home, and so he now frequently accompanied his mother to the place where
+      she worked. The little room had a funny fireplace called a stove, on which
+      his mother made tea and the girls roasted chestnuts, and it had no other
+      ordinary furniture except a long form. But the walls were mysterious.
+      Three of them were covered with long white cloths, which went to the side
+      when you tugged them, and then you could see on rails dozens of garments
+      that looked like nightgowns. Beneath the form were scores of little shoes,
+      most of them white or brown. In this house Tommy's mother spent eight
+      hours daily, but not all of them in this room. When she arrived the first
+      thing she did was to put Elspeth on the floor, because you cannot fall off
+      a floor; then she went upstairs with a bucket and a broom to a large bare
+      room, where she stayed so long that Tommy nearly forgot what she was like.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While his mother was upstairs Tommy would give Elspeth two or three shoes
+      to eat to keep her quiet, and then he played with the others, pretending
+      to be able to count them, arranging them in designs, shooting them,
+      swimming among them, saying "bow-wow" at them and then turning sharply to
+      see who had said it. Soon Elspeth dropped her shoes and gazed in
+      admiration at him, but more often than not she laughed in the wrong place,
+      and then he said ironically: "Oh, in course I can't do nothin'; jest let's
+      see you doing of it, then, cocky!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time the girls began to arrive, singly or in twos and threes, his
+      mother was back in the little room, making tea for herself or sewing bits
+      of them that had been torn as they stepped out of a cab, or helping them
+      to put on the nightgowns, or pretending to listen pleasantly to their
+      chatter and hating them all the time. There was every kind of them,
+      gorgeous ones and shabby ones, old tired ones and dashing young ones, but
+      whether they were the Honorable Mrs. Something or only Jane Anything, they
+      all came to that room for the same purpose: to get a little gown and a
+      pair of shoes. Then they went upstairs and danced to a stout little lady,
+      called the Sylph, who bobbed about like a ball at the end of a piece of
+      elastic. What Tommy never forgot was that while they danced the Sylph kept
+      saying, "One, two, three, four; one, two, three, four," which they did not
+      seem to mind, but when she said "One, two, three, four, <i>picture</i>!"
+      they all stopped and stood motionless, though it might be with one foot as
+      high as their head and their arms stretched out toward the floor, as if
+      they had suddenly seen a halfpenny there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the waiting-room, how they joked and pirouetted and gossiped, and
+      hugged and scorned each other, and what slang they spoke and how pretty
+      they often looked next moment, and how they denounced the one that had
+      just gone out as a cat with whom you could not get in a word edgeways, and
+      oh, how prompt they were to give a slice of their earnings to any "cat"
+      who was hard up! But still, they said, she had talent, but no genius. How
+      they pitied people without genius.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Have you ever tasted an encore or a reception? Tommy never had his teeth
+      in one, but he heard much about them in that room, and concluded that they
+      were some sort of cake. It was not the girls who danced in groups, but
+      those who danced alone, that spoke of their encores and receptions, and
+      sometimes they had got them last night, sometimes years ago. Two girls met
+      in the room, one of whom had stolen the other's reception, and&mdash;but
+      it was too dreadful to write about. Most of them carried newspaper
+      cuttings in their purses and read them aloud to the others, who would not
+      listen. Tommy listened, however, and as it was all about how one house had
+      risen at the girls and they had brought another down, he thought they led
+      the most adventurous lives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Occasionally they sent him out to buy newspapers or chestnuts, and then he
+      had to keep a sharp eye on the police lest they knew about Reddy. It was a
+      point of honor with all the boys he knew to pretend that the policeman was
+      after them. To gull the policeman into thinking all was well they
+      blackened their faces and wore their jackets inside out; their occupation
+      was a constant state of readiness to fly from him, and when he tramped out
+      of sight, unconscious of their existence, they emerged from dark places
+      and spoke in exultant whispers. Tommy had been proud to join them, but he
+      now resented their going on in this way; he felt that he alone had the
+      right to fly from the law. And once at least while he was flying something
+      happened to him that he was to remember better, far better, than his
+      mother's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What set him running on this occasion (he had been sent out to get one of
+      the girls' shoes soled) was the grandest sight to be seen in London&mdash;an
+      endless row of policemen walking in single file, all with the right leg in
+      the air at the same time, then the left leg. Seeing at once that they were
+      after him, Tommy ran, ran, ran until in turning a corner he found himself
+      wedged between two legs. He was of just sufficient size to fill the
+      aperture, but after a momentary look he squeezed through, and they proved
+      to be the gate into an enchanted land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The magic began at once. "Dagont, you sacket!" cried some wizard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A policeman's hand on his shoulder could not have taken the wind out of
+      Tommy more quickly. In the act of starting a-running again he brought down
+      his hind foot with a thud and stood stock still. Can any one wonder? It
+      was the Thrums tongue, and this the first time he had heard it except from
+      his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a dull day, and all the walls were dripping wet, this being the
+      part of London where the fogs are kept. Many men and women were passing to
+      and fro, and Tommy, with a wild exultation in his breast, peered up at the
+      face of this one and that; but no, they were only ordinary people, and he
+      played rub-a-dub with his feet on the pavement, so furious was he with
+      them for moving on as if nothing had happened. Draw up, ye carters;
+      pedestrians, stand still; London, silence for a moment, and let Tommy
+      Sandys listen!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Being but a frail plant in the way of a flood, Tommy was rooted up and
+      borne onward, but he did not feel the buffeting. In a passion of grief he
+      dug his fists in his eyes, for the glory had been his for but a moment. It
+      can be compared to nothing save the parcel (attached to a concealed
+      string) which Shovel and he once placed on the stair for Billy Hankey to
+      find, and then whipped away from him just as he had got it under his arm.
+      But so near the crying, Tommy did not cry, for even while the tears were
+      rushing to his aid he tripped on the step of a shop, and immediately, as
+      if that had rung the magic bell again, a voice, a woman's voice this time,
+      said shrilly, "Threepence ha'penny, and them jimply as big as a bantam's!
+      Na, na, but I'll gi'e you five bawbees."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy sat down flop on the step, feeling queer in the head. Was it&mdash;was
+      it&mdash;was it Thrums? He knew he had been running a long time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman, or fairy, or whatever you choose to call her, came out of the
+      shop and had to push Tommy aside to get past. Oh, what a sweet foot to be
+      kicked by. At the time, he thought she was dressed not unlike the women of
+      his own stair, but this defect in his vision he mended afterward, as you
+      may hear. Of course, he rose and trotted by her side like a dog, looking
+      up at her as if she were a cathedral; but she mistook his awe for
+      impudence and sent him sprawling, with the words, "Tak that, you glowering
+      partan!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Do you think Tommy resented this? On the contrary he screamed from where
+      he lay, "Say it again! say it again!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was gone, however, but only, as it were, to let a window open, from
+      which came the cry, "Davit, have you seen my man?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A male fairy roared back from some invisible place, "He has gone yont to
+      Petey's wi' the dambrod."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll dambrod him!" said the female fairy, and the window shut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy was now staggering like one intoxicated, but he had still some sense
+      left him, and he walked up and down in front of this house, as if to take
+      care of it. In the middle of the street some boys were very busy at a
+      game, carts and lorries passing over them occasionally. They came to the
+      pavement to play marbles, and then Tommy noticed that one of them wore
+      what was probably a glengarry bonnet. Could he be a Thrums boy?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first he played in the stupid London way, but by and by he had to make
+      a new ring, and he did it by whirling round on one foot. Tommy knew from
+      his mother that it is only done in this way in Thrums. Oho! Oho!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time he was prancing round his discovery, saying, "I'm one, too&mdash;so
+      am I&mdash;dagont, does yer hear? dagont!" which so alarmed the boy that
+      he picked up his marble and fled, Tommy, of course, after him. Alas! he
+      must have been some mischievous sprite, for he lured his pursuer back into
+      London and then vanished, and Tommy, searching in vain for the enchanted
+      street, found his own door instead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His mother pooh-poohed his tale, though he described the street exactly as
+      it struck him on reflection, and it bore a curious resemblance to the
+      palace of Aladdin that Reddy had told him about, leaving his imagination
+      to fill in the details, which it promptly did, with a square, a
+      town-house, some outside stairs, and an auld licht kirk. There was no such
+      street, however, his mother assured him; he had been dreaming. But if this
+      were so, why was she so anxious to make him promise never to look for the
+      place again?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did go in search of it again, daily for a time, always keeping a
+      look-out for bow-legs, and the moment he saw them, he dived recklessly
+      between, hoping to come out into fairyland on the other side. For though
+      he had lost the street, he knew that this was the way in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shovel had never heard of the street, nor had Bob. But Bob gave him
+      something that almost made him forget it for a time. Bob was his favorite
+      among the dancing girls, and she&mdash;or should it be he? The odd thing
+      about these girls was that a number of them were really boys&mdash;or at
+      least were boys at Christmas-time, which seemed to Tommy to be even
+      stranger than if they had been boys all the year round. A friend of Bob's
+      remarked to her one day, "You are to be a girl next winter, ain't you,
+      Bob?" and Bob shook her head scornfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you see any green in my eye, my dear?" she inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her friend did not look, but Tommy looked, and there was none. He assured
+      her of this so earnestly that Bob fell in love with him on the spot, and
+      chucked him under the chin, first with her thumb and then with her toe,
+      which feat was duly reported to Shovel, who could do it by the end of the
+      week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Did Tommy, Bob wanted to know, still think her a mere woman?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, he withdrew the charge, but&mdash;but&mdash;She was wearing her
+      outdoor garments, and he pointed to them, "Why does yer wear them, then?"
+      he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For the matter of that," she replied, pointing at his frock, "why do you
+      wear them?" Whereupon Tommy began to cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ain't not got no right ones," he blubbered. Harum-scarum Bob, who was a
+      trump, had him in her motherly arms immediately, and the upshot of it was
+      that a blue suit she had worn when she was Sam Something changed owners.
+      Mrs. Sandys "made it up," and that is how Tommy got into trousers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many contingencies were considered in the making, but the suit would fit
+      Tommy by and by if he grew, or it shrunk, and they did not pass each other
+      in the night. When proud Tommy first put on his suit the most unexpected
+      shyness overcame him, and having set off vaingloriously he stuck on the
+      stair and wanted to hide. Shovel, who had been having an argument with his
+      old girl, came, all boastful bumps, to him, and Tommy just stood still
+      with a self-conscious simper on his face. And Shovel, who could have
+      damped him considerably, behaved in the most honorable manner, initiating
+      him gravely into the higher life, much as you show the new member round
+      your club.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was very risky to go back to Reddy, whom he had not seen for many
+      weeks; but in trousers! He could not help it. He only meant to walk up and
+      down her street, so that she might see him from the window, and know that
+      this splendid thing was he; but though he went several times into the
+      street, Reddy never came to the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reason he had to wait in vain at Reddy's door was that she was dead;
+      she had been dead for quite a long time when Tommy came back to look for
+      her. You mothers who have lost your babies, I should be a sorry knave were
+      I to ask you to cry now over the death of another woman's child. Reddy had
+      been lent to two people for a very little while, just as your babies were,
+      and when the time was up she blew a kiss to them and ran gleefully back to
+      God, just as your babies did. The gates of heaven are so easily found when
+      we are little, and they are always standing open to let children wander
+      in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But though Reddy was gone away forever, mamma still lived in that house,
+      and on a day she opened the door to come out, Tommy was standing there&mdash;she
+      saw him there waiting for Reddy. Dry-eyed this sorrowful woman had heard
+      the sentence pronounced, dry eyed she had followed the little coffin to
+      its grave; tears had not come even when waking from illusive dreams she
+      put out her hand in bed to a child who was not there; but when she saw
+      Tommy waiting at the door for Reddy, who had been dead for a month, her
+      bosom moved and she could cry again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those tears were sweet to her husband, and it was he who took Tommy on his
+      knee in the room where the books were, and told him that there was no
+      Reddy now. When Tommy knew that Reddy was a deader he cried bitterly, and
+      the man said, very gently, "I am glad you were so fond of her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'T ain't that," Tommy answered with a knuckle in his eye, "'t ain't that
+      as makes me cry." He looked down at his trousers and in a fresh outburst
+      of childish grief he wailed, "It's them!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Papa did not understand, but the boy explained. "She can't not never see
+      them now," he sobbed, "and I wants her to see them, and they has pockets!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had come to the man unexpectedly. He put Tommy down almost roughly, and
+      raised his hand to his head as if he felt a sudden pain there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Tommy, you know, was only a little boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V &mdash; THE GIRL WITH TWO MOTHERS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth at last did something to win Tommy's respect; she fell ill of an
+      ailment called in Thrums the croop. When Tommy first heard his mother call
+      it croop, he thought she was merely humoring Elspeth, and that it was
+      nothing more distinguished than London whooping-cough, but on learning
+      that it was genuine croop, he began to survey the ambitious little
+      creature with a new interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was well for Elspeth, as she had now to spend most of the day at home
+      with him, their mother, whose health was failing through frequent attacks
+      of bronchitis, being no longer able to carry her through the streets. Of
+      course Elspeth took to repaying his attentions by loving him, and he soon
+      suspected it, and then gloomily admitted it to himself, but never to
+      Shovel. Being but an Englishman, Shovel saw no reason why relatives should
+      conceal their affection for each other, but he played on this Scottish
+      weakness of Tommy's with cruel enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She's fond on yer!" he would say severely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You's a liar."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Gar long! I believe as you're fond on her!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You jest take care, Shovel."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ain't yer?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Na-o!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will yer swear?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So I will swear."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let's hear yer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dagont!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So for a time the truth was kept hidden, and Shovel retired, casting
+      aspersions, and offering to eat all the hair on Elspeth's head for a
+      penny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This hair was white at present, which made Tommy uneasy about her future,
+      but on the whole he thought he might make something of her if she was only
+      longer. Sometimes he stretched her on the floor, pulling her legs out
+      straight, for she had a silly way of doubling them up, and then he
+      measured her carefully with his mother's old boots. Her growth proved to
+      be distressingly irregular, as one day she seemed to have grown an inch
+      since last night, and then next day she had shrunk two inches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After her day's work Mrs. Sandys was now so listless that, had not Tommy
+      interfered, Elspeth would have been a backward child. Reddy had been able
+      to walk from the first day, and so of course had he, but this little
+      slow-coach's legs wobbled at the joints, like the blade of a knife without
+      a spring. The question of questions was How to keep her on end?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy sat on the fender revolving this problem, his head resting on his
+      hand: that favorite position of mighty intellects when about to be
+      photographed, Elspeth lay on her stomach on the floor, gazing earnestly at
+      him, as if she knew she was in his thoughts for some stupendous purpose.
+      Thus the apple may have looked at Newton before it fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hankey, the postman, compelled the flowers in his window to stand erect by
+      tying them to sticks, so Tommy took two sticks from a bundle of firewood,
+      and splicing Elspeth's legs to them, held her upright against the door
+      with one hand. All he asked of her to-day was to remain in this position
+      after he said "One, two, three, four, <i>picture</i>!" and withdrew his
+      hand, but down she flopped every time, and he said, with scorn,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You ain't got no genius: you has just talent."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he had her in bed with the scratches nicely covered up before his
+      mother came home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He tried another plan with more success. Lost dogs, it may be remembered,
+      had a habit of following Shovel's father, and he not only took the
+      wanderers in, but taught them how to beg and shake hands and walk on two
+      legs. Tommy had sometimes been present at these agreeable exercises, and
+      being an inventive boy he&mdash;But as Elspeth was a nice girl, let it
+      suffice to pause here and add shyly, that in time she could walk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He also taught her to speak, and if you need to be told with what luscious
+      word he enticed her into language you are sentenced to re-read the first
+      pages of his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thrums," he would say persuasively, "Thrums, Thrums. You opens your mouth
+      like this, and shuts it like this, and that's it." Yet when he had coaxed
+      her thus for many days, what does she do but break her long silence with
+      the word "Tommy!" The recoil knocked her over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon afterward she brought down a bigger bird. No Londoner can say "Auld
+      licht," and Tommy had often crowed over Shovel's "Ol likt." When the
+      testing of Elspeth could be deferred no longer, he eyed her with the look
+      a hen gives the green egg on which she has been sitting twenty days, but
+      Elspeth triumphed, saying the words modestly even, as if nothing inside
+      her told her she had that day done something which would have baffled
+      Shakespeare, not to speak of most of the gentlemen who sit for Scotch
+      constituencies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Reddy couldn't say it!" Tommy cried exultantly, and from that great hour
+      he had no more fears for Elspeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next the alphabet knocked for admission; and entered first <i>M</i> and <i>P</i>,
+      which had prominence in the only poster visible from the window. Mrs.
+      Sandys had taught Tommy his letters, but he had got into words by studying
+      posters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth being able now to make the perilous descent of the stairs, Tommy
+      guided her through the streets (letting go hurriedly if Shovel hove in
+      sight), and here she bagged new letters daily. With Catlings something,
+      which is the best, she got into capital <i>C</i>s; <i>y</i>s are found
+      easily when you know where to look for them (they hang on behind); <i>N</i>s
+      are never found singly, but often three at a time; <i>Q</i> is so
+      aristocratic that even Tommy had only heard of it, doubtless it was there,
+      but indistinguishable among the masses like a celebrity in a crowd; on the
+      other hand, big <i>A</i> and little <i>e</i> were so dirt cheap, that
+      these two scholars passed them with something very like a sneer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The printing-press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse
+      of modern times, one sometimes forgets which. Elspeth's faith in it was
+      absolute, and as it only spoke to her from placards, here was her
+      religion, at the age of four:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "PRAY WITHOUT CEASING. HAPPY ARE THEY WHO NEEDING KNOW THE PAINLESS POROUS
+      PLASTER."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of religion, Tommy had said many fine things to her, embellishments on the
+      simple doctrine taught him by his mother before the miseries of this world
+      made her indifferent to the next. But the meaning of "Pray without
+      ceasing," Elspeth, who was God's child always, seemed to find out for
+      herself, and it cured all her troubles. She prayed promptly for every one
+      she saw doing wrong, including Shovel, who occasionally had words with
+      Tommy on the subject, and she not only prayed for her mother, but proposed
+      to Tommy that they should buy her a porous plaster. Mrs. Sandys had been
+      down with bronchitis again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy raised the monetary difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth knew where there was some money, and it was her very own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy knew where there was money, and it was his very own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth would not tell how much she had, and it was twopence halfpenny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither would Tommy tell, and it was twopence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy would get a surprise on his birthday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So would Elspeth get a surprise on her birthday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth would not tell what the surprise was to be, and it was to be a
+      gun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy also must remain mute, and it was to be a box of dominoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth did not want dominoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy knew that, but he wanted them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth discovered that guns cost fourpence, and dominoes threepence
+      halfpenny; it seemed to her, therefore, that Tommy was defrauding her of a
+      halfpenny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy liked her cheek. You got the dominoes for threepence halfpenny, but
+      the price on the box is fivepence, so that Elspeth would really owe him a
+      penny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This led to an agonizing scene in which Elspeth wept while Tommy told her
+      sternly about Reddy. It had become his custom to tell the tale of Reddy
+      when Elspeth was obstreperous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then followed a scene in which Tommy called himself a scoundrel for
+      frightening his dear Elspeth, and swore that he loved none but her.
+      Result: reconciliation, and agreed, that instead of a gun and dominoes,
+      they should buy a porous plaster. You know the shops where the plasters
+      are to be obtained by great colored bottles in their windows, and, as it
+      was advisable to find the very best shop, Tommy and Elspeth in their
+      wanderings came under the influence of the bottles, red, yellow, green,
+      and blue, and color entered into their lives, giving them many delicious
+      thrills. These bottles are the first poem known to the London child, and
+      you chemists who are beginning to do without them in your windows should
+      be told that it is a shame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the glamour, then, of the romantic battles walked Tommy and Elspeth
+      hand in hand, meeting so many novelties that they might have spared a tear
+      for the unfortunate children who sit in nurseries surrounded by all they
+      ask for, and if the adventures of these two frequently ended in the
+      middle, they had probably begun another while the sailor-suit boy was
+      still holding up his leg to let the nurse put on his little sock. While
+      they wandered, they drew near unwittingly to the enchanted street, to
+      which the bottles are a colored way, and at last they were in it, but
+      Tommy recognized it not; he did not even feel that he was near it, for
+      there were no outside stairs, no fairies strolling about, it was a short
+      street as shabby as his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But someone had shouted "Dinna haver, lassie; you're blethering!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy whispered to Elspeth, "Be still; don't speak," and he gripped her
+      hand tighter and stared at the speaker. He was a boy of ten, dressed like
+      a Londoner, and his companion had disappeared. Tommy never doubting but
+      that he was the sprite of long ago, gripped him by the sleeve. All the
+      savings of Elspeth and himself were in his pocket, and yielding to
+      impulse, as was his way, he thrust the fivepence halfpenny into James
+      Gloag's hand. The new millionaire gaped, but not at his patron, for the
+      why and wherefore of this gift were trifles to James beside the tremendous
+      fact that he had fivepence halfpenny. "Almichty me!" he cried and bolted.
+      Presently he returned, having deposited his money in a safe place, and his
+      first remark was perhaps the meanest on record. He held out his hand and
+      said greedily, "Have you ony mair?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, you feel certain, must have been the most important event of that
+      evening, but strange to say, it was not. Before Tommy could answer James's
+      question, a woman in a shawl had pounced upon him and hurried him and
+      Elspeth out of the street. She had been standing at a corner looking
+      wistfully at the window blinds behind which folk from Thrums passed to and
+      fro, hiding her face from people in the street, but gazing eagerly after
+      them. It was Tommy's mother, whose first free act on coming to London had
+      been to find out that street, and many a time since them site had skulked
+      through it or watched it from dark places, never daring to disclose
+      herself, but sometimes recognizing familiar faces, sometimes hearing a few
+      words in the old tongue that is harsh and ungracious to you, but was so
+      sweet to her, and bearing them away with her beneath her shawl as if they
+      were something warm to lay over her cold heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a time she upbraided Tommy passionately for not keeping away from this
+      street, but soon her hunger for news of Thrums overcame her prudence, and
+      she consented to let him go back if he promised never to tell that his
+      mother came from Thrums. "And if ony-body wants to ken your name, say it's
+      Tommy, but dinna let on that it's Tommy Sandys."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Elspeth," Tommy whispered that night, "I'm near sure there's something
+      queer about my mother and me and you." But he did not trouble himself with
+      wondering what the something queer might be, so engrossed was he in the
+      new and exciting life that had suddenly opened to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI &mdash; THE ENCHANTED STREET
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In Thrums Street, as it ought to have been called, herded at least
+      one-half of the Thrums folk in London, and they formed a colony, of which
+      the grocer at the corner sometimes said wrathfully that not a member would
+      give sixpence for anything except Bibles or whiskey. In the streets one
+      could only tell they were not Londoners by their walk, the flagstones
+      having no grip for their feet, or, if they had come south late in life, by
+      their backs, which they carried at the angle on which webs are most easily
+      supported. When mixing with the world they talked the English tongue,
+      which came out of them as broad as if it had been squeezed through a
+      mangle, but when the day's work was done, it was only a few of the giddier
+      striplings that remained Londoners. For the majority there was no raking
+      the streets after diversion, they spent the hour or two before bed-time in
+      reproducing the life of Thrums. Few of them knew much of London except the
+      nearest way between this street and their work, and their most interesting
+      visitor was a Presbyterian minister, most of whose congregation lived in
+      much more fashionable parts, but they were almost exclusively servant
+      girls, and when descending area-steps to visit them he had been challenged
+      often and jocularly by policemen, which perhaps was what gave him a
+      subdued and furtive appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rooms were furnished mainly with articles bought in London, but these
+      became as like Thrums dressers and seats as their owners could make them,
+      old Petey, for instance, cutting the back off a chair because he felt most
+      at home on stools. Drawers were used as baking-boards, pails turned into
+      salt-buckets, floors were sanded and hearthstones ca'med, and the popular
+      supper consisted of porter, hot water, and soaked bread, after every
+      spoonful of which, they groaned pleasantly, and stretched their legs.
+      Sometimes they played at the dambrod, but more often they pulled down the
+      blinds on London and talked of Thrums in their mother tongue. Nevertheless
+      few of them wanted to return to it, and their favorite joke was the case
+      of James Gloag's father, who being home-sick flung up his situation and
+      took train for Thrums, but he was back in London in three weeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy soon had the entry to these homes, and his first news of the inmates
+      was unexpected. It was that they were always sleeping. In broad daylight
+      he had seen Thrums men asleep on beds, and he was somewhat ashamed of them
+      until he heard the excuse. A number of the men from Thrums were bakers,
+      the first emigrant of this trade having drawn others after him, and they
+      slept great part of the day to be able to work all night in a cellar,
+      making nice rolls for rich people. Baker Lumsden, who became a friend of
+      Tommy, had got his place in the cellar when his brother died, and the
+      brother had succeeded Matthew Croall when he died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They die very soon, Tommy learned from Lumsden, generally when they are
+      eight and thirty. Lumsden was thirty-six, and when he died his nephew was
+      to get the place. The wages are good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there were several masons, one of whom, like the first baker, had
+      found work for all the others, and there were men who had drifted into
+      trades strange to their birthplace, and there was usually one at least who
+      had come to London to "better himself" and had not done it as yet. The
+      family Tommy liked best was the Whamonds, and especially he liked old
+      Petey and young Petey Whamond. They were a large family of women and men,
+      all of whom earned their living in other streets, except the old man, who
+      kept house and was a famous knitter of stockings, as probably his father
+      had been before him. He was a great one, too, at telling what they would
+      be doing at that moment in Thrums, every corner of which was as familiar
+      to him as the ins and outs of the family hose. Young Petey got fourteen
+      shillings a week from a hatter, and one of his duties was to carry as many
+      as twenty band-boxes at a time through fashionable streets; it is a matter
+      for elation that dukes and statesmen had often to take the curb-stone,
+      because young Petey was coming. Nevertheless young Petey was not
+      satisfied, and never would be (such is the Thrums nature) until he became
+      a salesman in the shop to which he acted at present as fetch and carry,
+      and he used to tell Tommy that this position would be his as soon as he
+      could sneer sufficiently at the old hats. When gentlemen come into the
+      shop and buy a new hat, he explained, they put it on, meaning to tell you
+      to send the old one to their address, and the art of being a fashionable
+      hatter lies in this: you must be able to curl your lips so contemptuously
+      at the old hat that they tell you guiltily to keep it, as they have no
+      further use for it. Then they retire ashamed of their want of moral
+      courage and you have made an extra half-guinea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I aye snort," young Petey admitted, "and it should be done without a
+      sound." When he graduated, he was to marry Martha Spens, who was waiting
+      for him at Tillyloss. There was a London seamstress whom he preferred, and
+      she was willing, but it is safest to stick to Thrums.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Tommy was among his new friends a Scotch word or phrase often escaped
+      his lips, but old Petey and the others thought he had picked it up from
+      them, and would have been content to accept him as a London waif who lived
+      somewhere round the corner. To trick people so simply, however, is not
+      agreeable to an artist, and he told them his name was Tommy Shovel, and
+      that his old girl walloped him, and his father found dogs, all which
+      inventions Thrums Street accepted as true. What is much more noteworthy is
+      that, as he gave them birth, Tommy half believed them also, being already
+      the best kind of actor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not all the talking was done by Tommy when he came home with news, for he
+      seldom mentioned a Thrums name, of which his mother could not tell him
+      something more. But sometimes she did not choose to tell, as when he
+      announced that a certain Elspeth Lindsay, of the Marywellbrae, was dead.
+      After this she ceased to listen, for old Elspeth had been her grandmother,
+      and she had now no kin in Thrums.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tell me about the Painted Lady," Tommy said to her. "Is it true she's a
+      witch?" But Mrs. Sandys had never heard of any woman so called: the
+      Painted Lady must have gone to Thrums after her time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There ain't no witches now," said Elspeth tremulously; Shovel's mother
+      had told her so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not in London," replied Tommy, with contempt; and this is all that was
+      said of the Painted Lady then. It is the first mention of her in these
+      pages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people Mrs. Sandys wanted to hear of chiefly were Aaron Latta and Jean
+      Myles, and soon Tommy brought news of them, but at the same time he had
+      heard of the Den, and he said first:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, mother, I thought as you had told me about all the beauty places in
+      Thrums, and you ain't never told me about the Den."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His mother heaved a quick breath. "It's the only place I hinna telled you
+      o'," she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Had you forget, it mother?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Forget the Den! Ah, no, Tommy, your mother had not forgotten the Den.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And, listen, Elspeth, in the Den there's a bonny spring of water called
+      the Cuttle Well. Had you forgot the Cuttle Well, mother?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, no; when Jean Myles forgot the names of her children she would still
+      remember the Cuttle Well. Regardless now of the whispering between Tommy
+      and Elspeth, she sat long over the fire, and it is not difficult to fathom
+      her thoughts. They were of the Den and the Cuttle Well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Into the life of every man, and no woman, there comes a moment when he
+      learns suddenly that he is held eligible for marriage. A girl gives him
+      the jag, and it brings out the perspiration. Of the issue elsewhere of
+      this stab with a bodkin let others speak; in Thrums its commonest effect
+      is to make the callant's body take a right angle to his legs, for he has
+      been touched in the fifth button, and he backs away broken-winded. By and
+      by, however, he is at his work&mdash;among the turnip-shoots, say&mdash;guffawing
+      and clapping his corduroys, with pauses for uneasy meditation, and there
+      he ripens with the swedes, so that by the back-end of the year he has
+      discovered, and exults to know, that the reward of manhood is neither more
+      nor less than this sensation at the ribs. Soon thereafter, or at worst,
+      sooner or later (for by holding out he only puts the women's dander up),
+      he is led captive to the Cuttle Well. This well has the reputation of
+      being the place where it is most easily said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wooded ravine called the Den is in Thrums rather than on its western
+      edge, but is so craftily hidden away that when within a stone's throw you
+      may give up the search for it; it is also so deep that larks rise from the
+      bottom and carol overhead, thinking themselves high in the heavens before
+      they are on a level with Nether Drumley's farmland. In shape it is almost
+      a semicircle, but its size depends on you and the maid. If she be with
+      you, the Den is so large that you must rest here and there; if you are
+      after her boldly, you can dash to the Cuttle Well, which was the
+      trysting-place, in the time a stout man takes to lace his boots; if you
+      are of those self-conscious ones who look behind to see whether jeering
+      blades are following, you may crouch and wriggle your way onward and not
+      be with her in half an hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Petey had told Tommy that, on the whole, the greatest pleasure in life
+      on a Saturday evening is to put your back against a stile that leads into
+      the Den and rally the sweethearts as they go by. The lads, when they see
+      you, want to go round by the other stile, but the lasses like it, and
+      often the sport ends spiritedly with their giving you a clout on the head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the Den runs a tiny burn, and by its side is a pink path, dyed
+      this pretty color, perhaps, by the blushes the ladies leave behind them.
+      The burn as it passes the Cuttle Well, which stands higher and just out of
+      sight, leaps in vain to see who is making that cooing noise, and the well,
+      taking the spray for kisses, laughs all day at Romeo, who cannot get up.
+      Well is a name it must have given itself, for it is only a spring in the
+      bottom of a basinful of water, where it makes about as much stir in the
+      world as a minnow jumping at a fly. They say that if a boy, by making a
+      bowl of his hands, should suddenly carry off all the water, a quick girl
+      could thread her needle at the spring. But it is a spring that will not
+      wait a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Men who have been lads in Thrums sometimes go back to it from London or
+      from across the seas, to look again at some battered little house and feel
+      the blasts of their bairnhood playing through the old wynds, and they may
+      take with them a foreign wife. They show her everything, except the Cuttle
+      Well; they often go there alone. The well is sacred to the memory of first
+      love. You may walk from the well to the round cemetery in ten minutes. It
+      is a common walk for those who go back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First love is but a boy and girl playing at the Cuttle Well with a bird's
+      egg. They blow it on one summer evening in the long grass, and on the next
+      it is borne away on a coarse laugh, or it breaks beneath the burden of a
+      tear. And yet&mdash;I once saw an aged woman, a widow of many years, cry
+      softly at mention of the Cuttle Well. "John was a good man to you," I
+      said, for John had been her husband. "He was a leal man to me," she
+      answered with wistful eyes, "ay, he was a leal man to me&mdash;but it
+      wasna John I was thinking o'. You dinna ken what makes me greet so sair,"
+      she added, presently, and though I thought I knew now I was wrong. "It's
+      because I canna mind his name," she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the Cuttle Well has its sad memories and its bright ones, and many of
+      the bright memories have become sad with age, as so often happens to
+      beautiful things, but the most mournful of all is the story of Aaron Latta
+      and Jean Myles. Beside the well there stood for long a great pink stone,
+      called the Shoaging, Stone, because it could be rocked like a cradle, and
+      on it lovers used to cut their names. Often Aaron Latta and Jean Myles sat
+      together on the Shoaging Stone, and then there came a time when it bore
+      these words cut by Aaron Latta:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HERE LIES THE MANHOOD OF AARON LATTA, A FOND SON, A FAITHFUL FRIEND AND A
+      TRUE LOVER, WHO VIOLATED THE FEELINGS OF SEX ON THIS SPOT, AND IS NOW THE
+      SCUNNER OF GOD AND MAN
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy's mother now heard these words for the first time, Aaron having cut
+      them on the stone after she left Thrums, and her head sank at each line,
+      as if someone had struck four blows at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stone was no longer at the Cuttle Well. As the easiest way of
+      obliterating the words, the minister had ordered it to be broken, and of
+      the pieces another mason had made stands for watches, one of which was now
+      in Thrums Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Aaron Latta ain't a mason now," Tommy rattled on: "he is a warper,
+      because he can warp in his own house without looking on mankind or
+      speaking to mankind. Auld Petey said he minded the day when Aaron Latta
+      was a merry loon, and then Andrew McVittie said, 'God behears, to think
+      that Aaron Latta was ever a merry man!' and Baker Lumsden said, 'Curse
+      her!'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His mother shrank in her chair, but said nothing, and Tommy explained: "It
+      was Jean Myles he was cursing; did you ken her, mother? she ruined Aaron
+      Latta's life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, and wha ruined Jean Myles's life?" his mother cried passionately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy did not know, but he thought that young Petey might know, for young
+      Petey had said: "If I had been Jean Myles I would have spat in Aaron's
+      face rather than marry him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Sandys seemed pleased to hear this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They wouldna tell me what it were she did," Tommy went on; "they said it
+      was ower ugly a story, but she were a bad one, for they stoned her out of
+      Thrums. I dinna know where she is now, but she were stoned out of Thrums!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No alane?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There was a man with her, and his name was&mdash;it was&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His mother clasped her hands nervously while Tommy tried to remember the
+      name. "His name was Magerful Tam," he said at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay," said his mother, knitting her teeth, "that was his name."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dinna mind any more," Tommy concluded. "Yes, I mind they aye called
+      Aaron Latta 'Poor Aaron Latta.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did they? I warrant, though, there wasna one as said 'Poor Jean Myles'?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She began the question in a hard voice, but as she said "Poor Jean Myles"
+      something caught in her throat, and she sobbed, painful dry sobs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How could they pity her when she were such a bad one?" Tommy answered
+      briskly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is there none to pity bad ones?" said his sorrowful mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth plucked her by the skirt. "There's God, ain't there?" she said,
+      inquiringly, and getting no answer she flopped upon her knees, to say a
+      babyish prayer that would sound comic to anybody except to Him to whom it
+      was addressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You ain't praying for a woman as was a disgrace to Thrums!" Tommy cried,
+      jealously, and he was about to raise her by force, when his mother stayed
+      his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let her alane," she said, with a twitching mouth and filmy eyes. "Let her
+      alane. Let my bairn pray for Jean Myles."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII &mdash; COMIC OVERTURE TO A TRAGEDY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      "Jean Myles bides in London" was the next remarkable news brought by Tommy
+      from Thrums Street. "And that ain't all, Magerful Tam is her man; and that
+      ain't all, she has a laddie called Tommy and that ain't all, Petey and the
+      rest has never seen her in London, but she writes letters to Thrums folks
+      and they writes to Petey and tells him what she said. That ain't all
+      neither, they canna find out what street she bides in, but it's on the
+      bonny side of London, and it's grand, and she wears silk clothes, and her
+      Tommy has velvet trousers, and they have a servant as calls him 'sir.' Oh,
+      I would just like to kick him! They often looks for her in the grand
+      streets, but they're angry at her getting on so well, and Martha
+      Scrymgeour said it were enough to make good women like her stop going
+      reg'lar to the kirk."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Martha said that!" exclaimed his mother, highly pleased. "Heard you
+      anything of a woman called Esther Auld? Her man does the orra work at the
+      Tappit Hen public in Thrums."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's head man at the Tappit Hen public now," answered Tommy; "and she
+      wishes she could find out where Jean Myles bides, so as she could write
+      and tell her that she is grand too, and has six hair-bottomed chairs."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She'll never get the satisfaction," said his mother triumphantly. "Tell
+      me more about her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She has a laddie called Francie, and he has yellow curls, and she nearly
+      greets because she canna tell Jean Myles that he goes to a school for the
+      children of gentlemen only. She is so mad when she gets a letter from Jean
+      Myles that she takes to her bed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yea, yea!" said Mrs. Sandys cheerily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But they think Jean Myles has been brought low at last," continued Tommy,
+      "because she hasna wrote for a long time to Thrums, and Esther Auld said
+      that if she knowed for certain as Jean Myles had been brought low, she
+      would put a threepenny bit in the kirk plate."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm glad you've telled me that, laddie," said Mrs. Sandys, and next day,
+      unknown to her children, she wrote another letter. She knew she ran a risk
+      of discovery, yet it was probable that Tommy would only hear her referred
+      to in Thrums Street by her maiden name, which he had never heard from her,
+      and as for her husband he had been Magerful Tam to everyone. The risk was
+      great, but the pleasure&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unsuspicious Tommy soon had news of another letter from Jean Myles, which
+      had sent Esther Auld to bed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Instead of being brought low," he announced, "Jean Myles is grander than
+      ever. Her Tommy has a governess."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That would be a doush of water in Esther's face?" his mother said,
+      smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She wrote to Martha Scrymgeour," said Tommy, "that it ain't no pleasure
+      to her now to boast as her laddie is at a school for gentlemen's children
+      only. But what made her maddest was a bit in Jean Myles's letter about
+      chairs. Jean Myles has give all her hair-bottomed chairs to a poor woman
+      and buyed a new kind, because hair-bottomed ones ain't fashionable now. So
+      Esther Auld can't not bear the sight of her chairs now, though she were
+      windy of them till the letter went to Thrums."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Poor Esther!" said Mrs. Sandys gaily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, and I forgot this, mother. Jean Myles's reason for not telling where
+      she bides in London is that she's so grand that she thinks if auld Petey
+      and the rest knowed where the place was they would visit her and boast as
+      they was her friends. Auld Petey stamped wi' rage when he heard that, and
+      Martha Scrymgeour said, 'Oh, the pridefu' limmer!'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, Martha," muttered Mrs. Sandys, "you and Jean Myles is evens now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the passage that had made them all wince the most was one giving
+      Jean's reasons for making no calls in Thrums Street. "You can break it to
+      Martha Scrymgeour's father and mither," the letter said, "and to Petey
+      Whamond's sisters and the rest as has friends in London, that I have seen
+      no Thrums faces here, the low part where they bide not being for the like
+      of me to file my feet in. Forby that, I could not let my son mix with
+      their bairns for fear they should teach him the vulgar Thrums words and
+      clarty his blue-velvet suit. I'm thinking you have to dress your laddie in
+      corduroy, Esther, but you see that would not do for mine. So no more at
+      present, and we all join in compliments, and my little velvets says he
+      wishes I would send some of his toys to your little corduroys. And so
+      maybe I will, Esther, if you'll tell Aaron Latta how rich and happy I am,
+      and if you're feared to say it to his face, tell it to the roaring farmer
+      of Double Dykes, and he'll pass it on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you ever hear of such a woman?" Tommy said indignantly, when he had
+      repeated as much of this insult to Thrums as he could remember.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was information his mother wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What said they to that bit?" she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first, it appears, they limited their comments to "Losh, losh," "keeps
+      a'," "it cows," "my eertie," "ay, ay," "sal, tal," "dagont" (the meaning
+      of which is obvious). But by and by they recovered their breath, and then
+      Baker Lamsden said, wonderingly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wha that was at her marriage could have thought it would turn out so
+      weel? It was an eerie marriage that, Petey!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, man, you may say so," old Petey answered. "I was there; I was one o'
+      them as went in ahint Aaron Latta, and I'm no' likely to forget it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wasna there," said the baker, "but I was standing at the door, and I
+      saw the hearse drive up."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What did they mean, mother?" Tommy asked, but she shuddered and replied,
+      evasively, "Did Martha Scrymgeour say anything?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She said such a lot," he had to confess, "that I dinna mind none on it.
+      But I mind what her father in Thrums wrote to her; he wrote to her that if
+      she saw a carriage go by, she was to keep her eyes on the ground, for
+      likely as not Jean Myles would be in it, and she thought as they was all
+      dirt beneath her feet. But Kirsty Ross&mdash;who is she?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She's Martha's mother. What about her?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She wrote at the end of the letter that Martha was to hang on ahint the
+      carriage and find out where Jean Myles bides."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Laddie, that was like Kirsty! Heard you what the roaring farmer o' Double
+      Dykes said?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, Tommy had not heard him mentioned. And indeed the roaring farmer of
+      Double Dykes had said nothing. He was already lying very quiet on the
+      south side of the cemetery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy's mother's next question cost her a painful effort. "Did you hear,"
+      she asked, "whether they telled Aaron Latta about the letter?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, they telled him," Tommy replied, "and he said a queer thing; he
+      said, 'Jean Myles is dead, I was at her coffining.' That's what he aye
+      says when they tell him there's another letter. I wonder what he means,
+      mother?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wonder!" she echoed, faintly. The only pleasure left her was to raise
+      the envy of those who had hooted her from Thrums, but she paid a price for
+      it. Many a stab she had got from the unwitting Tommy as he repeated the
+      gossip of his new friends, and she only won their envy at the cost of
+      their increased ill-will. They thought she was lording it in London, and
+      so they were merciless; had they known how poor she was and how ill, they
+      would have forgotten everything save that she was a Thrummy like
+      themselves, and there were few but would have shared their all with her.
+      But she did not believe this, and therefore you may pity her, for the hour
+      was drawing near, and she knew it, when she must appeal to some one for
+      her children's sake, not for her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, not for her own. When Tommy was wandering the pretty parts of London
+      with James Gloag and other boys from Thrums Street in search of Jean
+      Myles, whom they were to know by her carriage and her silk dress and her
+      son in blue velvet, his mother was in bed with bronchitis in the wretched
+      room we know of, or creeping to the dancing school, coughing all the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of the fits of coughing were very near being her last, but she
+      wrestled with her trouble, seeming at times to stifle it, and then for
+      weeks she managed to go to her work, which was still hers, because
+      Shovel's old girl did it for her when the bronchitis would not be defied.
+      Shovel's old slattern gave this service unasked and without payment; if
+      she was thanked it was ungraciously, but she continued to do all she could
+      when there was need; she smelled of gin, but she continued to do all she
+      could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wardrobe had been put upon its back on the floor, and so converted
+      into a bed for Tommy and Elspeth, who were sometimes wakened in the night
+      by a loud noise, which alarmed them until they learned that it was only
+      the man in the next room knocking angrily on the wall because their
+      mother's cough kept him from sleeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy knew what death was now, and Elspeth knew its name, and both were
+      vaguely aware that it was looking for their mother; but if she could only
+      hold out till Hogmanay, Tommy said, they would fleg it out of the house.
+      Hogmanay is the mighty winter festival of Thrums, and when it came round
+      these two were to give their mother a present that would make her strong.
+      It was not to be a porous plaster. Tommy knew now of something better than
+      that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I knows too!" Elspeth gurgled, "and I has threepence a'ready, I has."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Whisht!" said Tommy, in an agony of dread, "she hears you, and she'll
+      guess. We ain't speaking of nothing to give to you at Hogmanay," he said
+      to his mother with great cunning. Then he winked at Elspeth and said, with
+      his hand over his mouth, "I hinna twopence!" and Elspeth, about to cry in
+      fright, "Have you spended it?" saw the joke and crowed instead, "Nor yet
+      has I threepence!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They smirked together, until Tommy saw a change come over Elspeth's face,
+      which made him run her outside the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You was a-going to pray!" he said, severely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Cos it was a lie, Tommy. I does have threepence."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, you ain't a-going to get praying about it. She would hear yer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I would do it low, Tommy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She would see yer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, Tommy, let me. God is angry with me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy looked down the stair, and no one was in sight. "I'll let yer pray
+      here," he whispered, "and you can say I have twopence. But be quick, and
+      do it standing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps Mrs. Sandys had been thinking that when Hogmanay came her children
+      might have no mother to bring presents to, for on their return to the room
+      her eyes followed them woefully, and a shudder of apprehension shook her
+      torn frame. Tommy gave Elspeth a look that meant "I'm sure there's
+      something queer about her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was also something queer about himself, which at this time had the
+      strangest gallop. It began one day with a series of morning calls from
+      Shovel, who suddenly popped his head over the top of the door (he was
+      standing on the handle), roared "Roastbeef!" in the manner of a railway
+      porter announcing the name of a station, and then at once withdrew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He returned presently to say that vain must be all attempts to wheedle his
+      secret from him, and yet again to ask irritably why Tommy was not coming
+      out to hear all about it. Then did Tommy desert Elspeth, and on the stair
+      Shovel showed him a yellow card with this printed on it: "S.R.J.C.&mdash;Supper
+      Ticket;" and written beneath, in a lady's hand: "Admit Joseph Salt." The
+      letters, Shovel explained, meant Society for the somethink of Juvenile
+      Criminals, and the toffs what ran it got hold of you when you came out of
+      quod. Then if you was willing to repent they wrote down your name and the
+      place what you lived at in a book, and one of them came to see yer and
+      give yer a ticket for the blow-out night. This was blow-out night, and
+      that were Shovel's ticket. He had bought it from Hump Salt for fourpence.
+      What you get at the blow-out was roast-beef, plum-duff, and an orange; but
+      when Hump saw the fourpence he could not wait.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A favor was asked of Tommy. Shovel had been told by Hump that it was the
+      custom of the toffs to sit beside you and question you about your crimes,
+      and lacking the imagination that made Tommy such an ornament to the house,
+      the chances were that he would flounder in his answers and be ejected.
+      Hump had pointed this out to him after pocketing the fourpence. Would
+      Tommy, therefore, make up things for him to say; reward, the orange.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a proud moment for Tommy, as Shovel's knowledge of crime was much
+      more extensive than his own, though they had both studied it in the
+      pictures of a lively newspaper subscribed to by Shovel, senior. He became
+      patronizing at once and rejected the orange as insufficient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then suppose, after he got into the hall, Shovel dropped his ticket out at
+      the window; Tommy could pick it up, and then it would admit him also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy liked this, but foresaw a danger: the ticket might be taken from
+      Shovel at the door, just as they took them from you at that singing thing
+      in the church he had attended with young Petey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So help Shovel's davy, there was no fear of this. They were superior
+      toffs, what trusted to your honor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Would Shovel swear to this?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He would.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But would he swear dagont?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He swore dagont; and then Tommy had him. As he was so sure of it, he could
+      not object to Tommy's being the one who dropped the ticket out at the
+      window?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shovel did object for a time, but after a wrangle he gave up the ticket,
+      intending to take it from Tommy when primed with the necessary tale. So
+      they parted until evening, and Tommy returned to Elspeth, secretive but
+      elated. For the rest of the day he was in thought, now waggling his head
+      smugly over some dark, unutterable design and again looking a little
+      scared. In growing alarm she watched his face, and at last she slipped
+      upon her knees, but he had her up at once and said, reproachfully:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It were me as teached yer to pray, and now yer prays for me! That's fine
+      treatment!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, after his mother's return, just before he stole out to join
+      Shovel, he took Elspeth aside and whispered to her, nervously:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You can pray for me if you like, for, oh, Elspeth; I'm thinking as I'll
+      need it sore!" And sore he needed it before the night was out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII &mdash; THE BOY WITH TWO MOTHERS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      "I love my dear father and my dear mother and all the dear little kids at
+      'ome. You are a kind laidy or gentleman. I love yer. I will never do it
+      again, so help me bob. Amen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was what Shovel muttered to himself again and again as the two boys
+      made their way across the lamp-lit Hungerford Bridge, and Tommy asked him
+      what it meant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My old gal learned me that; she's deep," Shovel said, wiping the words
+      off his mouth with his sleeve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you got no kids at 'ome!" remonstrated Tommy. (Ameliar was now in
+      service.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shovel turned on him with the fury of a mother protecting her young.
+      "Don't you try for to knock none on it out," he cried, and again fell
+      a-mumbling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Said Tommy, scornfully: "If you says it all out at one bang you'll be done
+      at the start."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shovel sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you should blubber when yer says it," added Tommy, who could laugh or
+      cry merely because other people were laughing or crying, or even with less
+      reason, and so naturally that he found it more difficult to stop than to
+      begin. Shovel was the taller by half a head, and irresistible with his
+      fists, but to-night Tommy was master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You jest stick to me, Shovel," he said airily. "Keep a grip on my hand,
+      same as if yer was Elspeth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what was we copped for, Tommy?" entreated humble Shovel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy asked him if he knew what a butler was, and Shovel remembered,
+      confusedly, that there had been a portrait of a butler in his father's
+      news-sheet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, then," said Tommy, inspired by this same source, "there's a room a
+      butler has, and it is a pantry, so you and me we crawled through the
+      winder and we opened the door to the gang. You and me was copped. They
+      catched you below the table and me stabbing the butler."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was me what stabbed the butler," Shovel interposed, jealously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How could you do it, Shovel?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With a knife, I tell yer!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, you didn't have no knife," said Tommy, impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This crushed Shovel, but he growled sulkily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I bit him in the leg."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not you," said selfish Tommy. "You forgets about repenting, and if I let
+      yer bite him, you would brag about it. It's safer without, Shovel."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps it was. "How long did I get in quod, then, Tommy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fourteen days."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So did you?" Shovel said, with quick anxiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I got a month," replied Tommy, firmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shovel roared a word that would never have admitted him to the hall. Then,
+      "I'm as game as you, and gamer," he whined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I'm better at repenting. I tell yer, I'll cry when I'm repenting."
+      Tommy's face lit up, and Shovel could not help saying, with a curious look
+      at it:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You&mdash;you ain't like any other cove I knows," to which Tommy replied,
+      also in an awe-struck voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm so queer, Shovel, that when I thinks 'bout myself I'm&mdash;I'm
+      sometimes near feared."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What makes your face for to shine like that? Is it thinking about the
+      blow-out?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, it was hardly that, but Tommy could not tell what it was. He and the
+      saying about art for art's sake were in the streets that night, looking
+      for each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The splendor of the brightly lighted hall, which was situated in one of
+      the meanest streets of perhaps the most densely populated quarter in
+      London, broke upon the two boys suddenly and hit each in his vital part,
+      tapping an invitation on Tommy's brain-pan and taking Shovel coquettishly
+      in the stomach. Now was the moment when Shovel meant to strip Tommy of the
+      ticket, but the spectacle in front dazed him, and he stopped to tell a
+      vegetable barrow how he loved his dear father and his dear mother, and all
+      the dear kids at home. Then Tommy darted forward and was immediately lost
+      in the crowd surging round the steps of the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several gentlemen in evening dress stood framed in the lighted doorway,
+      shouting: "Have your tickets in your hands and give them up as you pass
+      in." They were fine fellows, helping in a splendid work, and their society
+      did much good, though it was not so well organized as others that have
+      followed in its steps; but Shovel, you may believe, was in no mood to
+      attend to them. He had but one thought: that the traitor Tommy was
+      doubtless at that moment boring his way toward them, underground, as it
+      were, and "holding his ticket in his hand." Shovel dived into the rabble
+      and was flung back upside down. Falling with his arms round a full-grown
+      man, he immediately ran up him as if he had been a lamp-post, and was
+      aloft just sufficiently long to see Tommy give up the ticket and saunter
+      into the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The crowd tried at intervals to rush the door. It was mainly composed of
+      ragged boys, but here and there were men, women, and girls, who came into
+      view for a moment under the lights as the mob heaved and went round and
+      round like a boiling potful. Two policemen joined the ticket-collectors,
+      and though it was a good-humored gathering, the air was thick with such
+      cries as these:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I lorst my ticket, ain't I telling yer? Gar on, guv'nor, lemme in!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, crumpets, look at Jimmy! Jimmy never done nothink, your honor; he's a
+      himposter"'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm the boy what kicked the peeler. Hie, you toff with the choker, ain't
+      I to step up?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tell yer, I'm a genooine criminal, I am. If yer don't lemme in I'll have
+      the lawr on you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let a poor cove in as his father drownded hisself for his country."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What air yer torking about? Warn't I in larst year, and the cuss as runs
+      the show, he says to me, 'Allers welcome,' he says. None on your sarse,
+      Bobby. I demands to see the cuss what runs&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Jest keeping on me out 'cos I ain't done nothin'. Ho, this is a
+      encouragement to honesty, I don't think."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mighty in tongue and knee and elbow was an unknown knight, ever
+      conspicuous; it might be but by a leg waving for one brief moment in the
+      air. He did not want to go in, would not go in though they went on their
+      blooming knees to him; he was after a viper of the name of Tommy. Half an
+      hour had not tired him, and he was leading another assault, when a
+      magnificent lady, such as you see in wax-works, appeared in the vestibule
+      and made some remark to a policeman, who then shouted:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If so there be hany lad here called Shovel, he can step forrard."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A dozen lads stepped forward at once, but a flail drove them right and
+      left, and the unknown knight had mounted the parapet amid a shower of
+      execrations. "If you are the real Shovel," the lady said to him, "you can
+      tell me how this proceeds, 'I love my dear father and my dear mother&mdash;'
+      Go on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shovel obeyed, tremblingly. "And all the dear little kids at 'ome. You are
+      a kind laidy or gentleman. I love yer. I will never do it again, so help
+      me bob. Amen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Charming!" chirped the lady, and down pleasant-smelling aisles she led
+      him, pausing to drop an observation about Tommy to a clergyman: "So glad I
+      came; I have discovered the most delightful little monster called Tommy."
+      The clergyman looked after her half in sadness, half sarcastically; he was
+      thinking that he had discovered a monster also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At present the body of the hall was empty, but its sides were lively with
+      gorging boys, among whom ladies moved, carrying platefuls of good things.
+      Most of them were sweet women, fighting bravely for these boys, and not at
+      all like Shovel's patroness, who had come for a sensation. Tommy falling
+      into her hands, she got it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy, who had a corner to himself, was lolling in it like a little king,
+      and he not only ordered roast-beef for the awe-struck Shovel, but sent the
+      lady back for salt. Then he whispered, exultantly: "Quick, Shovel, feel my
+      pocket" (it bulged with two oranges), "now the inside pocket" (plum-duff),
+      "now my waistcoat pocket" (threepence); "look in my mouth" (chocolates).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Shovel found speech he began excitedly: "I love my dear father and my
+      dear&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Gach!" said Tommy, interrupting him contemptuously. "Repenting ain't no
+      go, Shovel. Look at them other coves; none of them has got no money, nor
+      full pockets, and I tell you, it's 'cos they has repented."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Gar on!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's true, I tells you. That lady as is my one, she's called her
+      ladyship, and she don't care a cuss for boys as has repented," which of
+      course was a libel, her ladyship being celebrated wherever paragraphs
+      penetrate for having knitted a pair of stockings for the deserving poor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When I saw that," Tommy continued, brazenly, "I bragged 'stead of
+      repenting, and the wuss I says I am, she jest says, 'You little monster,'
+      and gives me another orange."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then I'm done for," Shovel moaned, "for I rolled off that 'bout loving my
+      dear father and my dear mother, blast 'em, soon as I seen her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He need not let that depress him. Tommy had told her he would say it, but
+      that it was all flam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shovel thought the ideal arrangement would be for him to eat and leave the
+      torking to Tommy. Tommy nodded. "I'm full, at any rate," he said,
+      struggling with his waistcoat. "Oh, Shovel, I <i>am</i> full!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her ladyship returned, and the boys held by their contract, but of the
+      dark character Tommy seems to have been, let not these pages bear the
+      record. Do you wonder that her ladyship believed him? On this point we
+      must fight for our Tommy. You would have believed him. Even Shovel, who
+      knew, between the bites, that it was all whoppers, listened as to his
+      father reading aloud. This was because another boy present half believed
+      it for the moment also. When he described the eerie darkness of the
+      butler's pantry, he shivered involuntarily, and he shut his eyes once&mdash;ugh!&mdash;that
+      was because he saw the blood spouting out of the butler. He was turning up
+      his trousers to show the mark of the butler's boot on his leg when the
+      lady was called away, and then Shovel shook him, saying: "Darn yer,
+      doesn't yer know as it's all your eye?" which brought Tommy to his senses
+      with a jerk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sure's death, Shovel," he whispered, in awe, "I was thinking I done it,
+      every bit!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had her ladyship come back she would have found him a different boy. He
+      remembered now that Elspeth, for whom he had filled his pockets, was
+      praying for him; he could see her on her knees, saying, "Oh, God, I'se
+      praying for Tommy," and remorse took hold of him and shook him on his
+      seat. He broke into one hysterical laugh and then immediately began to
+      sob. This was the moment when Shovel should have got him quietly out of
+      the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Members of the society discussing him afterwards with bated breath said
+      that never till they died could they forget her ladyship's face while he
+      did it. "But did you notice the boy's own face? It was positively
+      angelic." "Angelic, indeed; the little horror was intoxicated." No, there
+      was a doctor present, and according to him it was the meal that had gone
+      to the boy's head; he looked half starved. As for the clergyman, he only
+      said: "We shall lose her subscription; I am glad of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, Tommy was intoxicated, but with a beverage not recognized by the
+      faculty. What happened was this: Supper being finished, the time had come
+      for what Shovel called the jawing, and the boys were now mustered in the
+      body of the hall. The limited audience had gone to the gallery, and
+      unluckily all eyes except Shovel's were turned to the platform. Shovel was
+      apprehensive about Tommy, who was not exactly sobbing now; but strange,
+      uncontrollable sounds not unlike the winding up of a clock proceeded from
+      his throat; his face had flushed; there was a purposeful look in his
+      usually unreadable eye; his fingers were fidgeting on the board in front
+      of him, and he seemed to keep his seat with difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The personage who was to address the boys sat on the platform with
+      clergymen, members of committee, and some ladies, one of them Tommy's
+      patroness. Her ladyship saw Tommy and smiled to him, but obtained no
+      response. She had taken a front seat, a choice that she must have
+      regretted presently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chairman rose and announced that the. Rev. Mr. &mdash;&mdash;would
+      open the proceedings with prayer. The Rev. Mr. &mdash;&mdash; rose to pray
+      in a loud voice for the waifs in the body of the hall. At the same moment
+      rose Tommy, and began to pray in a squeaky voice for the people on the
+      platform.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had many Biblical phrases, mostly picked up in Thrums Street, and what
+      he said was distinctly heard in the stillness, the clergyman being
+      suddenly bereft of speech. "Oh," he cried, "look down on them ones there,
+      for, oh, they are unworthy of Thy mercy, and, oh, the worst sinner is her
+      ladyship, her sitting there so brazen in the black frock with yellow
+      stripes, and the worse I said I were the better pleased were she. Oh, make
+      her think shame for tempting of a poor boy, for getting suffer little
+      children, oh, why cumbereth she the ground, oh&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was in full swing before any one could act. Shovel having failed to
+      hold him in his seat, had done what was perhaps the next best thing, got
+      beneath it himself. The arm of the petrified clergyman was still extended,
+      as if blessing his brother's remarks; the chairman seemed to be trying to
+      fling his right hand at the culprit; but her ladyship, after the first
+      stab, never moved a muscle. Thus for nearly half a minute, when the
+      officials woke up, and squeezing past many knees, seized Tommy by the neck
+      and ran him out of the building. All down the aisle he prayed
+      hysterically, and for some time afterwards, to Shovel, who had been cast
+      forth along with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At an hour of that night when their mother was asleep, and it is to be
+      hoped they were the only two children awake in London, Tommy sat up softly
+      in the wardrobe to discover whether Elspeth was still praying for him. He
+      knew that she was on the floor in a night-gown some twelve sizes too large
+      for her, but the room was as silent and black as the world he had just
+      left by taking his fingers from his ears and the blankets off his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I see you," he said mendaciously, and in a guarded voice, so as not to
+      waken his mother, from whom he had kept his escapade. This had not the
+      desired effect of drawing a reply from Elspeth, and he tried bluster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You needna think as I'll repent, you brat, so there! What?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish I hadna told you about it!" Indeed, he had endeavored not to do
+      so, but pride in his achievement had eventually conquered prudence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Reddy would have laughed, she would, and said as I was a wonder. Reddy
+      was the kind I like. What?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You ate up the oranges quick, and the plum-duff too, so you should pray
+      for yoursel' as well as for me. It's easy to say as you didna know how I
+      got them till after you eated them, but you should have found out. What?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you think it was for my own self as I done it? I jest done it to get
+      the oranges and plum-duff to you, I did, and the threepence too. Eh?
+      Speak, you little besom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I tell you as I did repent in the hall. I was greeting, and I never
+      knowed I put up that prayer till Shovel told me on it. We was sitting in
+      the street by that time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was true. On leaving the hall Tommy had soon dropped to the cold
+      ground and squatted there till he came to, when he remembered nothing of
+      what had led to his expulsion. Like a stream that has run into a pond and
+      only finds itself again when it gets out, he was but a continuation of the
+      boy who when last conscious of himself was in the corner crying
+      remorsefully over his misdeed; and in this humility he would have returned
+      to Elspeth had no one told him of his prayer. Shovel, however, was at
+      hand, not only to tell him all about it, but to applaud, and home strutted
+      Tommy chuckling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sleeping," he next said to Elspeth, "so you may as well come to your
+      bed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He imitated the breathing of a sleeper, but it was the only sound to be
+      heard in London, and he desisted fearfully. "Come away, Elspeth," he said,
+      coaxingly, for he was very fond of her and could not sleep while she was
+      cold and miserable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still getting no response he pulled his body inch by inch out of the
+      bed-clothes, and holding his breath, found the floor with his feet
+      stealthily, as if to cheat the wardrobe into thinking that he was still in
+      it. But his reason was to discover whether Elspeth had fallen asleep on
+      her knees without her learning that he cared to know. Almost noiselessly
+      he worked himself along the floor, but when he stopped to bring his face
+      nearer hers, there was such a creaking of his joints that if Elspeth did
+      not hear it she&mdash;she must be dead! His knees played whack on the
+      floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth only gasped once, but he heard, and remained beside her for a
+      minute, so that she might hug him if such was her desire; and she put out
+      her hand in the darkness so that his should not have far to travel alone
+      if it chanced to be on the way to her. Thus they sat on their knees, each
+      aghast at the hard-heartedness of the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy put the blankets over the kneeling figure, and presently announced
+      from the wardrobe that if he died of cold before repenting the blame of
+      keeping him out of heaven would be Elspeth's. But the last word was
+      muffled, for the blankets were tucked about him as he spoke, and two
+      motherly little arms gave him the embrace they wanted to withhold. Foiled
+      again, he kicked off the bed-clothes and said: "I tell yer I wants to
+      die!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This terrified both of them, and he added, quickly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, God, if I was sure I were to die to-night I would repent at once." It
+      is the commonest prayer in all languages, but down on her knees slipped
+      Elspeth again, and Tommy, who felt that it had done him good, said
+      indignantly: "Surely that is religion. What?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lay on his face until he was frightened by a noise louder than thunder
+      in the daytime&mdash;the scraping of his eyelashes on the pillow. Then he
+      sat up in the wardrobe and fired his three last shots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Elspeth Sandys, I'm done with yer forever, I am. I'll take care on yer,
+      but I'll never kiss yer no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When yer boasts as I'm your brother I'll say you ain't. I'll tell my
+      mother about Reddy the morn, and syne she'll put you to the door smart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When you are a grown woman I'll buy a house to yer, but you'll have jest
+      to bide in it by your lonely self, and I'll come once a year to speir how
+      you are, but I won't come in, I won't&mdash;I'll jest cry up the stair."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The effect of this was even greater than he had expected, for now two were
+      in tears instead of one, and Tommy's grief was the more heartrending, he
+      was so much better at everything than Elspeth. He jumped out of the
+      wardrobe and ran to her, calling her name, and he put his arms round her
+      cold body, and the dear mite, forgetting how cruelly he had used her,
+      cried, "Oh, tighter, Tommy, tighter; you didn't not mean it, did yer? Oh,
+      you is terrible fond on me, ain't yer? And you won't not tell my mother
+      'bout Reddy, will yer, and you is no done wi' me forever, is yer? and you
+      won't not put me in a house by myself, will yer? Oh, Tommy, is that the
+      tightest you can do?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Tommy made it tighter, vowing, "I never meant it; I was a bad un to
+      say it. If Reddy were to come back wanting for to squeeze you out, I would
+      send her packing quick, I would. I tell yer what, I'll kiss you with folk
+      looking on, I will, and no be ashamed to do it, and if Shovel is one of
+      them what sees me, and he puts his finger to his nose, I'll blood the
+      mouth of him, I will, dagont!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he prayed for forgiveness, and he could always pray more beautifully
+      than Elspeth. Even she was satisfied with the way he did it, and so,
+      alack, was he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you forgot to tell," she said fondly, when once more they were in the
+      wardrobe together&mdash;"you forgot to tell as you filled your pockets wif
+      things to me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I didn't forget," Tommy replied modestly. "I missed it out, on purpose, I
+      did, 'cos I was sure God knows on it without my telling him, and I thought
+      he would be pleased if I didn't let on as I knowed it was good of me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, Tommy," cried Elspeth, worshipping him, "I couldn't have doned that,
+      I couldn't!" She was barely six, and easily taken in, but she would save
+      him from himself if she could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX &mdash; AULD LANG SYNE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      What to do with her ladyship's threepence? Tommy finally decided to drop
+      it into the charity-box that had once contained his penny. They held it
+      over the slit together, Elspeth almost in tears because it was such a
+      large sum to give away, but Tommy looking noble he was so proud of
+      himself; and when he said "Three!" they let go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There followed days of excitement centred round their money-box. Shovel
+      introduced Tommy to a boy what said as after a bit you forget how much
+      money was in your box, and then when you opened it, oh, Lor'! there is
+      more than you thought, so he and Elspeth gave this plan a week's trial,
+      affecting not to know how much they had gathered, but when they unlocked
+      it, the sum was still only eightpence; so then Tommy told the liar to come
+      on, and they fought while the horrified Elspeth prayed, and Tommy licked
+      him, a result due to one of the famous Thrums left-handers then on
+      exhibition in that street for the first time, as taught the victor by
+      Petey Whamond the younger, late of Tillyloss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The money did come in, once in spate (twopence from Bob in twenty-four
+      hours), but usually so slowly that they saw it resting on the way, and
+      then, when they listened intently, they could hear the thud of Hogmanay.
+      The last halfpenny was a special aggravation, strolling about, just out of
+      reach, with all the swagger of sixpence, but at last Elspeth had it, and
+      after that, the sooner Hogmanay came the better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They concealed their excitement under too many wrappings, but their mother
+      suspected nothing. When she was dressing on the morning of Hogmanay, her
+      stockings happened to be at the other side of the room, and they were such
+      a long way off that she rested on the way to them. At the meagre breakfast
+      she said what a heavy teapot that was, and Tommy thought this funny, but
+      the salt had gone from the joke when he remembered it afterwards. And when
+      she was ready to go off to her work she hesitated at the door, looking at
+      her bed and from it to her children as if in two minds, and then went
+      quietly downstairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The distance seems greater than ever to-day, poor woman, and you stop
+      longer at the corners, where rude men jeer at you. Scarcely can you push
+      open the door of the dancing-school or lift the pail; the fire has gone
+      out, you must again go on your knees before it, and again the smoke makes
+      you cough. Gaunt slattern, fighting to bring up the phlegm, was it really
+      you for whom another woman gave her life, and thought it a rich reward to
+      get dressing you once in your long clothes, when she called you her
+      beautiful, and smiled, and smiling, died? Well, well; but take courage,
+      Jean Myles. The long road still lies straight up hill, but your climbing
+      is near an end. Shrink from the rude men no more, they are soon to forget
+      you, so soon! It is a heavy door, but soon you will have pushed it open
+      for the last time. The girls will babble still, but not to you, not of
+      you. Cheer up, the work is nearly done. Her beautiful! Come, beautiful,
+      strength for a few more days, and then you can leave the key of the leaden
+      door behind you, and on your way home you may kiss your hand joyously to
+      the weary streets, for you are going to die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy and Elspeth had been to the foot of the stair many times to look for
+      her before their mother came back that evening, yet when she re-entered
+      her home, behold, they were sitting calmly on the fender as if this were a
+      day like yesterday or to-morrow, as if Tommy had not been on a business
+      visit to Thrums Street, as if the hump on the bed did not mean that a
+      glorious something was hidden under the coverlet. True, Elspeth would look
+      at Tommy imploringly every few minutes, meaning that she could not keep it
+      in much longer, and then Tommy would mutter the one word "Bell" to remind
+      her that it was against the rules to begin before the Thrums eight-o'clock
+      bell rang. They also wiled away the time of waiting by inviting each other
+      to conferences at the window where these whispers passed&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She ain't got a notion, Tommy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dinna look so often at the bed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If I could jest get one more peep at it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, no; but you can put your hand on the top of it as you go by."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The artfulness of Tommy lured his unsuspecting mother into telling how
+      they would be holding Hogmanay in Thrums to-night, how cartloads of
+      kebbock cheeses had been rolling into the town all the livelong day ("Do
+      you hear them, Elspeth?"), and in dark closes the children were already
+      gathering, with smeared faces and in eccentric dress, to sally forth as
+      guisers at the clap of eight, when the ringing of a bell lets Hogmanay
+      loose. ("You see, Elspeth?") Inside the houses men and women were
+      preparing (though not by fasting, which would have been such a good way
+      that it is surprising no one ever thought of it) for a series of visits,
+      at every one of which they would be offered a dram and kebbock and
+      bannock, and in the grander houses "bridies," which are a sublime kind of
+      pie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy had the audacity to ask what bridies were like. And he could not
+      dress up and be a guiser, could he, mother, for the guisers sang a song,
+      and he did not know the words? What a pity they could not get bridies to
+      buy in London, and learn the song and sing it. But of course they could
+      not! ("Elspeth, if you tumble off the fender again, she'll guess.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such is a sample of Tommy, but Elspeth was sly also, if in a smaller way,
+      and it was she who said: "There ain't nothin' in the bed, is there,
+      Tommy!" This duplicity made her uneasy, and she added, behind her teeth,
+      "Maybe there is," and then, "O God, I knows as there is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as the great moment drew near there were no more questions; two
+      children were staring at the clock and listening intently for the peal of
+      a bell nearly five hundred miles away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clock struck. "Whisht! It's time, Elspeth! They've begun! Come on!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few minutes afterwards Mrs. Sandys was roused by a knock at the door,
+      followed by the entrance of two mysterious figures. The female wore a
+      boy's jacket turned outside in, the male a woman's bonnet and a shawl, and
+      to make his disguise the more impenetrable he carried a poker in his right
+      hand. They stopped in the middle of the floor and began to recite, rather
+      tremulously,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Get up, good wife, and binna sweir, And deal your bread to them that's
+      here. For the time will come when you'll be dead, And then you'll need
+      neither ale nor bread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Sandys had started, and then turned piteously from them; but when
+      they were done she tried to smile, and said, with forced gayety, that she
+      saw they were guisers, and it was a fine night, and would they take a
+      chair. The male stranger did so at once, but the female said, rather
+      anxiously: "You are sure as you don't know who we is?" Their hostess shook
+      her head, and then he of the poker offered her three guesses, a daring
+      thing to do, but all went well, for her first guess was Shovel and his old
+      girl; second guess, Before and After; third guess, Napoleon Buonaparte and
+      the Auld Licht minister. At each guess the smaller of the intruders
+      clapped her hands gleefully, but when, with the third, she was unmuzzled,
+      she putted with her head at Mrs. Sandys and hugged her, screaming, "It
+      ain't none on them; it's jest me, mother, it's Elspeth!" and even while
+      their astounded hostess was asking could it be true, the male conspirator
+      dropped his poker noisily (to draw attention to himself) and stood
+      revealed as Thomas Sandys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wasn't it just like Thrums, wasn't it just the very, very same? Ah, it was
+      wonderful, their mother said, but, alas, there was one thing wanting: she
+      had no Hogmanay to give the guisers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had she not? What a pity, Elspeth! What a pity, Tommy! What might that be
+      in the bed, Elspeth? It couldn't not be their Hogmanay, could it, Tommy?
+      If Tommy was his mother he would look and see. If Elspeth was her mother
+      she would look and see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her curiosity thus cunningly aroused, Mrs. Sandys raised the coverlet of
+      the bed and&mdash;there were three bridies, an oatmeal cake, and a hunk of
+      kebbock. "And they comed from Thrums!" cried Elspeth, while Tommy cried,
+      "Petey and the others got a lot sent from Thrums, and I bought the bridies
+      from them, and they gave me the bannock and the kebbock for nuthin'!"
+      Their mother did not utter the cry of rapture which Tommy expected so
+      confidently that he could have done it for her; instead, she pulled her
+      two children toward her, and the great moment was like to be a tearful
+      rather than an ecstatic one, for Elspeth had begun to whimper, and even
+      Tommy&mdash;but by a supreme effort he shouldered reality to the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is this my Hogmanay, guidwife?" he asked in the nick of time, and the
+      situation thus being saved, the luscious feast was partaken of, the
+      guisers listening solemnly as each bite went down. They also took care to
+      address their hostess as "guidwife" or "mistress," affecting not to have
+      met her lately, and inquiring genially after the health of herself and
+      family. "How many have you?" was Tommy's masterpiece, and she answered in
+      the proper spirit, but all the time she was hiding great part of her
+      bridie beneath her apron, Hogmanay having come too late for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everything was to be done exactly as they were doing it in Thrums Street,
+      and so presently Tommy made a speech; it was the speech of old Petey, who
+      had rehearsed it several times before him. "Here's a toast," said Tommy,
+      standing up and waving his arms, "here's a toast that we'll drink in
+      silence, one that maun have sad thoughts at the back o't to some of us,
+      but one, my friends, that keeps the hearts of Thrums folk green and ties
+      us all thegither, like as it were wi' twine. It's to all them, wherever
+      they may be the night, wha' have sat as lads and lasses at the Cuttle
+      Well."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To one of the listeners it was such an unexpected ending that a faint cry
+      broke from her, which startled the children, and they sat in silence
+      looking at her. She had turned her face from them, but her arm was
+      extended as if entreating Tommy to stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That was the end," he said, at length, in a tone of expostulation; "it's
+      auld Petey's speech."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you sure," his mother asked wistfully, "that Petey was to say <i>all</i>
+      them as have sat at the Cuttle Well? He made no exception, did he?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy did not know what exception was, but he assured her that he had
+      repeated the speech, word for word. For the remainder of the evening she
+      sat apart by the fire, while her children gambled for crack-nuts, young
+      Petey having made a teetotum for Tommy and taught him what the letters on
+      it meant. Their mirth rang faintly in her ear, and they scarcely heard her
+      fits of coughing; she was as much engrossed in her own thoughts as they in
+      theirs, but hers were sad and theirs were jocund&mdash;Hogmanay, like all
+      festivals, being but a bank from which we can only draw what we put in. So
+      an hour or more passed, after which Tommy whispered to Elspeth: "Now's the
+      time; they're at it now," and each took a hand of their mother, and she
+      woke from her reverie to find that they had pulled her from her chair and
+      were jumping up and down, shouting, excitedly, "For Auld Lang Syne, my
+      dear, for Auld Lang Syne, Auld Lang Syne, my dear, Auld Lang Syne." She
+      tried to sing the words with her children, tried to dance round with them,
+      tried to smile, but&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Tommy who dropped her hand first. "Mother," he cried, "your face is
+      wet, you're greeting sair, and you said you had forgot the way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I mind it now, man, I mind it now," she said, standing helplessly in the
+      middle of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth nestled against her, crying, "My mother was thinking about Thrums,
+      wasn't she, Tommy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was thinking about the part o't I'm most awid to be in," the poor woman
+      said, sinking back into her chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's the Den," Tommy told Elspeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's the Square," Elspeth told Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, it's Monypenny."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, it's the Commonty."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was none of these places. "It's the cemetery," the woman said,
+      "it's the hamely, quiet cemetery on the hillside. Oh, there's mony a bonny
+      place in my nain bonny toon, but there's nain so hamely like as the
+      cemetery." She sat shaking in the chair, and they thought she was to say
+      no more, but presently she rose excitedly, and with a vehemence that made
+      them shrink from her she cried: "I winna lie in London! tell Aaron Latta
+      that; I winna lie in London!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a few more days she trudged to her work, and after that she seldom
+      left her bed. She had no longer strength to coax up the phlegm, and a
+      doctor brought in by Shovel's mother warned her that her days were near an
+      end. Then she wrote her last letter to Thrums, Tommy and Elspeth standing
+      by to pick up the pen when it fell from her feeble hand, and in the
+      intervals she told them that she was Jean Myles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And if I die and Aaron hasna come," she said, "you maun just gang to auld
+      Petey and tell him wha you are."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But how can you be Jean Myles?" asked astounded Tommy. "You ain't a grand
+      lady and&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His mother looked at Elspeth. "No' afore her," she besought him; but
+      before he set off to post the letter she said: "Come canny into my bed the
+      night, when Elspeth 's sleeping, and syne I'll tell you all there is to
+      tell about Jean Myles."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tell me now whether the letter is to Aaron Latta?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's for him," she said, "but it's no' to him. I'm feared he might burn
+      it without opening it if he saw my write on the cover, so I've wrote it to
+      a friend of his wha will read it to him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what's inside, mother?" the boy begged, inquisitively. "It must be
+      queer things if they'll bring Aaron Latta all the way from Thrums."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's but little in it, man," she said, pressing her hand hard upon her
+      chest. "It's no muckle mair than 'Auld Lang Syne, my dear, for Auld Lang
+      Syne.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X &mdash; THE FAVORITE OF THE LADIES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      That night the excited boy was wakened by a tap-tap, as of someone
+      knocking for admittance, and stealing to his mother's side, he cried,
+      "Aaron Latta has come; hearken to him chapping at the door!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was only the man through the wall, but Mrs. Sandys took Tommy into bed
+      with her, and while Elspeth slept, told him the story of her life. She
+      coughed feebly now, but the panting of the dying is a sound that no walls
+      can cage, and the man continued to remonstrate at intervals. Tommy never
+      recalled his mother's story without seeming, through the darkness in which
+      it was told, to hear Elspeth's peaceful breathing and the angry tap-tap on
+      the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm sweer to tell it to you," she began, "but tell I maun, for though
+      it's just a warning to you and Elspeth no' to be like them that brought
+      you into the world, it's all I have to leave you. Ay, and there's another
+      reason: you may soon be among folk wha ken but half the story and put a
+      waur face on it than I deserve."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had spoken calmly, but her next words were passionate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They thought I was fond o'him," she cried; "oh, they were blind, blind!
+      Frae the first I could never thole the sight o' him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Maybe that's no' true," she had to add. "I aye kent he was a black, but
+      yet I couldna put him out o' my head; he took sudden grips o' me like an
+      evil thought. I aye ran frae him, and yet I sair doubt that I went looking
+      for him too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Was it Aaron Latta?" Tommy asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, it was your father. The first I ever saw of him was at Cullew, four
+      lang miles frae Thrums. There was a ball after the market, and Esther Auld
+      and me went to it. We went in a cart, and I was wearing a pink print, wi'
+      a white bonnet, and blue ribbons that tied aneath the chin. I had a shawl
+      abune, no' to file them. There wasna a more innocent lassie in Thrums,
+      man, no, nor a happier one; for Aaron Latta&mdash;Aaron came half the way
+      wi' us, and he was hauding my hand aneath the shawl. He hadna speired me
+      at that time, but I just kent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was an auld custom to choose a queen of beauty at the ball, but that
+      night the men couldna 'gree wha should be judge, and in the tail-end they
+      went out thegither to look for one, determined to mak' judge o' the first
+      man they met, though they should have to tear him off a horse and bring
+      him in by force. You wouldna believe to look at me now, man, that I could
+      have had any thait o' being made queen, but I was fell bonny, and I was as
+      keen as the rest. How simple we were, all pretending to one another that
+      we didna want to be chosen! Esther Auld said she would hod ahint the tent
+      till a queen was picked, and at the very time she said it, she was in a
+      palsy, through no being able to decide whether she looked better in her
+      shell necklace or wanting it. She put it on in the end, and syne when we
+      heard the tramp o' the men, her mind misgave her, and she cried: 'For the
+      love o' mercy, keep them out till I get it off again!' So we were a'
+      laughing when they came in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Laddie, it was your father and Elspeth's that they brought wi' them, and
+      he was a stranger to us, though we kent something about him afore the
+      night was out. He was finely put on, wi' a gold chain, and a free w'y of
+      looking at women, and if you mind o' him ava, you ken that he was fair and
+      buirdly, wi' a full face, and aye a laugh ahint it. I tell ye, man, that
+      when our een met, and I saw that triumphing laugh ahint his face, I took a
+      fear of him, as if I had guessed the end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For years and years after that night I dreamed it ower again, and aye I
+      heard mysel' crying to God to keep that man awa' frae me. But I doubt I
+      put up no sic prayer at the time; his masterful look fleid me, and yet it
+      drew me against my will, and I was trembling wi' pride as well as fear
+      when he made me queen. We danced thegither and fought thegither a' through
+      the ball, and my will was no match for his, and the worst o't was I had a
+      kind o' secret pleasure in being mastered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Man, he kissed me. Lads had kissed me afore that night, but never since
+      first I went wi' Aaron Latta to the Cuttle Well. Aaron hadna done it, but
+      I was never to let none do it again except him. So when your father did it
+      I struck him, but ahint the redness that came ower his face, I saw his
+      triumphing laugh, and he whispered that he liked me for the blow. He said,
+      'I prefer the sweer anes, and the more you struggle, my beauty, the better
+      pleased I'll be.' Almost his hinmost words to me was, 'I've been hearing
+      of your Aaron, and that pleases me too!' I fired up at that and telled him
+      what I thought of him, but he said, 'If you canna abide me, what made you
+      dance wi' me so often?' and, oh, laddie, that's a question that has sung
+      in my head since syne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I've telled you that we found out wha he was, and 'deed he made no secret
+      of it. Up to the time he was twal year auld he had been a kent face in
+      that part, for his mither was a Cullew woman called Mag Sandys, ay, and a
+      single woman. She was a hard ane too, for when he was twelve year auld he
+      flung out o' the house saying he would ne'er come back, and she said he
+      shouldna run awa' wi' thae new boots on, so she took the boots off him and
+      let him go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He was a grown man when more was heard o' him, and syne stories came
+      saying he was at Redlintie, playing queer games wi' his father. His father
+      was gauger there, that's exciseman, a Mr. Cray, wha got his wife out o'
+      Thrums, and even when he was courting her (so they say) had the heart to
+      be ower chief wi' this other woman. Weel, Magerful Tam, as he was called
+      through being so masterful, cast up at Redlintie frae none kent where, gey
+      desperate for siller, but wi' a black coat on his back, and he said that
+      all he wanted was to be owned as the gauger's son. Mr. Cray said there was
+      no proof that he was his son, and syne the queer sport began. Your father
+      had noticed he was like Mr. Cray, except in the beard, and so he had his
+      beard clippit the same, and he got hand o' some weel-kent claethes o' the
+      gauger's that had been presented to a poor body, and he learned up a' the
+      gauger's tricks of speech and walking, especially a droll w'y he had o'
+      taking snuff and syne flinging back his head. They were as like as buckies
+      after that, and soon there was a town about it, for one day ladies would
+      find that they had been bowing to the son thinking he was the father, and
+      the next they wouldna speak to the father, mistaking him for the son; and
+      a report spread to the head office o' the excise that the gauger of
+      Redlintie spent his evenings at a public house, singing 'The De'il's awa'
+      wi' the Exciseman.' Tam drank nows and nans, and it ga'e Mr. Cray a turn
+      to see him come rolling yont the street, just as if it was himsel' in a
+      looking-glass. He was a sedate-living man now, but chiefly because his
+      wife kept him in good control, and this sight brought back auld times so
+      vive to him, that he a kind of mistook which ane he was, and took to
+      dropping, forgetful-like, into public-houses again. It was high time Tam
+      should be got out of the place, and they did manage to bribe him into
+      leaving, though no easily, for it had been fine sport to him, and to make
+      a sensation was what he valued above all things. We heard that he went
+      back to Redlintie a curran years after, but both the gauger and his wife
+      were dead, and I ken that he didna trouble the twa daughters. They were
+      Miss Ailie and Miss Kitty, and as they werena left as well off as was
+      expected they came to Thrums, which had been their mother's town, and
+      started a school for the gentry there. I dinna doubt but what it's the
+      school that Esther Auld's laddie is at.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So after being long lost sight o' he turned up at Cullew, wi' what looked
+      to simple folk a fortune in his pouches, and half a dozen untrue stories
+      about how he made it. He had come to make a show o' himsel' afore his
+      mither, and I dare say to give her some gold, for he was aye ready to give
+      when he had, I'll say that for him; but she had flitted to some unkent
+      place, and so he bade on some weeks at the Cullew public. He caredna
+      whether the folk praised or blamed him so long as they wondered at him,
+      and queer stories about his doings was aye on the road to Thrums. One was
+      that he gave wild suppers to whaever would come; another that he went to
+      the kirk just for the glory of flinging a sovereign into the plate wi' a
+      clatter; another that when he lay sleeping on twa chairs, gold and silver
+      dribbled out o' his trouser pouches to the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There was an ugly story too, about a lassie, that led to his leaving the
+      place and coming to Thrums, after he had near killed the Cullew smith, in
+      a fight. The first I heard o' his being in Thrums was when Aaron Latta
+      walked into my granny's house and said there was a strange man at the
+      Tappit Hen public standing drink to any that would tak', and boasting that
+      he had but to waggle his finger to make me give Aaron up. I went wi' Aaron
+      and looked in at the window, but I kent wha it was afore I looked. If
+      Aaron had just gone in and struck him! All decent women, laddie, has a
+      horror of being fought about. I'm no sure but what that's just the
+      difference atween guid ones and ill ones, but this man had a power ower
+      me; and if Aaron had just struck him! Instead o' meddling he turned white,
+      and I couldna help contrasting them, and thinking how masterful your
+      father looked. Fine I kent he was a brute, and yet I couldna help admiring
+      him for looking so magerful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He bade on at the Tappit Hen, flinging his siller about in the way that
+      made him a king at Cullew, but no molesting Miss Ailie and Miss Kitty,
+      which all but me thought was what he had come to Thrums to do. Aaron and
+      me was cried for the first time the Sabbath after he came, and the next
+      Sabbath for the second time, but afore that he was aye getting in my road
+      and speaking to me, but I ran frae him and hod frae him when I could, and
+      he said the reason I did that was because I kent his will was stronger
+      than mine. He was aye saying things that made me think he saw down to the
+      bottom o' my soul; what I didna understand was that in mastering other
+      women he had been learning to master me. Ay, but though I thought ower
+      muckle about him, never did I speak him fair. I loo'ed Aaron wi' all my
+      heart, and your father kent it; and that, I doubt, was what made him so
+      keen, for, oh, but he was vain!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And now we've come to the night I'm so sweer to speak about. She was a
+      good happy lassie that went into the Den that moonlight night wi' Aaron's
+      arm round her, but it was another woman that came out. We thought we had
+      the Den to oursel's, and as we sat on the Shoaging Stane at the Cuttle
+      Well, Aaron wrote wi' a stick on the ground 'Jean Latta,' and prigged wi'
+      me to look at it, but I spread my hands ower my face, and he didna ken
+      that I was keeking at it through my fingers all the time. We was so ta'en
+      up with oursel's that we saw nobody coming, and all at once there was your
+      father by the side o' us! 'You've written the wrong name, Aaron,' he said,
+      jeering and pointing with his foot at the letters; 'it should be Jean
+      Sandys.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Aaron said not a word, but I had a presentiment of ill, and I cried,
+      'Dinna let him change the name, Aaron!' Your father had been to change it
+      himsel', but at that he had a new thait, and he said, 'No, I'll no' do it;
+      your brave Aaron shall do it for me.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Laddie, it doesna do for a man to be a coward afore a woman that's fond
+      o' him. A woman will thole a man's being anything except like hersel'.
+      When I was sure Aaron was a coward I stood still as death, waiting to ken
+      wha's I was to be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Aaron did it. He was loath, but your father crushed him to the ground,
+      and said do it he should, and warned him too that if he did it he would
+      lose me, bantering him and cowing him and advising him no' to shame me,
+      all in a breath. He kent so weel, you see, what was in my mind, and aye
+      there was that triumphing laugh ahint his face. If Aaron had fought and
+      been beaten, even if he had just lain there and let the man strike away,
+      if he had done anything except what he was bidden, he would have won, for
+      it would have broken your father's power ower me. But to write the word!
+      It was like dishonoring me to save his ain skin, and your father took good
+      care he should ken it. You've heard me crying to Aaron in my sleep, but it
+      wasna for him I cried, it was for his fire-side. All the love I had for
+      him, and it was muckle, was skailed forever that night at the Cuttle Well.
+      Without a look ahint me away I went wi' my master, and I had no more will
+      to resist him&mdash;and oh, man, man, when I came to mysel' next morning I
+      wished I had never been born!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The men folk saw that Aaron had shamed them, and they werena quite so set
+      agin me as the women, wha had guessed the truth, though they couldna be
+      sure o't. Sair I pitied mysel', and sair I grat, but only when none was
+      looking. The mair they miscalled me the higher I held my head, and I hung
+      on your father's arm as if I adored him, and I boasted about his office
+      and his clerk in London till they believed what I didna believe a word o'
+      myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But though I put sic a brave face on't, I was near demented in case he
+      shouldna marry me, and he kent that and jokit me about it. Dinna think I
+      was fond o' him; I hated him now. And dinna think his masterfulness had
+      any more power ower me; his power was broken forever when I woke up that
+      weary morning. But that was ower late, and to wait on by mysel' in Thrums
+      for what might happen, and me a single woman&mdash;I daredna! So I
+      flattered at him, and flattered at him, till I got the fool side o' him,
+      and he married me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My granny let the marriage take place in her house, and he sent in so
+      muckle meat and drink that some folk was willing to come. One came that
+      wasna wanted. In the middle o' the marriage Aaron Latta, wha had refused
+      to speak to anybody since that night, walked in wearing his blacks, wi'
+      crape on them, as if it was a funeral, and all he said was that he had
+      come to see Jean Myles coffined. He went away quietly as soon as we was
+      married, but the crowd outside had fathomed his meaning, and abune the
+      minister's words I could hear them crying, 'Ay, it's mair like a burial
+      than a marriage!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My heart was near breaking wi' woe, but, oh, I was awid they shouldna ken
+      it, and the bravest thing I ever did was to sit through the supper that
+      night, making muckle o' your father, looking fond-like at him, laughing at
+      his coarse jokes, and secretly hating him down to my very marrow a' the
+      time. The crowd got word o' the ongoings, and they took a cruel revenge. A
+      carriage had been ordered for nine o'clock to take us to Tilliedrum, where
+      we should get the train to London, and when we heard it, as we thought,
+      drive up to the door, out we went, me on your father's arm laughing, but
+      wi' my teeth set. But Aaron's words had put an idea into their heads,
+      though he didna intend it, and they had got out the hearse. It was the
+      hearse they had brought to the door instead of a carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We got awa' in a carriage in the tail-end, and the stanes hitting it was
+      all the good luck flung after me. It had just one horse, and I mind how I
+      cried to Esther Auld, wha had been the first to throw, that when I came
+      back it would be in a carriage and pair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, I had pride! In the carriage your father telled me as a joke that he
+      had got away without paying the supper, and that about all the money he
+      had now, forby what was to pay our tickets to London, was the
+      half-sovereign on his watch-chain. But I was determined to have Thrums
+      think I had married grand, and as I had three pound six on me, the savings
+      o' all my days, I gave two pound of it to Malcolm Crabb, the driver,
+      unbeknown to your father, but pretending it was frae him, and telled him
+      to pay for the supper and the carriage with it. He said it was far ower
+      muckle, but I just laughed, and said wealthy gentlemen like Mr. Sandys
+      couldna be bothered to take back change, so Malcolm could keep what was
+      ower. Malcolm was the man Esther Auld had just married, and I counted on
+      this maddening her and on Malcolm's spreading the story through the town.
+      Laddie, I've kent since syne what it is to be without bite or sup, but
+      I've never grudged that siller."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor woman had halted many times in her tale, and she was glad to make
+      an end. "You've forgotten what a life he led me in London," she said, "and
+      it could do you no good to hear it, though it might be a lesson to thae
+      lassies at the dancing-school wha think so much o' masterful men. It was
+      by betting at horseraces that your father made a living, and whiles he was
+      large o' siller, but that didna last, and I question whether he would have
+      stuck to me if I hadna got work. Well, he's gone, and the Thrums folk'll
+      soon ken the truth about Jean Myles now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused, and then cried, with extraordinary vehemence: "Oh, man, how I
+      wish I could keep it frae them for ever and ever!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But presently she was calm again and she said: "What I've been telling
+      you, you can understand little o' the now, but some of it will come back
+      to you when you're a grown man, and if you're magerful and have some
+      lassie in your grip, maybe for the memory of her that bore you, you'll let
+      the poor thing awa'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she asked him to add this to his nightly prayer: "O God, keep me from
+      being a magerful man!" and to teach this other prayer to Elspeth, "O God,
+      whatever is to be my fate, may I never be one of them that bow the knee to
+      magerful men, and if I was born like that and canna help it, oh, take me
+      up to heaven afore I'm fil't."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wardrobe was invisible in the darkness, but they could still hear
+      Elspeth's breathing as she slept, and the exhausted woman listened long to
+      it, as if she would fain carry away with her to the other world the memory
+      of that sweet sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you gang to Thrums," she said at last, "you may hear my story frae
+      some that winna spare me in the telling; but should Elspeth be wi' you at
+      sic times, dinna answer back; just slip quietly away wi' her. She's so
+      young that she'll soon forget all about her life in London and all about
+      me, and that'll be best for her. I would like her lassiehood to be bright
+      and free frae cares, as if there had never been sic a woman as me. But
+      laddie, oh, my laddie, dinna you forget me; you and me had him to thole
+      thegither, dinna you forget me! Watch ower your little sister by day and
+      hap her by night, and when the time comes that a man wants her&mdash;if he
+      be magerful, tell her my story at once. But gin she loves one that is her
+      ain true love, dinna rub off the bloom, laddie, with a word about me. Let
+      her and him gang to the Cuttle Well, as Aaron and me went, kenning no
+      guile and thinking none, and with their arms round one another's waists.
+      But when her wedding-day comes round&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her words broke in a sob and she cried: "I see them, I see them standing
+      up thegither afore the minister! Oh! you lad, you lad that's to be married
+      on my Elspeth, turn your face and let me see that you're no' a magerful
+      man!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the lad did not turn his face, and when she spoke next it was to
+      Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In the bottom o' my kist there's a little silver teapot. It's no' real
+      silver, but it's fell bonny. I bought it for Elspeth twa or three months
+      back when I saw I couldna last the winter. I bought it to her for a
+      marriage present. She's no' to see it till her wedding-day comes round.
+      Syne you're to give it to her, man, and say it's with her mother's love.
+      Tell her all about me, for it canna harm her then. Tell her of the fool
+      lies I sent to Thrums, but dinna forget what a bonny place I thought it
+      all the time, nor how I stood on many a driech night at the corner of that
+      street, looking so waeful at the lighted windows, and hungering for the
+      wring of a Thrums hand or the sound of the Thrums word, and all the time
+      the shrewd blasts cutting through my thin trails of claithes. Tell her,
+      man, how you and me spent this night, and how I fought to keep my hoast
+      down so as no' to waken her. Mind that whatever I have been, I was aye
+      fond o' my bairns, and slaved for them till I dropped. She'll have long
+      forgotten what I was like, and it's just as well, but yet&mdash;Look at
+      me, Tommy, look long, long, so as you'll be able to call up my face as it
+      was on the far-back night when I telled you my mournful story. Na, you
+      canna see in the dark, but haud my hand, haud it tight, so that, when you
+      tell Elspeth, you'll mind how hot it was, and the skin loose on it; and
+      put your hand on my cheeks, man, and feel how wet they are wi' sorrowful
+      tears, and lay it on my breast, so that you can tell her how I was shrunk
+      awa'. And if she greets for her mother a whiley, let her greet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sobbing boy hugged his mother. "Do you think I'm an auld woman?" she
+      said to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're gey auld, are you no'?" he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay," she said, "I'm gey auld; I'm nine and twenty. I was seventeen on the
+      day when Aaron Latta went half-road in the cart wi' me to Cullew, hauding
+      my hand aneath my shawl. He hadna spiered me, but I just kent."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy remained in his mother's bed for the rest of the night, and so many
+      things were buzzing in his brain that not for an hour did he think it time
+      to repeat his new prayer. At last he said reverently: "O God, keep me from
+      being a magerful man!" Then he opened his eyes to let God see that his
+      prayer was ended, and added to himself: "But I think I would fell like
+      it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI &mdash; AARON LATTA
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Airlie post had dropped the letters for outlying farms at the
+      Monypenny smithy and trudged on. The smith having wiped his hand on his
+      hair, made a row of them, without looking at the addresses, on his
+      window-sill, where, happening to be seven in number, they were almost a
+      model of Monypenny, which is within hail of Thrums, but round the corner
+      from it, and so has ways of its own. With the next clang on the anvil the
+      middle letter fell flat, and now the likeness to Monypenny was absolute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again all the sound in the land was the melancholy sweet kink, kink, kink
+      of the smith's hammer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Across the road sat Dite Deuchars, the mole-catcher, a solitary figure,
+      taking his pleasure on the dyke. Behind him was the flour-miller's field,
+      and beyond it the Den, of which only some tree-tops were visible. He
+      looked wearily east the road, but no one emerged from Thrums; he looked
+      wearily west the road, which doubled out of sight at Aaron Latta's
+      cottage, little more than a stone's throw distant. On the inside of
+      Aaron's window an endless procession seemed to be passing, but it was only
+      the warping mill going round. It was an empty day, but Dite, the accursed,
+      was used to them; nothing ever happened where he was, but many things as
+      soon as he had gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He yawned and looked at the houses opposite. They were all of one story;
+      the smith's had a rusty plough stowed away on its roof; under a window
+      stood a pew and bookboard, bought at the roup of an old church, and thus
+      transformed into a garden-seat. There were many of them in Thrums that
+      year. All the doors, except that of the smithy, were shut, until one of
+      them blew ajar, when Dite knew at once, from the smell which crossed the
+      road, that Blinder was in the bunk pulling the teeth of his potatoes. May
+      Ann Irons, the blind man's niece, came out at this door to beat the
+      cistern with a bass, and she gave Dite a wag of her head. He was to be
+      married to her if she could get nothing better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by the Painted Lady came along the road. She was a little woman,
+      brightly dressed, so fragile that a collie might have knocked her over
+      with his tail, and she had a beautiful white-and-pink face, the white
+      ending of a sudden in the middle of her neck, where it met skin of a
+      duller color. As she tripped along with mincing gait, she was speaking
+      confidentially to herself, but when she saw Dite grinning, she seemed,
+      first, afraid, and then sorry for herself, and then she tried to carry it
+      off with a giggle, cocking her head impudently at him. Even then she
+      looked childish, and a faded guilelessness, with many pretty airs and
+      graces, still lingered about her, like innocent birds loath to be gone
+      from the spot where their nest has been. When she had passed monotony
+      again reigned, and Dite crossed to the smithy window, though none of the
+      letters could be for him. He could read the addresses on six of them, but
+      the seventh lay on its back, and every time he rose on his tip-toes to
+      squint down at it, the spout pushed his bonnet over his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Smith," he cried in at the door, "to gang hame afore I ken wha that
+      letter's to is more than I can do."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The smith good-naturedly brought the letter to him, and then glancing at
+      the address was dumfounded. "God behears," he exclaimed, with a sudden
+      look at the distant cemetery, "it's to Double Dykes!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dite also shot a look at the cemetery. "He'll never get it," he said, with
+      mighty conviction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men gazed at the cemetery for some time, and at last Dite
+      muttered, "Ay, ay, Double Dykes, you was aye fond o' your joke!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What has that to do wi' 't?" rapped out the smith, uncomfortably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dite shuddered. "Man," he said, "does that letter no bring Double Dykes
+      back terrible vive again! If we was to see him climbing the cemetery dyke
+      the now, and coming stepping down the fields in his moleskin waistcoat wi'
+      the pearl buttons&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Auchterlonie stopped him with a nervous gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But it couldna be the pearl buttons," Dite added thoughtfully, "for Betty
+      Finlayson has been wearing them to the kirk this four year. Ay, ay, Double
+      Dykes, that puts you farther awa' again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The smith took the letter to a neighbor's house to ask the advice of old
+      Irons, the blind tailor, who when he lost his sight had given himself the
+      name of Blinder for bairns to play with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Make your mind easy, smith," was Blinder's counsel. "The letter is meant
+      for the Painted Lady. What's Double Dykes? It's but the name of a farm,
+      and we gave it to Sanders because he was the farmer. He's dead, and them
+      that's in the house now become Double Dykes in his place."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Painted Lady only had the house, objected Dite; Nether Drumgley
+      was farming the land, and so he was the real Double Dykes. True, she might
+      have pretended to her friends that she had the land also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had no friends, the smith said, and since she came to Double Dykes
+      from no one could find out where, though they knew her furniture was
+      bought in Tilliedrum, she had never got a letter. Often, though, as she
+      passed his window she had keeked sideways at the letters, as bairns might
+      look at parlys. If he made a tinkle with his hammer at such times off she
+      went at once, for she was as easily flichtered as a field of crows, that
+      take wing if you tap your pipe on the loof of your hand. It was true she
+      had spoken to him once; when he suddenly saw her standing at his smiddy
+      door, the surprise near made him fall over his brot. She looked so neat
+      and ladylike that he gave his hair a respectful pull before he remembered
+      the kind of woman she was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And what was it she said to him? Dite asked eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had pointed to the letters on the window-sill, and said she, "Oh, the
+      dear loves!" It was a queer say, but she had a bonny English word. The
+      English word was no doubt prideful, but it melted in the mouth like a lick
+      of sirup. She offered him sixpence for a letter, any letter he liked, but
+      of course he refused it. Then she prigged with him just to let her hold
+      one in her hands, for said she, bairnlike, "I used to get one every day."
+      It so happened that one of the letters was to Mysy Bobbie; and Mysy was of
+      so little importance that he thought there would be no harm in letting the
+      Painted Lady hold her letter, so he gave it to her, and you should have
+      seen her dawting it with her hand and holding it to her breast like a
+      lassie with a pigeon. "Isn't it sweet?" she said, and before he could stop
+      her she kissed it. She forgot it was no letter of hers, and made to open
+      it, and then she fell a-trembling and saying she durst not read it, for
+      you never knew whether the first words might not break your heart. The
+      envelope was red where her lips had touched it, and yet she had an
+      innocent look beneath the paint. When he took the letter from her, though,
+      she called him a low, vulgar fellow for presuming to address a lady. She
+      worked herself into a fury, and said far worse than that; a perfect guller
+      of clarty language came pouring out of her. He had heard women curse many
+      a time without turning a hair, but he felt wae when she did it, for she
+      just spoke it like a bairn that had been in ill company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The smith's wife, Suphy, who had joined the company, thought that men were
+      easily taken in, especially smiths. She offered, however, to convey the
+      letter to Double Dykes. She was anxious to see the inside of the Painted
+      Lady's house, and this would be a good opportunity. She admitted that she
+      had crawled to the east window of it before now, but that dour bairn of
+      the Painted Lady's had seen her head and whipped down the blind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunate Suphy! she could not try the window this time, as it was broad
+      daylight, and the Painted Lady took the letter from her at the door. She
+      returned crestfallen, and for an hour nothing happened. The mole-catcher
+      went off to the square, saying, despondently, that nothing would happen
+      until he was round the corner. No sooner had he rounded the corner than
+      something did happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A girl who had left Double Dykes with a letter was walking quickly toward
+      Monypenny. She wore a white pinafore over a magenta frock, and no one
+      could tell her whether she was seven or eight, for she was only the
+      Painted Lady's child. Some boys, her natural enemies, were behind; they
+      had just emerged from the Den, and she heard them before they saw her, and
+      at once her little heart jumped and ran off with her. But the halloo that
+      told her she was discovered checked her running. Her teeth went into her
+      underlip; now her head was erect. After her came the rabble with a rush,
+      flinging stones that had no mark and epithets that hit. Grizel disdained
+      to look over her shoulder. Little hunted child, where was succor to come
+      from if she could not fight for herself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though under the torture she would not cry out. "What's a father?" was
+      their favorite jeer, because she had once innocently asked this question
+      of a false friend. One tried to snatch the letter from her, but she
+      flashed him a look that sent him to the other side of the dyke, where, he
+      said, did she think he was afraid of her? Another strutted by her side,
+      mimicking her in such diverting manner that presently the others had to
+      pick him out of the ditch. Thus Grizel moved onward defiantly until she
+      reached Monypenny, where she tossed the letter in at the smithy door and
+      immediately returned home. It was the letter that had been sent to her
+      mother, now sent back, because it was meant for the dead farmer after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The smith read Jean Myles's last letter, with a face of growing gravity.
+      "Dear Double Dykes," it said, "I send you these few scrapes to say I am
+      dying, and you and Aaron Latta was seldom sindry, so I charge you to go to
+      him and say to him 'Aaron Latta, it's all lies Jean Myles wrote to Thrums
+      about her grandeur, and her man died mony year back, and it was the only
+      kindness he ever did her, and if she doesna die quick, her and her
+      starving bairns will be flung out into the streets.' If that doesna move
+      him, say, 'Aaron Latta, do you mind yon day at Inverquharity and the
+      cushie doos?' likewise, 'Aaron Latta, do you mind yon day at the Kaims of
+      Airlie?' likewise, 'Aaron Latta, do you mind that Jean Myles was ower
+      heavy for you to lift? Oh, Aaron, you could lift me so pitiful easy now.'
+      And syne says you solemnly three times, 'Aaron Latta, Jean Myles is lying
+      dying all alone in a foreign land; Aaron Latta, Jean Myles is lying dying
+      all alone in a foreign land; Aaron Latta, Jean Myles is lying dying all
+      alone in a foreign land.' And if he's sweer to come, just say, 'Oh, Aaron,
+      man, you micht; oh, Aaron, oh, Aaron, are you coming?'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The smith had often denounced this woman, but he never said a word against
+      her again. He stood long reflecting, and then took the letter to Blinder
+      and read it to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She doesna say, 'Oh, Aaron Latta, do you mind the Cuttle Well?'" was the
+      blind man's first comment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She was thinking about it," said Auchterlonie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, and he's thinking about it," said Blinder, "night and day, night and
+      day. What a town there'll be about that letter, smith!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There will. But I'm to take it to Aaron afore the news spreads. He'll
+      never gang to London though."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think he will, smith."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ken him well."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Maybe I ken him better."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You canna see the ugly mark it left on his brow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can see the uglier marks it has left in his breast."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I'll take the letter; I can do no more."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the smith opened the door of Aaron's house he let out a draught of
+      hot air that was glad to be gone from the warper's restless home. The
+      usual hallan, or passage, divided the but from the ben, and in the ben a
+      great revolving thing, the warping-mill, half filled the room. Between it
+      and a pile of webs that obscured the light a little silent man was sitting
+      on a box turning a handle. His shoulders were almost as high as his ears,
+      as if he had been caught forever in a storm, and though he was barely five
+      and thirty, he had the tattered, dishonored beard of black and white that
+      comes to none till the glory of life has gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the smith appeared round the webs. "Aaron," he said, awkwardly,
+      "do you mind Jean Myles?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The warper did not for a moment take his eyes off a contrivance with pirns
+      in it that was climbing up and down the whirring mill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She's dead," he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She's dying," said the smith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A thread broke, and Aaron had to rise to mend it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stop the mill and listen," Auchterlonie begged him, but the warper
+      returned to his seat and the mill again revolved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is her dying words to you," continued the smith. "Did you speak?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I didna, but I wish you would take your arm off the haik."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She's loath to die without seeing you. Do you hear, man? You shall listen
+      to me, I tell you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am listening, smith," the warper replied, without rancour. "It's but
+      right that you should come here to take your pleasure on a shamed man."
+      His calmness gave him a kind of dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did I ever say you was a shamed man, Aaron?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Am I not?" the warper asked quietly; and Auchterlonie hung his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aaron continued, still turning the handle, "You're truthful, and you canna
+      deny it. Nor will you deny that I shamed you and every other mother's son
+      that night. You try to hod it out o' pity, smith, but even as you look at
+      me now, does the man in you no rise up against me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If so," the smith answered reluctantly, "if so, it's against my will."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is so," said Aaron, in the same measured voice, "and it's right that
+      it should be so. A man may thieve or debauch or murder, and yet no be so
+      very different frae his fellow-men, but there's one thing he shall not do
+      without their wanting to spit him out o' their mouths, and that is,
+      violate the feelings of sex."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The strange words in which the warper described his fall had always an
+      uncomfortable effect on those who heard him use them, and Auchterlonie
+      could only answer in distress, "Maybe that's what it is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's what it is. I have had twal lang years sitting on this box to
+      think it out. I blame none but mysel'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then you'll have pity on Jean in her sair need," said the smith. He read
+      slowly the first part of the letter, but Aaron made no comment, and the
+      mill had not stopped for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She says," the smith proceeded, doggedly&mdash;"she says to say to you,
+      'Aaron Latta, do you mind yon day at Inverquharity and the cushie doos?'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only the monotonous whirr of the mill replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She says, 'Aaron Latta, do you mind that Jean Myles was ower heavy for
+      you to lift? Oh, Aaron, you could lift me so pitiful easy now.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another thread broke and the warper rose with sudden fury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now that you've eased your conscience, smith," he said, fiercely, "make
+      your feet your friend."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll do so," Auchterlonie answered, laying the letter on the webs, "but I
+      leave this ahint me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wap it in the fire."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If that's to be done, you do it yoursel'. Aaron, she treated you ill, but&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's the door, smith."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The smith walked away, and had only gone a few steps when he heard the
+      whirr of the mill again. He went back to the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She's dying, man!" he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let her die!" answered Aaron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In an hour the sensational news was through half of Thrums, of which
+      Monypenny may be regarded as a broken piece, left behind, like the dot of
+      quicksilver in the tube, to show how high the town once rose. Some could
+      only rejoice at first in the down-come of Jean Myles, but most blamed the
+      smith (and himself among them) for not taking note of her address, so that
+      Thrums Street could be informed of it and sent to her relief. For Blinder
+      alone believed that Aaron would be softened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was twa threads the smith saw him break," the blind man said, "and
+      Aaron's good at his work. He'll go to London, I tell you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You forget, Blinders, that he was warping afore I was a dozen steps frae
+      the door."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, and that just proves he hadna burned the letter, for he hadna time.
+      If he didna do it at the first impulse, he'll no do it now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every little while the boys were sent along the road to look in at Aaron's
+      end window and report.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At seven in the evening Aaron had not left his box, and the blind man's
+      reputation for seeing farther than those with eyes was fallen low.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's a good sign," he insisted, nevertheless. "It shows his mind's
+      troubled, for he usually louses at six."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By eight the news was that Aaron had left his mill and was sitting staring
+      at his kitchen fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's thinking o' Inverquharity and the cushie doos," said Blinder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "More likely," said Dite Deuchars, "he's thinking o' the Cuttle Well."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Corp Shiach clattered along the road about nine to say that Aaron Latta
+      was putting on his blacks as if for a journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At once the blind man's reputation rose on stilts. It fell flat, however,
+      before the ten-o'clock bell rang, when three of the Auchterlonie children,
+      each pulling the others back that he might arrive first, announced that
+      Aaron had put on his corduroys again, and was back at the mill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That settles it," was everyone's good-night to Blinder, but he only
+      answered thoughtfully, "There's a fierce fight going on, my billies."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning when his niece was shaving the blind man, the razor had to
+      travel over a triumphant smirk which would not explain itself to
+      womankind, Blinder being a man who could bide his time. The time came when
+      the smith looked in to say, "Should I gang yont to Aaron's and see if
+      he'll give me the puir woman's address?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, I wouldna advise that," answered Blinder, cleverly concealing his
+      elation, "for Aaron Latta's awa' to London."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What! How can you ken?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I heard him go by in the night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's no possible!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I kent his foot."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're sure it was Aaron?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Blinder did not consider the question worth answering, his sharpness at
+      recognizing friends by their tread being proved. Sometimes he may have
+      carried his pretensions too far. Many granted that he could tell when a
+      doctor went by, when a lawyer, when a thatcher, when a herd, and this is
+      conceivable, for all callings have their walk. But he was regarded as
+      uncanny when he claimed not only to know ministers in this way, but to be
+      able to distinguish between the steps of the different denominations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had made no mistake about the warper, however. Aaron was gone, and ten
+      days elapsed before he was again seen in Thrums.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII &mdash; A CHILD'S TRAGEDY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      No one in Thrums ever got a word from Aaron Latta about how he spent those
+      ten days, and Tommy and Elspeth, whom he brought back with him, also tried
+      to be reticent, but some of the women were too clever for them. Jean and
+      Aaron did not meet again. Her first intimation that he had come she got
+      from Shovel, who said that a little high-shouldered man in black had been
+      inquiring if she was dead, and was now walking up and down the street,
+      like one waiting. She sent her children out to him, but he would not come
+      up. He had answered Tommy roughly, but when Elspeth slipped her hand into
+      his, he let it stay there, and he instructed her to tell Jean Myles that
+      he would bury her in the Thrums cemetery and bring up her bairns. Jean
+      managed once to go to the window and look down at him, and by and by he
+      looked up and saw her. They looked long at each other, and then he turned
+      away his head and began to walk up and down again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Tilliedrum the coffin was put into a hearse and thus conveyed to
+      Monypenny, Aaron and the two children sitting on the box-seat. Someone
+      said, "Jean Myles boasted that when she came back to Thrums it would be in
+      her carriage and pair, and she has kept her word," and the saying is still
+      preserved in that Bible for week-days of which all little places have
+      their unwritten copy, one of the wisest of books, but nearly every text in
+      it has cost a life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About a score of men put on their blacks and followed the hearse from the
+      warper's house to the grave. Elspeth wanted to accompany Tommy, but Aaron
+      held her back, saying, quietly, "In this part, it's only men that go to
+      burials, so you and me maun bide at name," and then she cried, no one
+      understood why, except Tommy. It was because he would see Thrums first;
+      but he whispered to her, "I promise to keep my eyes shut and no look
+      once," and so faithfully did he keep his promise on the whole that the
+      smith held him by the hand most of the way, under the impression that he
+      was blind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he had opened his eyes at the grave, when a cord was put into his
+      hand, and then he wept passionately, and on his way back to Monypenny,
+      whether his eyes were open or shut, what he saw was his mother being shut
+      up in a black hole and trying for ever and ever to get out. He ran to
+      Elspeth for comfort, but in the meantime she had learned from Blinder's
+      niece that graves are dark and cold, and so he found her sobbing even like
+      himself. Tommy could never bear to see Elspeth crying, and he revealed his
+      true self in his way of drying her tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It will be so cold in that hole," she sobbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," he said, "it's warm."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It will be dark."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, it's clear."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She would like to get out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, she was terrible pleased to get in."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was characteristic of him that he soon had Elspeth happy by arguments
+      not one of which he believed himself; characteristic also that his own
+      grief was soothed by the sound of them. Aaron, who was in the garret
+      preparing their bed, had told the children that they must remain indoors
+      to-day out of respect to their mother's memory (to-morrow morning they
+      could explore Thrums); but there were many things in that kitchen for them
+      to look at and exult over. It had no commonplace ceiling, the couples, or
+      rafters, being covered with the loose flooring of a romantic garret, and
+      in the rafters were several great hooks, from one of which hung a ham, and
+      Tommy remembered, with a thrill which he communicated to Elspeth, that it
+      is the right of Thrums children to snip off the ham as much as they can
+      remove with their finger-nails and roast it on the ribs of the fire. The
+      chief pieces of furniture were a dresser, a corner cupboard with diamond
+      panes, two tables, one of which stood beneath the other, but would have to
+      come out if Aaron tried to bake, and a bed with a door. These two did not
+      know it, but the room was full of memories of Jean Myles. The corner
+      cupboard had been bought by Aaron at a roup because she said she would
+      like to have one; it was she who had chosen the six cups and saucers with
+      the blue spots on them. A razor-strop, now hard as iron, hung on a nail on
+      the wall; it had not been used since the last time Aaron strutted through
+      the Den with his sweetheart. One day later he had opened the door of the
+      bird-cage, which still stood in the window, and let the yellow yite go.
+      Many things were where no woman would have left them: clothes on the floor
+      with the nail they had torn from the wall; on a chair a tin basin, soapy
+      water and a flannel rag in it; horn spoons with whistles at the end of
+      them were anywhere&mdash;on the mantelpiece, beneath the bed; there were
+      drawers that could not be opened because their handles were inside.
+      Perhaps the windows were closed hopelessly also, but this must be left
+      doubtful; no one had ever tried to open them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The garret where Tommy and Elspeth were to sleep was reached by a ladder
+      from the hallan; when you were near the top of the ladder your head hit a
+      trap-door and pushed it open. At one end of the garret was the bed, and at
+      the other end were piled sticks for firewood and curious dark-colored
+      slabs whose smell the children disliked until Tommy said, excitedly,
+      "Peat!" and then they sniffed reverently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Tommy, too, who discovered the tree-tops of the Den, and Elspeth
+      seeing him gazing in a transport out at the window cried, "What is it,
+      Tommy? Quick!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Promise no to scream," he replied, warningly. "Well, then, Elspeth
+      Sandys, that's where the Den is!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth blinked with awe, and anon said, wistfully, "Tommy, do you see
+      that there? That's where the Den is!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It were me what told you," cried Tommy, jealously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But let me tell you, Tommy!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, then, you can tell me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That there is the Den, Tommy!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dagont!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, that to-morrow were here! Oh, that Shovel could see these two
+      to-morrow!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here is another splendid game, T. Sandys, inventor. The girl goes into the
+      bed, the boy shuts the door on her, and imitates the sound of a train in
+      motion. He opens the door and cries, "Tickets, please." The girl says,
+      "What is the name of this place?" The boy replies, "It's Thrums!" There is
+      more to follow, but the only two who have played the game always roared so
+      joyously at this point that they could get no farther.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, to-morrow, come quick, quick!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, poor Shovel!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To-morrow came, and with it two eager little figures rose and gulped their
+      porridge, and set off to see Thrums. They were dressed in the black
+      clothes Aaron Latta had bought for them in London, and they had agreed
+      just to walk, but when they reached the door and saw the tree-tops of the
+      Den they&mdash;they ran. Would you not like to hold them back? It is a
+      child's tragedy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went first into the Den, and the rocks were dripping wet, all the
+      trees, save the firs, were bare, and the mud round a tiny spring pulled
+      off one of Elspeth's boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tommy," she cried, quaking, "that narsty puddle can't not be the Cuttle
+      Well, can it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, it ain't," said Tommy, quickly, but he feared it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's c-c-colder here than London," Elspeth said, shivering, and Tommy was
+      shivering too, but he answered, "I'm&mdash;I'm&mdash;I'm warm."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Den was strangely small, and soon they were on a shabby brae where
+      women in short gowns came to their doors and men in night-caps sat down on
+      the shafts of their barrows to look at Jean Myles's bairns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What does yer think?" Elspeth whispered, very doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They're beauties," Tommy answered, determinedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently Elspeth cried, "Oh, Tommy, what a ugly stair! Where is the
+      beauty stairs as is wore outside for show?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was one of them and Tommy knew it. "Wait till you see the west town
+      end," he said bravely; "it's grand." But when they were in the west town
+      end, and he had to admit it, "Wait till you see the square," he said, and
+      when they were in the square, "Wait," he said, huskily, "till you see the
+      town-house." Alas, this was the town-house facing them, and when they knew
+      it, he said hurriedly, "Wait till you see the Auld Licht Kirk."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They stood long in front of the Auld Licht Kirk, which he had sworn was
+      bigger and lovelier than St. Paul's, but&mdash;well, it is a different
+      style of architecture, and had Elspeth not been there with tears in
+      waiting, Tommy would have blubbered. "It's&mdash;it's littler than I
+      thought," he said desperately, "but&mdash;the minister, oh, what a
+      wonderful big man he is!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you sure?" Elspeth squeaked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I swear he is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The church door opened and a gentleman came out, a little man, boyish in
+      the back, with the eager face of those who live too quickly. But it was
+      not at him that Tommy pointed reassuringly; it was at the monster church
+      key, half of which protruded from his tail pocket and waggled like the
+      hilt of a sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Speaking like an old residenter, Tommy explained that he had brought his
+      sister to see the church, "She's ta'en aback," he said, picking out Scotch
+      words carefully, "because it's littler than the London kirks, but I telled
+      her&mdash;I telled her that the preaching is better."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This seemed to please the stranger, for he patted Tommy on the head while
+      inquiring, "How do you know that the preaching is better?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tell him, Elspeth," replied Tommy modestly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There ain't nuthin' as Tommy don't know," Elspeth explained. "He knows
+      what the minister is like too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's a noble sight," said Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He can get anything from God he likes," said Elspeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's a terrible big man," said Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This seemed to please the little gentleman less. "Big!" he exclaimed,
+      irritably; "why should he be big?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is big," Elspeth almost screamed, for the minister was her last hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nonsense!" said the little gentleman. "He is&mdash;well, I am the
+      minister."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You!" roared Tommy, wrathfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, oh, oh!" sobbed Elspeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment the Rev. Mr. Dishart looked as if he would like to knock two
+      little heads together, but he walked away without doing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never mind," Tommy whispered hoarsely to Elspeth. "Never mind, Elspeth,
+      you have me yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This consolation seldom failed to gladden her, but her disappointment was
+      so sharp to-day that she would not even look up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come away to the cemetery, it's grand," he said; but still she would not
+      be comforted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I'll let you hold my hand&mdash;as soon as we're past the houses," he
+      added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll let you hold it now," he said eventually; but even then Elspeth
+      cried dismally, and her sobs were hurting him more than her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew all the ways of getting round Elspeth, and when next he spoke it
+      was with a sorrowful dignity. "I didna think," he said, "as yer wanted me
+      never to be able to speak again; no, I didna think it, Elspeth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took her hands from her face and looked at him inquiringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One of the stories mamma telled me and Reddy," he said, "were about a man
+      what saw such a beauty thing that he was struck dumb with admiration.
+      Struck dumb is never to be able to speak again, and I wish I had been
+      struck dumb when you wanted it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I didn't want it!" Elspeth cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If Thrums had been one little bit beautier than it is," he went on
+      solemnly, "it would have struck me dumb. It would have hurt me sore, but
+      what about that, if it pleased you!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then did Elspeth see what a wicked girl she had been, and when next the
+      two were observed by the curious (it was on the cemetery road), they were
+      once more looking cheerful. At the smallest provocation they exchanged
+      notes of admiration, such as, "Oh, Tommy, what a bonny barrel!" or "Oh,
+      Elspeth, I tell yer that's a dyke, and there's just walls in London," but
+      sometimes Elspeth would stoop hastily, pretending that she wanted to tie
+      her bootlace, but really to brush away a tear, and there were moments when
+      Tommy hung very limp. Each was trying to deceive the other for the other's
+      sake, and one of them was never good at deception. They saw through each
+      other, yet kept up the chilly game, because they could think of nothing
+      better, and perhaps the game was worth playing, for love invented it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sat down on their mother's grave. No stone was ever erected to the
+      memory of Jean Myles, but it is enough for her that she lies at home. That
+      comfort will last her to the Judgment Day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man who had dug the grave sent them away, and they wandered to the
+      hill, and thence down the Roods, where there were so many outside stairs
+      not put there for show that it was well Elspeth remembered how susceptible
+      Tommy was to being struck dumb. For her sake he said, "They're bonny," and
+      for his sake she replied, "I'm glad they ain't bonnier."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When within one turn of Monypenny they came suddenly upon some boys
+      playing at capey-dykey, a game with marbles that is only known in Thrums.
+      There are thirty-five ways of playing marbles, but this is the best way,
+      and Elspeth knew that Tommy was hungering to look on, but without her,
+      lest he should be accused of sweethearting. So she offered to remain in
+      the background.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was she sure she shouldn't mind?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She said falteringly that of course she would mind a little, but&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Tommy was irritated, and said he knew she would mind, but if she just
+      pretended she didn't mind, he could leave her without feeling that he was
+      mean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Elspeth affected not to mind, and then he deserted her, conscience at
+      rest, which was his nature. But he should have remained with her. The
+      players only gave him the side of their eye, and a horrid fear grew on him
+      that they did not know he was a Thrums boy. "Dagont!" he cried to put them
+      right on that point, but though they paused in their game, it was only to
+      laugh at him uproariously. Let the historian use an oath for once; dagont,
+      Tommy had said the swear in the wrong place!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How fond he had been of that word! Many a time he had fired it in the face
+      of Londoners, and the flash had often blinded them and always him. Now he
+      had brought it home, and Thrums would have none of it; it was as if these
+      boys were jeering at their own flag. He tottered away from them until he
+      came to a trance, or passage, where he put his face to the wall and forgot
+      even Elspeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not noticed a girl pass the mouth of the trance, trying not very
+      successfully to conceal a brandy-bottle beneath her pinafore, but
+      presently he heard shouts, and looking out he saw Grizel, the Painted
+      Lady's child, in the hands of her tormentors. She was unknown to him, of
+      course, but she hit back so courageously that he watched her with
+      interest, until&mdash;until suddenly he retreated farther into the trance.
+      He had seen Elspeth go on her knees, obviously to ask God to stay the
+      hands and tongues of these cruel boys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth had disgraced him, he felt. He was done with her forever. If they
+      struck her, serve her right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Struck her! Struck little Elspeth! His imagination painted the picture
+      with one sweep of its brush. Take care, you boys, Tommy is scudding back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had not molested Elspeth as yet. When they saw and heard her praying,
+      they had bent forward, agape, as if struck suddenly in the stomach. Then
+      one of them, Francie Crabb, the golden-haired son of Esther Auld,
+      recovered and began to knead Grizel's back with his fists, less in
+      viciousness than to show that the prayer was futile. Into this scene
+      sprang Tommy, and he thought that Elspeth was the kneaded one. Had he
+      taken time to reflect he would probably have used the Thrums feint, and
+      then in with a left-hander, which is not very efficacious in its own
+      country; but being in a hurry he let out with Shovel's favorite, and down
+      went Francie Crabb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Would you!" said Tommy, threatening, when Francie attempted to rise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw now that Elspeth was untouched, that he had rescued an unknown
+      girl, and it cannot be pretended of him that he was the boy to squire all
+      ladies in distress. In ordinary circumstances he might have left Grizel to
+      her fate, but having struck for her, he felt that he would like to go on
+      striking. He had also the day's disappointments to avenge. It is startling
+      to reflect that the little minister's height, for instance, put an extra
+      kick in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he stood stridelegs over Francie, who whimpered, "I wouldna have struck
+      this one if that one hadna prayed for me. It wasna likely I would stand
+      that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You shall stand it," replied Tommy, and turning to Elspeth, who had risen
+      from her knees, he said: "Pray away, Elspeth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth refused, feeling that there would be something wrong in praying
+      from triumph, and Tommy, about to be very angry with her, had a glorious
+      inspiration. "Pray for yourself," he said to Francie, "and do it out
+      loud."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other boys saw that a novelty promised, and now Francie need expect no
+      aid from them. At first he refused to pray, but he succumbed when Tommy
+      had explained the consequences, and illustrated them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy dictated: "Oh, God, I am a sinner. Go on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Francie not only said it, but looked it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I pray to you to repent me, though I ain't worthy," continued Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I pray to you to repent me, though I ain't worthy," growled Francie.
+      (It was the arrival of ain't in Thrums.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy considered, and then: "I thank Thee, O God," he said, "for telling
+      this girl&mdash;this lassie&mdash;to pray for me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two gentle taps helped to knock this out of Francie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Being an artist, Tommy had kept his best for the end (and made it up
+      first). "And lastly," he said, "I thank this boy for thrashing me&mdash;I
+      mean this here laddie. Oh, may he allus be near to thrash me when I strike
+      this other lassie again. Amen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When it was all over Tommy looked around triumphantly, and though he liked
+      the expression on several faces, Grizel's pleased him best. "It ain't no
+      wonder you would like to be me, lassie!" he said, in an ecstasy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't want to be you, you conceited boy," retorted the Painted Lady's
+      child hotly, and her heat was the greater because the clever little wretch
+      had read her thoughts aright. But it was her sweet voice that surprised
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're English!" he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So are you," broke in a boy offensively, and then Tommy said to Grizel
+      loftily, "Run away; I'll not let none on them touch you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not afraid of them," she rejoined, with scorn, "and I shall not let
+      you help me, and I won't run." And run she did not; she walked off
+      leisurely with her head in the air, and her dignity was beautiful, except
+      once when she made the mistake of turning round to put out her tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, alas! in the end someone ran. If only they had not called him
+      "English." In vain he fired a volley of Scotch; they pretended not to
+      understand it. Then he screamed that he and Shovel could fight the lot of
+      them. Who was Shovel? they asked derisively. He replied that Shovel was a
+      bloke who could lick any two of them&mdash;and with one hand tied behind
+      his back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No sooner had he made this proud boast than he went white, and soon two
+      disgraceful tears rolled down his cheeks. The boys saw that for some
+      reason unknown his courage was gone, and even Francie Crabb began to turn
+      up his sleeves and spit upon his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth was as bewildered as the others, but she slipped her hand into his
+      and away they ran ingloriously, the foe too much astounded to jeer. She
+      sought to comfort him by saying (and it brought her a step nearer
+      womanhood), "You wasn't feared for yourself, you wasn't; you was just
+      feared they would hurt me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Tommy sobbed in reply, "That ain't it. I bounced so much about the
+      Thrums folk to Shovel, and now the first day I'm here I heard myself
+      bouncing about Shovel to Thrums folk, and it were that what made me cry.
+      Oh, Elspeth, it's&mdash;it's not the same what I thought it would be!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor was it the same to Elspeth, so they sat down by the roadside and cried
+      with their arms round each other, and any passer-by could look who had the
+      heart. But when night came, and they were in their garret bed, Tommy was
+      once more seeking to comfort Elspeth with arguments he disbelieved, and
+      again he succeeded. As usual, too, the make-believe made him happy also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you forgot," he whispered, "that my mother said as she would come
+      and see us every night in our bed? If yer cries, she'll see as we're
+      terrible unhappy, and that will make her unhappy too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, Tommy, is she here now?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Whisht! She's here, but they don't like living ones to let on as they
+      knows it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth kept closer to Tommy, and with their heads beneath the blankets,
+      so as to stifle the sound, he explained to her how they could cheat their
+      mother. When she understood, he took the blankets off their faces and said
+      in the darkness in a loud voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's a grand place, Thrums!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth replied in a similar voice, "Ain't the town-house just big!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Said Tommy, almost chuckling, "Oh, the bonny, bonny Auld Licht Kirk!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Said Elspeth, "Oh, the beauty outside stairs!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Said Tommy, "The minister is so long!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Said Elspeth, "The folk is so kind!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Said Tommy, "Especially the laddies!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, I is so happy!" cried Elspeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Me too!" cried Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My mother would be so chirpy if she could jest see us!" Elspeth said,
+      quite archly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But she canna!" replied Tommy, slyly pinching Elspeth in the rib.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they dived beneath the blankets, and the whispering was resumed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did she hear, does yer think?" asked Elspeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Every word," Tommy replied. "Elspeth, we've done her!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII &mdash; SHOWS HOW TOMMY TOOK CARE OF ELSPETH
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Thus the first day passed, and others followed in which women, who had
+      known Jean Myles, did her children kindnesses, but could not do all they
+      would have done, for Aaron forbade them to enter his home except on
+      business though it was begging for a housewife all day. Had Elspeth at the
+      age of six now settled down to domestic duties she would not have been the
+      youngest housekeeper ever known in Thrums, but she was never very good at
+      doing things, only at loving and being loved, and the observant neighbors
+      thought her a backward girl; they forgot, like most people, that service
+      is not necessarily a handicraft. Tommy discovered what they were saying,
+      and to shield Elspeth he took to housewifery with the blind down; but
+      Aaron, entering the kitchen unexpectedly, took the besom from, him,
+      saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's an ill thing for men folk to ken ower muckle about women's work."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You do it yoursel'," Tommy argued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I said men folk," replied Aaron, quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The children knew that remarks of this sort had reference to their mother,
+      of whom he never spoke more directly; indeed he seldom spoke to them at
+      all, and save when he was cooking or giving the kitchen a slovenly
+      cleaning they saw little of him. Monypenny had predicted that their
+      presence must make a new man of him, but he was still unsociable and
+      morose and sat as long as ever at the warping-mill, of which he seemed to
+      have become the silent wheel. Tommy and Elspeth always dropped their
+      voices when they spoke of him, and sometimes when his mill stopped he
+      heard one of them say to the other, "Whisht, he's coming!" Though he
+      seldom, spoke sharply to them, his face did not lose its loneliness at
+      sight of them. Elspeth was his favorite (somewhat to the indignation of
+      both); they found this out without his telling them or even showing it
+      markedly, and when they wanted to ask anything of him she was deputed to
+      do it, but she did it quavering, and after drawing farther away from him
+      instead of going nearer. A dreary life would have lain before them had
+      they not been sent to school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were at this time three schools in Thrums, the chief of them ruled
+      over by the terrible Cathro (called Knuckly when you were a street away
+      from him). It was a famous school, from which a band of three or four or
+      even six marched every autumn to the universities as determined after
+      bursaries as ever were Highlandmen to lift cattle, and for the same
+      reason, that they could not do without.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A very different kind of dominie was Cursing Ballingall, who had been
+      dropped at Thrums by a travelling circus, and first became familiar to the
+      town as, carrying two carpet shoes, two books, a pillow, and a saucepan,
+      which were all his belongings, he wandered from manse to manse offering to
+      write sermons for the ministers at circus prices. That scheme failing, he
+      was next seen looking in at windows in search of a canny calling, and
+      eventually he cut one of his braces into a pair of tawse, thus with a
+      single stroke of the knife, making himself a school-master and lop-sided
+      for life. His fee was but a penny a week, "with a bit o' the swine when
+      your father kills," and sometimes there were so many pupils on a form that
+      they could only rise as one. During the first half of the scholastic day
+      Ballingall's shouts and pounces were for parents to listen to, but after
+      his dinner of crowdy, which is raw meal and hot water, served in a cogie,
+      or wooden bowl, languor overcame him and he would sleep, having first
+      given out a sum in arithmetic and announced:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The one as finds out the answer first, I'll give him his licks."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Last comes the Hanky School, which was for the genteel and for the common
+      who contemplated soaring. You were not admitted to it in corduroys or
+      bare-footed, nor did you pay weekly; no, your father called four times a
+      year with the money in an envelope. He was shown into the blue-and-white
+      room, and there, after business had been transacted, very nervously on
+      Miss Ailie's part, she offered him his choice between ginger wine and what
+      she falteringly called wh-wh-whiskey. He partook in the polite national
+      manner, which is thus:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will take something, Mr. Cortachy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, I thank you, ma'am."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A little ginger wine?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It agrees ill with me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then a little wh-wh-whiskey?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are ower kind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then may I?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not heeding."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps, though, you don't take?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can take it or want it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that enough?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It will do perfectly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Shall I fill it up?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As you please, ma'am."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ailie's relationship to the magerful man may be remembered; she
+      shuddered to think of it herself, for in middle-age she retained the mind
+      of a young girl, but when duty seemed to call, this school-mistress could
+      be brave, and she offered to give Elspeth her schooling free of charge.
+      Like the other two hers was a "mixed" school, but she did not want Tommy,
+      because she had seen him in the square one day, and there was a leer on
+      his face that reminded her of his father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another woman was less particular. This was Mrs. Crabb, of the Tappit Hen,
+      the Esther Auld whom Jean Myles's letters had so frequently sent to bed.
+      Her Francie was still a pupil of Miss Ailie, and still he wore the golden
+      hair, which, despite all advice, she would not crop. It was so beautiful
+      that no common boys could see it without wanting to give it a tug in
+      passing, and partly to prevent this, partly to show how high she had risen
+      in the social scale, Esther usually sent him to school under the charge of
+      her servant lass. She now proposed to Aaron that this duty should devolve
+      on Tommy, and for the service she would pay his fees at the Hanky School.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We maun all lend a hand to poor Jean's bairns," she said, with a gleam in
+      her eye. "It would have been well for her, Aaron, if she had married you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that all you have to say?" asked the warper, who had let her enter no
+      farther than the hallan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I would expect him to lift Francie ower the pools in wet weather; and it
+      might be as well if he called him Master Francie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that all?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, I ask no more, for we maun all help Jean's bairns. If she could only
+      look down, Aaron, and see her little velvets, as she called him, lifting
+      my little corduroys ower the pools!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aaron flung open the door. "Munt!" he said, and he looked so dangerous
+      that she retired at once. He sent Tommy to Ballingall's, and accepted Miss
+      Ailie's offer for Elspeth, but this was an impossible arrangement, for it
+      was known to the two persons primarily concerned that Elspeth would die if
+      she was not where Tommy was. The few boys he had already begun to know
+      were at Cathro's or Ballingall's, and as they called Miss Ailie's a lassie
+      school he had no desire to attend it, but where he was there also must
+      Elspeth be. Daily he escaped from Ballingall's and hid near the Dovecot,
+      as Miss Ailie's house was called, and every little while he gave vent to
+      Shovel's whistle, so that Elspeth might know of his proximity and be
+      cheered. Thrice was he carried back, kicking, to Ballingall's by urchins
+      sent in pursuit, stern ministers of justice on the first two occasions;
+      but on the third they made him an offer: if he would hide in Couthie's
+      hen-house they were willing to look for him everywhere else for two hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy's behavior seemed beautiful to the impressionable Miss Ailie, but it
+      infuriated Aaron, and on the fourth day he set off for the parish school,
+      meaning to put the truant in the hands of Cathro, from whom there was no
+      escape. Vainly had Elspeth implored him to let Tommy come to the Dovecot,
+      and vainly apparently was she trotting at his side now, looking up
+      appealingly in his face. But when they reached the gate of the parish
+      school-yard he walked past it because she was tugging him, and always when
+      he seemed about to turn she took his hand again, and he seemed to have
+      lost the power to resist Jean Myles's bairn. So they came to the Dovecot,
+      and Miss Ailie gained a pupil who had been meant for Cathro. Tommy's arms
+      were stronger than Elspeth's, but they could not hare done as much for him
+      that day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus did the two children enter upon the genteel career, to the
+      indignation of the other boys and girls of Monypenny, all of whom were
+      commoners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV &mdash; THE HANKY SCHOOL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Dovecot was a prim little cottage standing back from the steepest brae
+      in Thrums and hidden by high garden walls, to the top of which another
+      boy's shoulders were, for apple-lovers, but one step up. Jargonelle trees
+      grew against the house, stretching their arms round it as if to measure
+      its girth, and it was also remarkable for several "dumb" windows with the
+      most artful blinds painted on them. Miss Ailie's fruit was famous, but she
+      loved her flowers best, and for long a notice board in her garden said,
+      appealingly: "Persons who come to steal the fruit are requested not to
+      walk on the flower-beds." It was that old bachelor, Dr. McQueen, who
+      suggested this inscription to her, and she could never understand why he
+      chuckled every time he read it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were seven rooms in the house, but only two were of public note, the
+      school-room, which was downstairs, and the blue-and-white room above. The
+      school-room was so long that it looked very low in the ceiling, and it had
+      a carpet, and on the walls were texts as well as maps. Miss Ailie's desk
+      was in the middle of the room, and there was another desk in the corner; a
+      cloth had been hung over it, as one covers a cage to send the bird to
+      sleep. Perhaps Miss Ailie thought that a bird had once sung there, for
+      this had been the desk of her sister, Miss Kitty, who died years before
+      Tommy came to Thrums. Dainty Miss Kitty, Miss Kitty with the roguish
+      curls, it is strange to think that you are dead, and that only Miss Ailie
+      hears you singing now at your desk in the corner! Miss Kitty never sang
+      there, but the playful ringlets were once the bright thing in the room,
+      and Miss Ailie sees them still, and they are a song to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pupils had to bring handkerchiefs to the Dovecot, which led to its
+      being called the Hanky School, and in time these handkerchiefs may be said
+      to have assumed a religious character, though their purpose was merely to
+      protect Miss Ailie's carpet. She opened each scholastic day by reading
+      fifteen verses from the Bible, and then she said sternly, "Hankies!"
+      whereupon her pupils whipped out their handkerchiefs, spread them on the
+      floor and kneeled on them while Miss Ailie repeated the Lord's Prayer.
+      School closed at four o'clock, again with hankies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only on great occasions were the boys and girls admitted to the
+      blue-and-white room, when they were given shortbread, but had to eat it
+      with their heads flung back so that no crumbs should fall. Nearly
+      everything in this room was blue or white, or both. There were white
+      blinds and blue curtains, a blue table-cover and a white crumb-cloth, a
+      white sheepskin with a blue footstool on it, blue chairs dotted with white
+      buttons. Only white flowers came into this room, where there were blue
+      vases for them, not a book was to be seen without a blue alpaca cover.
+      Here Miss Ailie received visitors in her white with the blue braid, and
+      enrolled new pupils in blue ink with a white pen. Some laughed at her,
+      others remembered that she must have something to love after Miss Kitty
+      died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ailie had her romance, as you may hear by and by, but you would not
+      have thought it as she came forward to meet you in the blue-and-white
+      room, trembling lest your feet had brought in mud, but too much a lady to
+      ask you to stand on a newspaper, as she would have liked dearly to do. She
+      was somewhat beyond middle-age, and stoutly, even squarely, built, which
+      gave her a masculine appearance; but she had grown so timid since Miss
+      Kitty's death that when she spoke you felt that either her figure or her
+      manner must have been intended for someone else. In conversation she had a
+      way of ending a sentence in the middle which gave her a reputation of
+      being "thro'ither," though an artificial tooth was the cause. It was
+      slightly loose, and had she not at times shut her mouth suddenly, and then
+      done something with her tongue, an accident might have happened. This
+      tooth fascinated Tommy, and once when she was talking he cried, excitedly,
+      "Quick, it's coming!" whereupon her mouth snapped close, and she turned
+      pink in the blue-and-white room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless Tommy became her favorite, and as he had taught himself to
+      read, after a fashion, in London, where his lesson-books were chiefly
+      placards and the journal subscribed to by Shovel's father, she often
+      invited him after school hours to the blue-and-white room, where he sat on
+      a kitchen chair (with his boots off) and read aloud, very slowly, while
+      Miss Ailie knitted. The volume was from the Thrums Book Club, of which
+      Miss Ailie was one of the twelve members. Each member contributed a book
+      every year, and as their tastes in literature differed, all sorts of books
+      came into the club, and there was one member who invariably gave a
+      ro-ro-romance. He was double-chinned and forty, but the school-mistress
+      called him the dashing young banker, and for months she avoided his
+      dangerous contribution. But always there came a black day when a desire to
+      read the novel seized her, and she hurried home with it beneath her
+      rokelay. This year the dashing banker's choice was a lady's novel called
+      "I Love My Love with an A," and it was a frivolous tale, those being
+      before the days of the new fiction, with its grand discovery that women
+      have an equal right with men to grow beards. The hero had such a way with
+      him and was so young (Miss Ailie could not stand them a day more than
+      twenty) that the school-mistress was enraptured and scared at every page,
+      but she fondly hoped that Tommy did not understand. However, he discovered
+      one day what something printed thus, "D&mdash;n," meant, and he
+      immediately said the word with such unction that Miss Ailie let fall her
+      knitting. She would have ended the readings then had not Agatha been at
+      that point in the arms of an officer who, Miss Ailie felt almost certain,
+      had a wife in India, and so how could she rest till she knew for certain?
+      To track the officer by herself was not to be thought of, to read without
+      knitting being such shameless waste of time, and it was decided to resume
+      the readings on a revised plan: Tommy to say "stroke" in place of the "D&mdash;ns,"
+      and "word we have no concern with" instead of "Darling" and "Little One."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ailie was not the only person at the Dovecot who admired Tommy.
+      Though in duty bound, as young patriots, to jeer at him for having been
+      born in the wrong place, the pupils of his own age could not resist the
+      charm of his reminiscences; even Gav Dishart, a son of the manse, listened
+      attentively to him. His great topic was his birthplace, and whatever
+      happened in Thrums, he instantly made contemptible by citing something of
+      the same kind, but on a larger scale, that had happened in London; he
+      turned up his nose almost farther than was safe when they said Catlaw was
+      a stiff mountain to climb. ("Oh, Gav, if you just saw the London
+      mountains!") Snow! why they didn't know what snow was in Thrums. If they
+      could only see St. Paul's or Hyde Park or Shovel! he couldn't help
+      laughing at Thrums, he couldn't&mdash;Larfing, he said at first, but in a
+      short time his Scotch was better than theirs, though less unconscious. His
+      English was better also, of course, and you had to speak in a kind of
+      English when inside the Hanky School; you got your revenge at "minutes."
+      On the whole, Tommy irritated his fellow-pupils a good deal, but they
+      found it difficult to keep away from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He also contrived to enrage the less genteel boys of Monypenny. Their
+      leader was Corp Shiach, three years Tommy's senior, who had never been
+      inside a school except once, when he broke hopefully into Ballingall's
+      because of a stirring rumor (nothing in it) that the dominie had hangit
+      himself with his remaining brace; then in order of merit came Birkie
+      Fleemister; then, perhaps, the smith's family, called the
+      Haggerty-Taggertys, they were such slovens. When school was over Tommy
+      frequently stepped out of his boots and stockings, so that he no longer
+      looked offensively genteel, and then Monypenny was willing to let him join
+      in spyo, smuggle bools, kickbonnety, peeries, the preens, suckers pilly,
+      or whatever game was in season, even to the baiting of the Painted Lady,
+      but they would not have Elspeth, who should have been content to play
+      dumps with the female Haggerty-Taggertys, but could enjoy no game of which
+      Tommy was not the larger half. Many times he deserted her for manlier
+      joys, but though she was out of sight he could not forget her longing
+      face, and soon he sneaked off to her; he upbraided her, but he stayed with
+      her. They bore with him for a time, but when they discovered that she had
+      persuaded him (after prayer) to put back the spug's eggs which he had
+      brought home in triumph, then they drove him from their company, and for a
+      long time afterwards his deadly enemy was the hard-hitting Corp Shiach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth was not invited to attend the readings of "I Love My Love with an
+      A," perhaps because there were so many words in it that she had no concern
+      with, but she knew they ended as the eight-o'clock bell began to ring, and
+      it was her custom to meet Tommy a few yards from Aaron's door. Farther she
+      durst not venture in the gloaming through fear of the Painted Lady, for
+      Aaron's house was not far from the fearsome lane that led to Double Dykes,
+      and even the big boys who made faces at this woman by day ran from her in
+      the dusk. Creepy tales were told of what happened to those on whom she
+      cast a blighting eye before they could touch cold iron, and Tommy was one
+      of many who kept a bit of cold iron from the smithy handy in his pocket.
+      On his way home from the readings he never had occasion to use it, but at
+      these times he sometimes met Grizel, who liked to do her shopping in the
+      evenings when her persecutors were more easily eluded, and he forced her
+      to speak to him. Not her loneliness appealed to him, but that look of
+      admiration she had given him when he was astride of Francie Crabb. For
+      such a look he could pardon many rebuffs; without it no praise greatly
+      pleased him; he was always on the outlook for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I warrant," he said to her one evening, "you want to have some man-body
+      to take care of you the way I take care of Elspeth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, I don't," she replied, promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Would you no like somebody to love you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you mean kissing?" she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's better things in it than that," he said guardedly; "but if you
+      want kissing, I&mdash;I&mdash;Elspeth'll kiss you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will she want to do it?" inquired Grizel, a little wistfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll make her do it," Tommy said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't want her to do it," cried Grizel, and he could not draw another
+      word from her. However he was sure she thought him a wonder, and when next
+      they met he challenged her with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you not now?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I won't tell you," answered Grizel, who was never known to lie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You think I'm a wonder," Tommy persisted, "but you dinna want me to know
+      you think it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grizel rocked her arms, a quaint way she had when excited, and she blurted
+      out, "How do you know?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The look he liked had come back to her face, but he had no time to enjoy
+      it, for just then Elspeth appeared, and Elspeth's jealousy was easily
+      aroused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dinna ken you, lassie," he said coolly to Grizel, and left her stamping
+      her foot at him. She decided never to speak to Tommy again, but the next
+      time they met he took her into the Den and taught her how to fight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is painful to have to tell that Miss Ailie was the person who provided
+      him with the opportunity. In the readings they arrived one evening at the
+      scene in the conservatory, which has not a single Stroke in it, but is so
+      full of Words We have no Concern with that Tommy reeled home blinking, and
+      next day so disgracefully did he flounder in his lessons that the gentle
+      school-mistress cast up her arms in despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know what to say to you," she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fine I know what you want to say," he retorted, and unfortunately she
+      asked, "What?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stroke!" he replied, leering horridly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I Love My Love with an A" was returned to the club forthwith (whether he
+      really did have a wife in India Miss Ailie never knew) and "Judd on the
+      Shorter Catechism" took its place. But mark the result. The readings ended
+      at a quarter to eight now, at twenty to eight, at half-past seven, and so
+      Tommy could loiter on the way home without arousing Elspeth's suspicion.
+      One evening he saw Grizel cutting her way through the Haggerty-Taggerty
+      group, and he offered to come to her aid if she would say "Help me." But
+      she refused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, however, the Haggerty-Taggertys were gone she condescended to say,
+      "I shall never, never ask you to help me, but&mdash;if you like&mdash;you
+      can show me how to hit without biting my tongue."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll learn you Shovel's curly ones," replied Tommy, cordially, and he
+      adjourned with her to the Den for that purpose. He said he chose the Den
+      so that Corp Shiach and the others might not interrupt them, but it was
+      Elspeth he was thinking of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are like Miss Ailie with her cane when she is pandying," he told
+      Grizel. "You begin well, but you slacken just when you are going to hit."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is because my hand opens," Grizel said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And then it ends in a shove," said her mentor, severely. "You should
+      close your fists like this, with the thumbs inside, and then play dab,
+      this way, that way, yon way. That's what Shovel calls, 'You want it, take
+      it, you've got it.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus did the hunted girl get her first lesson in scientific warfare in the
+      Den, and neither she nor Tommy saw the pathos of it. Other lessons
+      followed, and during the rests Grizel told Tommy all that she knew about
+      herself. He had won her confidence at last by&mdash;by swearing dagont
+      that he was English also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV &mdash; THE MAN WHO NEVER CAME
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      "Is it true that your mother's a bonny swearer?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy wanted to find out all about the Painted Lady, and the best way was
+      to ask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She does not always swear," Grizel said eagerly. "She sometimes says
+      sweet, sweet things."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What kind of things?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I won't tell you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tell me one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, then, 'Beloved.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Word We have no Concern with," murmured Tommy. He was shocked, but still
+      curious. "Does she say 'Beloved' to you?" he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, she says it to him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Him! Wha is he?" Tommy thought he was at the beginning of a discovery,
+      but she answered, uncomfortably,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you've seen him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, he&mdash;he is not there."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not there! How can she speak to him if he's no there?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She thinks he is there. He&mdash;he comes on a horse."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is the horse like?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is no horse."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you said&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She just thinks there is a horse. She hears it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you ever hear it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl was looking imploringly into Tommy's face as if begging it to say
+      that these things need not terrify her, but what he wanted was
+      information.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What does the Painted Lady do," he asked, "when she thinks she hears the
+      horse?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She blows kisses, and then&mdash;then she goes to the Den."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What to do?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She walks up and down the Den, talking to the man."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And him no there?" cried Tommy, scared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, there is no one there."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And syne what do you do?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I won't tell you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy reflected, and then he said, "She's daft."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is not always daft," cried Grizel. "There are whole weeks when she is
+      just sweet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then what do you make of her being so queer in the Den?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not sure, but I think&mdash;I think there was once a place like the
+      Den at her own home in England, where she used to meet the man long ago,
+      and sometimes she forgets that it is not long ago now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wonder wha the man was?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think he was my father."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought you didna ken what a father was?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know now. I think my father was a Scotsman."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What makes you think that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I heard a Thrums woman say it would account for my being called Grizel,
+      and I think we came to Scotland to look for him, but it is so long, long
+      ago."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How long?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know. We have lived here four years, but we were looking for him
+      before that. It was not in this part of Scotland we looked for him. We
+      gave up looking for him before we came here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What made the Painted Lady take a house here, then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think it was because the Den is so like the place she used to meet him
+      in long ago."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What was his name?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Does the Painted Lady no tell you about yoursel'?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, she is angry if I ask."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Her name is Mary, I've heard?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mary Gray is her name, but&mdash;but I don't think it is her real name."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How, does she no use her real name?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because she wants her own mamma to think she is dead."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What makes her want that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not sure, but I think it is because there is me. I think it was
+      naughty of me to be born. Can you help being born?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy would have liked to tell her about Reddy, but forbore, because he
+      still believed that he had acted criminally in that affair, and so for the
+      time being the inquisition ended. But though he had already discovered all
+      that Grizel knew about her mother and nearly all that curious Thrums ever
+      ferreted out, he returned to the subject at the next meeting in the Den.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where does the Painted Lady get her money?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh," said Grizel, "that is easy. She just goes into that house called the
+      bank, and asks for some, and they give her as much as she likes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, I've heard that, but&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The remainder of the question was never uttered. Instead,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hod ahint a tree!" cried Tommy, hastily, and he got behind one himself;
+      but he was too late; Elspeth was upon them; she had caught them together
+      at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy showed great cunning. "Pretend you have eggs in your hand," he
+      whispered to Grizel, and then, in a loud voice, he said: "Think shame of
+      yoursel', lassie, for harrying birds' nests. It's a good thing I saw you,
+      and brought you here to force you to put them back. Is that you, Elspeth?
+      I catched this limmer wi' eggs in her hands (and the poor birds sic bonny
+      singers, too!), and so I was forcing her to&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it would not do. Grizel was ablaze with indignation. "You are a horrid
+      story-teller," she said, "and if I had known you were ashamed of being
+      seen with me, I should never have spoken to you. Take him," she cried,
+      giving Tommy a push toward Elspeth, "I don't want the mean little
+      story-teller."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's not mean!" retorted Elspeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nor yet little!" roared Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, he is," insisted Grizel, "and I was not harrying nests. He came with
+      me here because he wanted to."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just for the once," he said, hastily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is the sixth time," said Grizel, and then she marched out of the
+      Den. Tommy and Elspeth followed slowly, and not a word did either say
+      until they were in front of Aaron's house. Then by the light in the window
+      Tommy saw that Elspeth was crying softly, and he felt miserable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was just teaching her to fight," he said humbly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You looked like it!" she replied, with the scorn that comes occasionally
+      to the sweetest lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He tried to comfort her in various tender ways, but none of them sufficed
+      this time, "You'll marry her as soon as you're a man," she insisted, and
+      she would not let this tragic picture go. It was a case for his biggest
+      efforts, and he opened his mouth to threaten instant self-destruction
+      unless she became happy at once. But he had threatened this too frequently
+      of late, even shown himself drawing the knife across his throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As usual the right idea came to him at the right moment. "If you just kent
+      how I did it for your sake," he said, with gentle dignity, "you wouldna
+      blame me; you would think me noble."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She would not help him with a question, and after waiting for it he
+      proceeded. "If you just kent wha she is! And I thought she was dead! What
+      a start it gave me when I found out it was her!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wha is she?" cried Elspeth, with a sudden shiver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was trying to keep it frae you," replied Tommy, sadly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She seized his arm. "Is it Reddy?" she gasped, for the story of Reddy had
+      been a terror to her all her days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She doesna ken I was the laddie that diddled her in London," he said,
+      "and I promise you never to let on, Elspeth. I&mdash;I just went to the
+      Den with her to say things that would put her off the scent. If I hadna
+      done that she might have found out and ta'en your place here and tried to
+      pack you off to the Painted Lady's."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth stared at him, the other grief already forgotten, and he thought
+      he was getting on excellently, when she cried with passion, "I don't
+      believe as it is Reddy!" and ran into the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dinna believe it, then!" disappointed Tommy shouted, and now he was in
+      such a rage with himself that his heart hardened against her. He sought
+      the company of old Blinder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately Elspeth had believed it, and her woe was the more pitiful
+      because she saw at once, what had never struck Tommy, that it would be
+      wicked to keep Grizel out of her rights. "I'll no win to Heaven now," she
+      said, despairingly, to herself, for to offer to change places with Grizel
+      was beyond her courage, and she tried some childish ways of getting round
+      God, such as going on her knees and saying, "I'm so little, and I hinna no
+      mother!" That was not a bad way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another way was to give Grizel everything she had, except Tommy. She
+      collected all her treasures, the bottle with the brass top that she had
+      got from Shovel's old girl, the "housewife" that was a present from Miss
+      Ailie, the teetotum, the pretty buttons Tommy had won for her at the game
+      of buttony, the witchy marble, the twopence she had already saved for the
+      Muckley, these and some other precious trifles she made a little bundle of
+      and set off for Double Dykes with them, intending to leave them at the
+      door. This was Elspeth, who in ordinary circumstances would not have
+      ventured near that mysterious dwelling even in daylight and in Tommy's
+      company. There was no room for vulgar fear in her bursting little heart
+      to-night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy went home anon, meaning to be whatever kind of boy she seemed most
+      in need of, but she was not in the house, she was not in the garden; he
+      called her name, and it was only Birkie Fleemister, mimicking her, who
+      answered, "Oh, Tommy, come to me!" But Birkie had news for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sure as death," he said in some awe, "I saw Elspeth ganging yont the
+      double dykes, and I cried to her that the Painted Lady would do her a
+      mischief, but she just ran on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth in the double dykes&mdash;alone&mdash;and at night! Oh, how Tommy
+      would have liked to strike himself now! She must have believed his wicked
+      lie after all, and being so religious she had gone to&mdash;He gave
+      himself no time to finish the thought. The vital thing was that she was in
+      peril, he seemed to hear her calling to him, "Oh, Tommy, come quick! oh,
+      Tommy, oh, Tommy!" and in an agony of apprehension he ran after her. But
+      by the time he got to the beginning of the double dykes he knew that she
+      must be at the end of them, and in the Painted Lady's maw, unless their
+      repute by night had blown her back. He paused on the Coffin Brig, which is
+      one long narrow stone; and along the funnel of the double dykes he sent
+      the lonely whisper, "Elspeth, are you there?" He tried to shout it, but no
+      boy could shout there after nightfall in the Painted Lady's time, and when
+      the words had travelled only a little way along the double dykes, they
+      came whining back to him, like a dog despatched on uncanny work. He heard
+      no other sound save the burn stealing on tiptoe from an evil place, and
+      the uneasy rustling of tree-tops, and his own breathing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Coffin Brig remains, but the double dykes have fallen bit by bit into
+      the burn, and the path they made safe is again as naked as when the
+      Kingoldrum Jacobites filed along it, and sweer they were, to the support
+      of the Pretender. It traverses a ridge and is streaked with slippery
+      beech-roots which like to fling you off your feet, on the one side into a
+      black burn twenty feet below, on the other down a pleasant slope. The
+      double dykes were built by a farmer fond of his dram, to stop the tongue
+      of a water-kelpie which lived in a pool below and gave him a turn every
+      night he staggered home by shouting, "Drunk again, Peewitbrae!" and
+      announcing, with a smack of the lips, that it had a bed ready for him in
+      the burn. So Peewitbrae built two parallel dykes two feet apart and two
+      feet high, between which he could walk home like a straight man. His
+      cunning took the heart out of the brute, and water-kelpies have not been
+      seen near Thrums since about that time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By day even girls played at palaulays here, and it was a favorite resort
+      of boys, who knew that you were a man when you could stand on both dykes
+      at once. They also stripped boldly to the skin and then looked doubtfully
+      at the water. But at night! To test your nerves you walked alone between
+      the double dykes, and the popular practice was to start off whistling,
+      which keeps up the courage. At the point where you turned to run back (the
+      Painted Lady after you, or so you thought) you dropped a marked stone,
+      which told next day how far you had ventured. Corp Shiach long held the
+      championship, and his stone was ostentatiously fixed in one of the dykes
+      with lime. Tommy had suffered at his hands for saying that Shovel's mark
+      was thirty yards farther on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With head bent to the level of the dykes, though it was almost a mirk
+      night beneath the trees, and one arm outstretched before him straight as
+      an elvint, Tommy faced this fearful passage, sometimes stopping to touch
+      cold iron, but on the whole hanging back little, for Elspeth was in peril.
+      Soon he reached the paling that was not needed to keep boys out of the
+      Painted Lady's garden, one of the prettiest and best-tended flower-gardens
+      in Thrums, and crawling through where some spars had fallen, he approached
+      the door as noiseless as an Indian brave after scalps. There he crouched,
+      with a heart that was going like a shuttle on a loom, and listened for
+      Elspeth's voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a night he had come nearly as far as this before, but in the tail of
+      big fellows with a turnip lantern. Into the wood-work of the east window
+      they had thrust a pin, to which a button was tied, and the button was also
+      attached to a long string. They hunkered afar off and pulled this string,
+      and then the button tapped the death-rap on the window, and the sport was
+      successful, for the Painted Lady screamed. But suddenly the door opened
+      and they were put to flight by the fierce barking of a dog. One said that
+      the brute nabbed him in the leg, another saw the vive tongue of it, a
+      third played lick at it with the lantern; this was before they discovered
+      that the dog had been Grizel imitating one, brave Grizel, always ready to
+      protect her mother, and never allowed to cherish the childish fears that
+      were hers by birthright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy could not hear a sound from within, but he had startling proof that
+      Elspeth was near. His foot struck against something at the door, and,
+      stooping, he saw that it was a little bundle of the treasures she valued
+      most. So she had indeed come to stay with the Painted Lady if Grizel
+      proved merciless! Oh, what a black he had been!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though originally a farm-house, the cottage was no larger than Aaron's,
+      and of its two front windows only one showed a light, and that through a
+      blind. Tommy sidled round the house in the hope that the small east window
+      would be more hospitable, and just as he saw that it was blindless
+      something that had been crouching rose between him and it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let go!" he cried, feeling the Painted Lady's talons in his neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tommy!" was the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's you, Elspeth?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it you, Tommy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of course. Whisht!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But say it is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, Tommy, I'm so fleid!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew her farther from the window and told her it had all been a wicked
+      lie, and she was so glad that she forgot to chide him, but he denounced
+      himself, and he was better than Elspeth even at that. However, when he
+      learned what had brought her here he dried his eyes and skulked to the
+      door again and brought back her belongings, and then she wanted him to
+      come away at once. But the window fascinated him; he knew he should never
+      find courage to come here again, and he glided toward it, signing to
+      Elspeth to accompany him. They were now too near Double Dykes for speaking
+      to be safe, but he tapped his head as a warning to her to remove her hat,
+      for a woman's head-gear always reaches a window in front of its wearer,
+      and he touched his cold iron and passed it to her as if it were a
+      snuff-mull. Thus fortified, they approached the window fearfully, holding
+      hands and stepping high, like a couple in a minuet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI &mdash; THE PAINTED LADY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It had been the ordinary dwelling room of the unknown poor, the mean
+      little "end"&mdash;ah, no, no, the noblest chamber in the annals of the
+      Scottish nation. Here on a hard anvil has its character been fashioned and
+      its history made at rush-lights and its God ever most prominent. Always
+      within reach of hands which trembled with reverence as they turned its
+      broad page could be found the Book that is compensation for all things,
+      and that was never more at home than on bare dressers and worm-eaten
+      looms. If you were brought up in that place and have forgotten it, there
+      is no more hope for you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But though still recalling its past, the kitchen into which Tommy and
+      Elspeth peered was trying successfully to be something else. The
+      plate-rack had been a fixture, and the coffin-bed and the wooden bole, or
+      board in the wall, with its round hole through which you thrust your hand
+      when you wanted salt, and instead of a real mantelpiece there was a quaint
+      imitation one painted over the fireplace. There were some pieces of
+      furniture too, such as were usual in rooms of the kind, but most of them,
+      perhaps in ignorance, had been put to novel uses, like the plate-rack,
+      where the Painted Lady kept her many pretty shoes instead of her crockery.
+      Gossip said she had a looking-glass of such prodigious size that it stood
+      on the floor, and Tommy nudged Elspeth to signify, "There it is!" Other
+      nudges called her attention to the carpet, the spinet, a chair that rocked
+      like a cradle, and some smaller oddities, of which the queerest was a
+      monster velvet glove hanging on the nail that by rights belonged to the
+      bellows. The Painted Lady always put on this glove before she would touch
+      the coals, which diverted Tommy, who knew that common folk lift coals with
+      their bare hands while society uses the fringe of its second petticoat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It might have been a boudoir through which a kitchen and bedroom had
+      wandered, spilling by the way, but though the effect was tawdry,
+      everything had been rubbed clean by that passionate housewife, Grizel. She
+      was on her knees at present ca'ming the hearth-stone a beautiful blue, and
+      sometimes looking round to address her mother, who was busy among her
+      plants and cut flowers. Surely they were know-nothings who called this
+      woman silly, and blind who said she painted. It was a little face all of
+      one color, dingy pale, not chubby, but retaining the soft contours of a
+      child's face, and the features were singularly delicate. She was clad in a
+      soft gray, and her figure was of the smallest; there was such an air of
+      youth about her that Tommy thought she could become a girl again by merely
+      shortening her frock, not such a girl as gaunt Grizel, though, who would
+      have looked a little woman had she let her frock down. In appearance
+      indeed the Painted Lady resembled her plain daughter not at all, but in
+      manner in a score of ways, as when she rocked her arms joyously at sight
+      of a fresh bud or tossed her brown hair from her brows with a pretty
+      gesture that ought, God knows, to have been for some man to love. The
+      watchers could not hear what she and Grizel said, but evidently it was
+      pleasant converse, and mother and child, happy in each other's company,
+      presented a picture as sweet as it is common, though some might have
+      complained that they were doing each other's work. But the Painted Lady's
+      delight in flowers was a scandal in Thrums, where she would stand her
+      ground if the roughest boy approached her with roses in his hand, and she
+      gave money for them, which was one reason why the people thought her daft.
+      She was tending her flowers now with experienced eye, smelling them
+      daintily, and every time she touched them it was a caress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The watchers retired into the field to compare impressions, and Elspeth
+      said emphatically, "I like her, Tommy, I'm not none fleid at her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy had liked her also, but being a man he said, "You forget that she's
+      an ill one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She looks as if she didna ken that hersel'," answered Elspeth, and these
+      words of a child are the best picture we can hope to get of the Painted
+      Lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On their return to the window, they saw that Grizel had finished her
+      ca'ming and was now sitting on the floor nursing a doll. Tommy had not
+      thought her the kind to shut her eyes to the truth about dolls, but she
+      was hugging this one passionately. Without its clothes it was of the
+      nine-pin formation, and the painted eyes and mouth had been incorporated
+      long since in loving Grizel's system; but it became just sweet as she
+      swaddled it in a long yellow frock and slipped its bullet head into a duck
+      of a pink bonnet. These articles of attire and the others that you begin
+      with had all been made by Grizel herself out of the colored tissue-paper
+      that shopkeepers wrap round brandy bottles. The doll's name was Griselda,
+      and it was exactly six months old, and Grizel had found it, two years ago,
+      lying near the Coffin Brig, naked and almost dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was making the usual fuss at having its clothes put on, and Grizel had
+      to tell it frequently that of all the babies&mdash;which shamed it now and
+      again, but kept her so occupied that she forgot her mother. The Painted
+      Lady had sunk into the rocking-chair, and for a time she amused herself
+      with it, but by and by it ceased to rock, and as she sat looking straight
+      before her a change came over her face. Elspeth's hand tightened its
+      clutch on Tommy's; the Painted Lady had begun to talk to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not speaking aloud, for evidently Grizel, whose back was toward
+      her, heard nothing, but her lips moved and she nodded her head and smiled
+      and beckoned, apparently to the wall, and the childish face rapidly became
+      vacant and foolish. This mood passed, and now she was sitting very still,
+      only her head moving, as she looked in apprehension and perplexity this
+      way and that, like one who no longer knew where she was, nor who was the
+      child by the fire. When at last Grizel turned and observed the change, she
+      may have sighed, but there was no fear in her face; the fear was on the
+      face of her mother, who shrank from her in unmistakable terror and would
+      have screamed at a harsh word or a hasty movement. Grizel seemed to know
+      this, for she remained where she was, and first she nodded and smiled
+      reassuringly to her mother, and then, leaning forward, took her hand and
+      stroked it softly and began to talk. She had laid aside her doll, and with
+      the act become a woman again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Painted Lady was soothed, but her bewildered look came and went, as if
+      she only caught at some explanation Grizel was making, to lose it in a
+      moment. Yet she seemed most eager to be persuaded. The little watchers at
+      this queer play saw that Grizel was saying things to her which she
+      repeated docilely and clung to and lost hold of. Often Grizel illustrated
+      her words by a sort of pantomime, as when she sat down on a chair and
+      placed the doll in her lap, then sat down on her mother's lap; and when
+      she had done this several times Tommy took Elspeth into the field to say
+      to her:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you no see? She means as she is the Painted Lady's bairn, just the
+      same as the doll is her bairn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the Painted Lady needed to be told this every minute she was daft
+      indeed, and Elspeth could peer no longer at the eerie spectacle. To leave
+      Tommy, however, was equally difficult, so she crouched at his feet when he
+      returned to the window, drawn there hastily by the sound of music.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Painted Lady could play on the spinet beautifully, but Grizel could
+      not play, though it was she who was trying to play now. She was running
+      her fingers over the notes, producing noises from them, while she swayed
+      grotesquely on her seat and made comic faces. Her object was to capture
+      her mother's mind, and she succeeded for a short time, but soon it floated
+      away from all control, and the Painted Lady fell a-shaking violently. Then
+      Grizel seemed to be alarmed, and her arms rocked despairingly, but she
+      went to her mother and took loving hold of her, and the woman clung to her
+      child in a way pitiful to see. She was on Grizel's knee now, but she still
+      shivered as if in a deadly chill, and her feet rattled on the floor, and
+      her arms against the sides of the chair. Grizel pinned the trembling arms
+      with her own and twisted her legs round her mother's, and still the
+      Painted Lady's tremors shook them both, so that to Tommy they were as two
+      people wrestling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shivering slowly lessened and at last ceased, but this seemed to make
+      Grizel no less unhappy. To her vehement attempt to draw her mother's
+      attention she got no response; the Painted Lady was hearkening intently
+      for some sound other than Grizel's voice, and only once did she look at
+      her child. Then it was with cruel, ugly eyes, and at the same moment she
+      shoved Grizel aside so viciously that it was almost a blow. Grizel sat
+      down sorrowfully beside her doll, like one aware that she could do no
+      more, and her mother at once forgot her. What was she listening for so
+      eagerly? Was it for the gallop of a horse? Tommy strained his ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Elspeth&mdash;speak low&mdash;do you hear anything?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No; I'm ower fleid to listen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Whisht! do you no hear a horse?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, everything's terrible still. Do you hear a horse?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I&mdash;I think I do, but far awa'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His imagination was on fire. Did he hear a distant galloping or did he
+      only make himself hear it? He had bent his head, and Elspeth, looking
+      affrighted into his face, whispered, "I hear it too, oh, Tommy, so do I!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Painted Lady had heard it. She kissed her hand toward the Den
+      several times, and each time Tommy seemed to hear that distant galloping.
+      All the sweetness had returned to her face now, and with it a surging joy,
+      and she rocked her arms exultantly, but quickly controlled them lest
+      Grizel should see. For evidently Grizel must be cheated, and so the
+      Painted Lady became very sly. She slipped off her shoes to be able to make
+      her preparations noiselessly, and though at all other times her face
+      expressed the rapture of love, when she glanced at her child it was
+      suspiciously and with a gleam of hatred. Her preparations were for going
+      out. She was long at the famous mirror, and when she left it her hair was
+      elaborately dressed and her face so transformed that first Tommy exclaimed
+      "Bonny!" and then corrected himself with a scornful "Paint!" On her feet
+      she put a foolish little pair of red shoes, on her head a hat too gay with
+      flowers, and across her shoulders a flimsy white shawl at which the night
+      air of Thrums would laugh. Her every movement was light and cautious and
+      accompanied by side-glances at Grizel, who occasionally looked at her,
+      when the Painted Lady immediately pretended to be tending her plants
+      again. She spoke to Grizel sweetly to deceive her, and shot baleful
+      glances at her next moment. Tommy saw that Grizel had taken up her doll
+      once more and was squeezing it to her breast. She knew very well what was
+      going on behind her back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Tommy took to his heels, Elspeth after him. He had seen the
+      Painted Lady coming on her tip-toes to the window. They saw the window
+      open and a figure in a white shawl creep out of it, as she had doubtless
+      escaped long ago by another window when the door was barred. They lost
+      sight of her at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What will Grizel do now?" Tommy whispered, and he would have returned to
+      his watching place, but Elspeth pointed to the window. Grizel was there
+      closing it, and next moment the lamp was extinguished. They heard a key
+      turn in the lock, and presently Grizel, carrying warm wraps, passed very
+      near them and proceeded along the double dykes, not anxious apparently to
+      keep her mother in view, but slowly, as if she knew where to find her. She
+      went into the Den, where Tommy dared not follow her, but he listened at
+      the stile and in the awful silence he fancied he heard the neighing of a
+      horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next time he met Grizel he was yearning to ask her how she spent that
+      night, but he knew she would not answer; it would be a long time before
+      she gave him her confidence again. He offered her his piece of cold iron,
+      however, and explained why he carried it, whereupon she flung it across
+      the road, crying, "You horrid boy, do you think I am frightened at my
+      mamma!" But when he was out of sight she came back and slipped the cold
+      iron into her pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII &mdash; IN WHICH TOMMY SOLVES THE WOMAN PROBLEM
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Pity made Elspeth want to like the Painted Lady's child now, but her own
+      rules of life were all from a book never opened by Grizel, who made her
+      religion for herself and thought God a swear; she also despised Elspeth
+      for being so dependent on Tommy, and Elspeth knew it. The two great
+      subjects being barred thus, it was not likely that either girl, despite
+      some attempts on Elspeth's part, should find out the best that was in the
+      other, without which friendship has no meaning, and they would have gone
+      different ways had not Tommy given an arm to each. He, indeed, had as
+      little in common with Grizel, for most conspicuous of his traits was the
+      faculty of stepping into other people's shoes and remaining there until he
+      became someone else; his individuality consisted in having none, while she
+      could only be herself and was without tolerance for those who were
+      different; he had at no time in his life the least desire to make other
+      persons like himself, but if they were not like Grizel she rocked her arms
+      and cried, "Why, why, why?" which is the mark of the "womanly" woman. But
+      his tendency to be anyone he was interested in implied enormous sympathy
+      (for the time being), and though Grizel spurned his overtures, this only
+      fired his pride of conquest. We can all get whatever we want if we are
+      quite determined to have it (though it be a king's daughter), and in the
+      end Tommy vanquished Grizel. How? By offering to let her come into Aaron's
+      house and wash it and dust it and ca'm it, "just as if you were our
+      mother," an invitation she could not resist. To you this may seem an easy
+      way, but consider the penetration he showed in thinking of it. It came to
+      him one day when he saw her lift the smith's baby out of the gutter, and
+      hug it with a passionate delight in babies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She's so awid to do it," he said basely to Elspeth, "that we needna let
+      on how much we want it done." And he also mentioned her eagerness to Aaron
+      as a reason why she should be allowed to do it for nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Aaron to hold out against her admittance would have been to defraud
+      himself, for she transformed his house. When she saw the brass lining of
+      the jelly-pan discolored, and that the stockings hanging from the string
+      beneath the mantelpiece had given way where the wearers were hardest on
+      them; when she found dripping adhering to a cold frying-pan instead of in
+      a "pig," and the pitcher leaking and the carrot-grater stopped&mdash;when
+      these and similar discoveries were made by Grizel, was it a squeal of
+      horror she gave that such things should be, or a cry of rapture because to
+      her had fallen the task of setting them right?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She just made a jump for the besom," was Tommy's graphic description of
+      how it all began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You should have seen Grizel on the hoddy-table knocking nails into the
+      wall. The hoddy-table is so called because it goes beneath the larger one
+      at night, like a chicken under its mother, and Grizel, with the nails in
+      her mouth, used them up so quickly that you would have sworn she swallowed
+      half of them; yet she rocked her arms because she could not be at all four
+      walls at once. She rushed about the room until she was dizzy, and Tommy
+      knew the moment to cry "Grip her, she'll tumble!" when he and Elspeth
+      seized her and put her on a stool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is on the hoddy-table that you bake and iron. "There's not a
+      baking-board in the house," Elspeth explained. "There is!" cried Grizel,
+      there and then converting a drawer into one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between her big bannocks she made baby ones, for no better reason than
+      that she was so fond of babies, and she kissed the baby ones and said,
+      "Oh, the loves, they are just sweet!" and she felt for them when Tommy
+      took a bite. She could go so quickly between the board and the girdle that
+      she was always at one end of the course or the other, but never gave you
+      time to say at which end, and on the limited space round the fire she
+      could balance such a number of bannocks that they were as much a wonder as
+      the Lord's prayer written on a sixpence. Such a vigilant eye she kept on
+      them, too, that they dared not fall. Yet she had never been taught to
+      bake; a good-natured neighbor had now and again allowed her to look on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then her ironing! Even Aaron opened his mouth on this subject, Blinder
+      being his confidant. "I thought there was a smell o' burning," he said,
+      "and so I went butt the house; but man, as soon as my een lighted on her I
+      minded of my mother at the same job. The crittur was so busy with her work
+      that she looked as if, though the last trumpet had blawn, she would just
+      have cried, 'I canna come till my ironing's done!' Ay, I went ben without
+      a word."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But best of all was to see Grizel "redding up" on a Saturday afternoon.
+      Where were Tommy and Elspeth then? They were shut up in the coffin-bed to
+      be out of the way, and could scarce have told whether they fled thither or
+      were wrapped into it by her energetic arms. Even Aaron dared not cross the
+      floor until it was sanded. "I believe," he said, trying to jest, "you
+      would like to shut me up in the bed too!" "I should just love it," she
+      cried, eagerly; "will you go?" It is an inferior woman who has a sense of
+      humor when there is a besom in her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus began great days to Grizel, "sweet" she called them, for she had many
+      of her mother's words, and a pretty way of emphasizing them with her plain
+      face that turned them all into superlatives. But though Tommy and Elspeth
+      were her friends now, her mouth shut obstinately the moment they mentioned
+      the Painted Lady; she regretted ever having given Tommy her confidence on
+      that subject, and was determined not to do so again. He did not dare tell
+      her that he had once been at the east window of her home, but often he and
+      Elspeth spoke to each other of that adventure, and sometimes they woke in
+      their garret bed thinking they heard the horseman galloping by. Then they
+      crept closer to each other, and wondered whether Grizel was cosey in her
+      bed or stalking an eerie figure in the Den.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aaron said little, but he was drawn to the girl, who had not the
+      self-consciousness of Tommy and Elspeth in his presence, and sometimes he
+      slipped a penny into her hand. The pennies were not spent, they were
+      hoarded for the fair, or Muckle Friday, or Muckley, great day of the year
+      in Thrums. If you would know how Tommy was making ready for this mighty
+      festival, listen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of his sources of income was the <i>Mentor</i>, a famous London weekly
+      paper, which seemed to visitors to be taken in by every person of position
+      in Thrums. It was to be seen not only in parlors, but on the armchair at
+      the Jute Bank, in the gauger's gig, in the Spittal factor's dog-cart, on a
+      shoemaker's form, protruding from Dr. McQueen's tail pocket and from Mr.
+      Duthie's oxter pocket, on Cathro's school-desk, in the Rev. Mr. Dishart's
+      study, in half a dozen farms. Miss Ailie compelled her little servant,
+      Gavinia, to read the <i>Mentor</i>, and stood over her while she did it;
+      the phrase, "this week's," meant this week's <i>Mentor</i>. Yet the secret
+      must be told: only one copy of the paper came to Thrums weekly; it was
+      subscribed for by the whole reading public between them, and by Miss
+      Ailie's influence Tommy had become the boy who carried it from house to
+      house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This brought him a penny a week, but so heavy were his incidental expenses
+      that he could have saved little for the Muckley had not another
+      organization given him a better chance. It was a society, newly started,
+      for helping the deserving poor; they had to subscribe not less than a
+      penny weekly to it, and at the end of the year each subscriber was to be
+      given fuel, etc., to the value of double what he or she had put in. "The
+      three Ps" was a nickname given to the society by Dr. McQueen, because it
+      claimed to distribute "Peats and Potatoes with Propriety," but he was one
+      of its heartiest supporters nevertheless. The history of this society in
+      the first months of its existence not only shows how Tommy became a
+      moneyed man, but gives a glimpse into the character of those it benefited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ailie was treasurer, and the pennies were to be brought to her on
+      Monday evenings between the hours of seven and eight. The first Monday
+      evening found her ready in the school-room, in her hand the famous pencil
+      that wrote red with the one end and blue with the other; by her side her
+      assistant, Mr. T. Sandys, a pen balanced on his ear. For a whole hour did
+      they wait, but though many of the worthiest poor had been enrolled as
+      members, the few who appeared with their pennies were notoriously
+      riff-raff. At eight Miss Ailie disconsolately sent Tommy home, but he was
+      back in five minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's a mask of them," he told her, excitedly, "hanging about, but
+      feared to come in because the others would see them. They're ashamed to
+      have it kent that they belong to a charity society, and Meggy Robbie is
+      wandering round the Dovecot wi' her penny wrapped in a paper, and Watty
+      Rattray and Ronny-On is walking up and down the brae pretending they dinna
+      ken one another, and auld Connacher's Jeanie Ann says she has been four
+      times round the town waiting for Kitty Elshioner to go away, and there's a
+      one-leggit man hodding in the ditch, and Tibbie Birse is out wi' a lantern
+      counting them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ailie did not know what to do. "Here's Jeanie Ann's penny," Tommy
+      continued, opening his hand, "and this is three bawbees frae Kitty
+      Elshioner and you and me is no to tell a soul they've joined."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A furtive tapping was heard at the door. It was Ronny-On, who had skulked
+      forward with twopence, but Gavinia answered his knock, so he just said,
+      "Ay, Gavinia, it's yoursel'. Well, I'll be stepping," and would have
+      retired had not Miss Ailie caught him. Even then he said, "Three bawbees
+      is to you to lay by, and one bawbee to Gavinia no to tell."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To next Monday evening Miss Ailie now looked with apprehension, but Tommy
+      lay awake that night until, to use a favorite crow of his, he "found a
+      way." He borrowed the school-mistress's blue-and-red pencil and sought the
+      houses of the sensitive poor with the following effect. One sample will
+      suffice; take him at the door of Meggy Robbie in the West Muir, which he
+      flung open with the effrontery of a tax-collector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're a three P," he said, with a wave of his pencil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm no sic thing!" cried the old lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It winna do, woman," Tommy said sternly. "Miss Ailie telled me you paid
+      in your first penny on the chap of ten." He wetted the pencil on his
+      tongue to show that it was vain to trifle with him, and Meggy bowed her
+      head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It'll be through the town that I've joined," she moaned, but Tommy
+      explained that he was there to save her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm willing to come to your house," he said, "and collect the money every
+      week, and not a soul will I tell except the committee."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Kitty Elshioner would see you coming," said Meggy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, no, I'll creep yont the hedge and climb the hen-house."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But it would be a' found out at any rate," she remembered, "when I go for
+      the peats and things at Hogmanay."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It needna be," eagerly replied Tommy. "I'll bring them to you in a barrow
+      in the dead o' night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Could you?" she cried passionately, and he promised he would, and it may
+      be mentioned here that he did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what for yoursel'?" she inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A bawbee," he said, "the night afore the Muckley."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bargain was made, but before he could get away, "Tell me, laddie,"
+      said Meggy, coaxingly, "has Kitty Elshioner joined?" They were all as
+      curious to know who had joined as they were anxious to keep their own
+      membership a secret; but Tommy betrayed none, at least none who agreed to
+      his proposal. There were so many of these that on the night before the
+      Muckley he had thirteen pence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you was doing good all the time you was making the thirteen pence,"
+      Elspeth said, fondly. "I believe that was the reason you did it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe it was!" Tommy exclaimed. He had not thought of this before,
+      but it was easy to him to believe anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII &mdash; THE MUCKLEY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Every child in Thrums went to bed on the night before the Muckley hugging
+      a pirly, or, as the vulgar say, a money-box; and all the pirlies were
+      ready for to-morrow, that is to say, the mouths of them had been widened
+      with gully knives by owners now so skilful at the jerk which sends their
+      contents to the floor that pirlies they were no longer. "Disgorge!" was
+      the universal cry, or, in the vernacular, "Out you come, you sweer
+      deevils!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not a coin but had its history, not a boy who was unable to pick out his
+      own among a hundred. The black one came from the 'Sosh, the bent lad he
+      got for carrying in Ronny-On's sticks. Oh michty me, sure as death he had
+      nearly forgotten the one with the warts on it. Which to spend first? The
+      goldy one? Na faags, it was ower ill to come by. The scartit one? No, no,
+      it was a lucky. Well, then, the one found in the rat's hole? (That was a
+      day!) Ay, dagont, ay, we'll make the first blatter with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Tommy's first Muckley, and the report that he had thirteen pence
+      brought him many advisers about its best investment. Even Corp Shiach
+      (five pence) suspended hostilities for this purpose. "Mind this," he said
+      solemnly, "there's none o' the candies as sucks so long as Californy's
+      Teuch and Tasty. Other kinds may be sweeter, but Teuch and Tasty lasts the
+      longest, and what a grip it has! It pulls out your teeth!" Corp seemed to
+      think that this was a recommendation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm nane sure o' Teuch and Tasty," Birkie said. "If you dinna keep a
+      watch on it, it slips ower when you're swallowing your spittle."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then you should tie a string to it," suggested Tommy, who was thought
+      more of from that hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Beware of Pickpockets!</i> Had it not been for placards with this
+      glorious announcement (it is the state's first printed acknowledgment that
+      boys and girls form part of the body politic) you might have thought that
+      the night before the Muckley was absurdly like other nights. Not a show
+      had arrived, not a strange dog, no romantic figures were wandering the
+      streets in search of lodgings, no stands had sprung up in the square. You
+      could pass hours in pretending to fear that when the morning came there
+      would be no fairyland. And all the time you <i>knew</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About ten o'clock Ballingall's cat was observed washing its face, a
+      deliberate attempt to bring on rain. It was immediately put to death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy and Elspeth had agreed to lie awake all night; if Tommy nipped
+      Elspeth, Elspeth would nip Tommy. Other children had made the same
+      arrangement, though the experienced ones were aware that it would fail. If
+      it was true that all the witches were dead, then the streets of stands and
+      shows and gaming-tables and shooting-galleries were erected by human
+      hands, and it followed that were you to listen through the night you must
+      hear the hammers. But always in the watches the god of the Muckley came
+      unseen and glued your eyes, as if with Teuch and Tasty, and while you
+      slept&mdash;Up you woke with a start. What was it you were to mind as soon
+      as you woke? Listen! That's a drum beating! It's the Muckley! They are all
+      here! It has begun! Oh, michty, michty, michty, whaur's my breeks?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Tommy, with Elspeth and Grizel, set off excitedly for the town, the
+      country folk were already swarming in. The Monypenny road was thick with
+      them, braw loons in blue bonnets with red bobs to them, tartan waistcoats,
+      scarves of every color, woollen shirts as gay, and the strutting wearers
+      in two minds&mdash;whether to take off the scarf to display the shirt, or
+      hide the shirt and trust to the scarf. Came lassies, too, in wincey
+      bodices they were like to burst through, and they were listening
+      apprehensively as they ploughed onward for a tearing at the seams. There
+      were red-headed lasses, yellow-chy-headed and black-headed, blue-shawled
+      and red-shawled lasses; boots on every one of them, stockings almost as
+      common, the skirt kilted up for the present, but down it should go when
+      they were in the thick of things, and then it must take care of itself.
+      All were solemn and sheepish as yet, but wait a bit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first-known face our three met was Corp. He was only able to sign to
+      them, because Californy's specialty had already done its work and glued
+      his teeth together. He was off to the smithy to be melted, but gave them
+      to understand that though awkward it was glorious. Then came Birkie, who
+      had sewn up the mouths of his pockets, all but a small slit in each, as a
+      precaution against pickpockets, and was now at his own request being held
+      upside down by the Haggerty-Taggertys on the chance that a halfpenny which
+      had disappeared mysteriously might fall out. A more tragic figure was
+      Francie Crabb (one and seven pence), who, like a mad, mad thing, had taken
+      all his money to the fair at once. In ten minutes he had bought fourteen
+      musical instruments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy and party had not yet reached the celebrated corner of the west town
+      end where the stands began, but they were near it, and he stopped to give
+      Grizel and Elspeth his final instructions: "(1) Keep your money in your
+      purse, and your purse in your hand, and your hand in your pocket; (2) if
+      you lose me, I'll give Shovel's whistle, and syne you maun squeeze and
+      birse your way back to me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now then, are you ready? Bang! They were in it. Strike up, ye fiddlers;
+      drums, break; tooters, fifers, at it for your lives; trumpets, blow;
+      bagpipes, skirl; music-boxes, all together now&mdash;Tommy has arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even before he had seen Thrums, except with his mother's eye, Tommy knew
+      that the wise begin the Muckley by measuring its extent. That the square
+      and adjoining wynds would be crammed was a law of nature, but boyhood drew
+      imaginary lines across the Roods, the west town end, the east town end,
+      and the brae, and if the stands did not reach these there had been
+      retrogression. Tommy found all well in two quarters, got a nasty shock on
+      the brae, but medicine for it in the Roods; on the whole, yelled a hundred
+      children, by way of greeting to each other, a better Muckley than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From those who loved them best, the more notable Muckleys got distinctive
+      names for convenience of reference. As shall be ostentatiously shown in
+      its place, there was a Muckley called (and by Corp Shiach, too) after
+      Tommy, but this, his first, was dubbed Sewster's Muckley, in honor of a
+      seamstress who hanged herself that day in the Three-cornered Wood. Poor
+      little sewster, she had known joyous Muckleys too, but now she was up in
+      the Three-cornered Wood hanging herself, aged nineteen. I know nothing
+      more of her, except that in her maiden days when she left the house her
+      mother always came to the door to look proudly after her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How to describe the scene, when owing to the throng a boy could only peer
+      at it between legs or through the crook of a woman's arm? Shovel would
+      have run up ploughmen to get his bird's-eye view, and he could have told
+      Tommy what he saw, and Tommy could have made a picture of it in his mind,
+      every figure ten feet high. But perhaps to be lost in it was best. You had
+      but to dive and come up anywhere to find something amazing; you fell over
+      a box of jumping-jacks into a new world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everyone to his taste. If you want Tommy's sentiments, here they are,
+      condensed: "The shows surpass everything else on earth. Four streets of
+      them in the square! The best is the menagerie, because there is the
+      loudest roaring there. Kick the caravans and you increase the roaring.
+      Admission, however, prohibitive (threepence). More economical to stand
+      outside the show of the 'Mountain Maid and the Shepherd's Bride' and watch
+      the merriman saying funny things to the monkey. Take care you don't get in
+      front of the steps, else you will be pressed up by those behind and have
+      to pay before you have decided that you want to go in. When you fling
+      pennies at the Mountain Maid and the Shepherd's Bride they stop
+      play-acting and scramble for them. Go in at night when there are drunk
+      ploughmen to fling pennies. The Fat Wife with the Golden Locks lets you
+      put your fingers in her arms, but that is soon over. 'The Slave-driver and
+      his Victims.' Not worth the money; they are not blooding. To Jerusalem and
+      Back in a Jiffy. This is a swindle. You just keek through holes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Elspeth was of a different mind. She liked To Jerusalem and Back best,
+      and gave the Slave-driver and his Victims a penny to be Christians. The
+      only show she disliked was the wax-work, where was performed the "Tragedy
+      of Tiffano and the Haughty Princess." Tiffano loved the woodman's
+      daughter, and so he would not have the Haughty Princess, and so she got a
+      magician to turn him into a pumpkin, and then she ate him. What distressed
+      Elspeth was that Tiffano could never get to heaven now, and all the
+      consolation Tommy, doing his best, could give her was, "He could go, no
+      doubt he could go, but he would have to take the Haughty Princess wi' him,
+      and he would be sweer to do that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grizel reflected: "If I had a whip like the one the Slave-driver has
+      shouldn't I lash the boys who hoot my mamma! I wish I could turn boys into
+      pumpkins. The Mountain Maid wore a beautiful muslin with gold lace, but
+      she does not wash her neck."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lastly, let Corp have his say: "I looked at the outside of the shows, but
+      always landed back at Californy's stand. Sucking is better nor near
+      anything. The Teuch and Tasty is stickier than ever. I have lost twa
+      teeth. The Mountain Maid is biding all night at Tibbie Birse's, and I went
+      in to see her. She had a bervie and a boiled egg to her tea. She likes her
+      eggs saft wi' a lick of butter in them. The Fat Wife is the one I like
+      best. She's biding wi' Shilpit Kaytherine on the Tanage Brae. She weighs
+      Jeems and Kaytherine and the sma' black swine. She had an ingin to her
+      tea. The Slave-driver's a fushinless body. One o' the Victims gives him
+      his licks. They a' bide in the caravan. You can stand on the wheel and
+      keek in. They had herrings wi' the rans to their tea. I cut a hole in
+      Jerusalem and Back, and there was no Jerusalem there. The man as ocht
+      Jerusalem greets because the Fair Circassian winna take him. He is biding
+      a' night wi' Blinder. He likes a dram in his tea."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth's money lasted till four o'clock. For Aaron, almost the only man
+      in Thrums who shunned the revels that day, she bought a gingerbread house;
+      and the miraculous powder which must be taken on a sixpence was to make
+      Blinder see again, but unfortunately he forgot about putting it on the
+      sixpence. And of course there was something for a certain boy. Grizel had
+      completed her purchases by five o'clock, when Tommy was still heavy with
+      threepence halfpenny. They included a fluffy pink shawl, she did not say
+      for whom, but the Painted Lady wore it afterwards, and for herself another
+      doll.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But that doll's leg is broken," Tommy pointed out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That was why I bought it," she said warmly, "I feel so sorry for it, the
+      darling," and she carried it carefully so that the poor thing might suffer
+      as little pain as possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twice they rushed home for hasty meals, and were back so quickly that
+      Tommy's shadow strained a muscle in turning with him. Night came on, and
+      from a hundred strings stretched along stands and shows there now hung
+      thousands of long tin things like trumpets. One burning paper could set a
+      dozen of these ablaze, and no sooner were they lit than a wind that had
+      been biding its time rushed in like the merriman, making the lamps swing
+      on their strings, so that the flaring lights embraced, and from a distance
+      Thrums seemed to be on fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even Grizel was willing to hold Tommy's hand now, and the three could only
+      move this way and that as the roaring crowd carried them. They were not
+      looking at the Muckley, they were part of it, and at last Thrums was all
+      Tommy's fancy had painted it. This intoxicated him, so that he had to
+      scream at intervals, "We're here, Elspeth, I tell you, we're here!" and he
+      became pugnacious and asked youths twice his size whether they denied that
+      he was here, and if so, would they come on. In this frenzy he was seen by
+      Miss Ailie, who had stolen out in a veil to look for Gavinia, but just as
+      she was about to reprove him, dreadful men asked her was she in search of
+      a lad, whereupon she fled home and barred the door, and later in the
+      evening warned Gavinia, through the key-hole, taking her for a roystering
+      blade, that there were policemen in the house, to which the astounding
+      reply of Gavinia, then aged twelve, was, "No sic luck."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the darkness, too, crept into the Muckley certain devils in the color
+      of the night who spoke thickly and rolled braw lads in the mire, and egged
+      on friends to fight and cast lewd thoughts into the minds of the women. At
+      first the men had been bashful swains. To the women's "Gie me my faring,
+      Jock," they had replied, "Wait, Jean, till I'm fee'd," but by night most
+      had got their arles, with a dram above it, and he who could only guffaw at
+      Jean a few hours ago had her round the waist now, and still an arm free
+      for rough play with other kimmers. The Jeans were as boisterous as the
+      Jocks, giving them leer for leer, running from them with a giggle, waiting
+      to be caught and rudely kissed. Grand, patient, long-suffering fellows
+      these men were, up at five, summer and winter, foddering their horses,
+      maybe hours before there would be food for themselves, miserably paid,
+      housed like cattle, and when the rheumatism seized them, liable to be
+      flung aside like a broken graip. As hard was the life of the women: coarse
+      food, chaff beds, damp clothes, their portion; their sweethearts in the
+      service of masters who were reluctant to fee a married man. Is it to be
+      wondered that these lads who could be faithful unto death drank soddenly
+      on their one free day, that these girls, starved of opportunities for
+      womanliness, of which they could make as much as the finest lady,
+      sometimes woke after a Muckley to wish that they might wake no more? Our
+      three brushed shoulders with the devils that had been let loose, but
+      hardly saw them; they heard them, but did not understand their tongue. The
+      eight-o'clock bell had rung long since, and though the racket was as great
+      as ever, it was only because every reveller left now made the noise of
+      two. Mothers were out fishing for their bairns. The Haggerty-Taggertys had
+      straggled home hoarse as crows; every one of them went to bed that night
+      with a stocking round his throat. Of Monypenny boys, Tommy could find none
+      in the square but Corp, who, with another tooth missing, had been going
+      about since six o'clock with his pockets hanging out, as a sign that all
+      was over. An awkward silence had fallen on the trio; the reason, that
+      Tommy had only threepence left and the smallest of them cost threepence.
+      The reference of course is to the wondrous gold-paper packets of sweets
+      (not unlike crackers in appearance) which are only seen at the Muckley,
+      and are what every girl claims of her lad or lads. Now, Tommy had vowed to
+      Elspeth&mdash;But he had also said to Grizel&mdash;In short, how could he
+      buy for both with threepence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grizel, as the stranger, ought to get&mdash;But he knew Elspeth too well
+      to believe that she would dry her eyes with that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth being his sister&mdash;But he had promised Grizel, and she had
+      been so ill brought up that she said nasty things when you broke your
+      word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gold packet was bought. That is it sticking out of Tommy's inside
+      pocket. The girls saw it and knew what was troubling him, but not a word
+      was spoken now between the three. They set off for home self-consciously,
+      Tommy the least agitated on the whole, because he need not make up his
+      mind for another ten minutes. But he wished Grizel would not look at him
+      sideways and then rock her arms in irritation. They passed many
+      merry-makers homeward bound, many of them following a tortuous course, for
+      the Scottish toper gives way first in the legs, the Southron in the other
+      extremity, and thus between them could be constructed a man wholly sober
+      and another as drunk as Chloe. But though the highway clattered with many
+      feet, not a soul was in the double dykes, and at the easy end of that
+      formidable path Grizel came to a determined stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good-night," she said, with such a disdainful glance at Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not made up his mind yet, but he saw that it must be done now, and
+      to take a decisive step was always agony to him, though once taken it
+      ceased to trouble. To dodge it for another moment he said, weakly: "Let's&mdash;let's
+      sit down a whiley on the dyke."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Grizel, while coveting the packet, because she had never got a present
+      in her life, would not shilly-shally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you to give it to Elspeth?" she asked, with the horrid directness
+      that is so trying to an intellect like Tommy's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "N-no," he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To Grizel?" cried Elspeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "N-no," he said again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was an undignified moment for a great boy, but the providence that
+      watched over Tommy until it tired of him came to his aid in the nick of
+      time. It took the form of the Painted Lady, who appeared suddenly out of
+      the gloom of the Double Dykes. Two of the children jumped, and the third
+      clenched her little fists to defend her mamma if Tommy cast a word at her.
+      But he did not; his mouth remained foolishly open. The Painted Lady had
+      been talking cheerfully to herself, but she drew back apprehensively, with
+      a look of appeal on her face, and then&mdash;and then Tommy "saw a way."
+      He handed her the gold packet, "It's to you," he said, "it's&mdash;it's
+      your Muckley!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment she was afraid to take it, but when she knew that this sweet
+      boy's gift was genuine, she fondled it and was greatly flattered, and
+      dropped him the quaintest courtesy and then looked defiantly at Grizel.
+      But Grizel did not take it from her. Instead, she flung her arms
+      impulsively round Tommy's neck, she was so glad, glad, glad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Tommy and Elspeth walked away to their home, Elspeth could hear him
+      breathing heavily, and occasionally he gave her a furtive glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Grizel needna have done that," she said, sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," replied Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But it was noble of you," she continued, squeezing his hand, "to give it
+      to the Painted Lady. Did you mean to give it to her a' the time?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, Elspeth!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But did you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, Elspeth!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's no you greeting, is it?" she asked, softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm near the greeting," he said truthfully, "but I'm no sure what about."
+      His sympathy was so easily aroused that he sometimes cried without exactly
+      knowing why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's because you're so good," Elspeth told him; but presently she said,
+      with a complete change of voice, "No, Grizel needna have done that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was a shameful thing to do," Tommy agreed, shaking his head. "But she
+      did it!" he added triumphantly; "you saw her do it, Elspeth!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you didna like it?" Elspeth asked, in terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, of course I didna like it, but&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what, Tommy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I liked her to like it," he admitted, and by and by he began to laugh
+      hysterically. "I'm no sure what I'm laughing at," he said, "but I think
+      it's at mysel'." He may have laughed at himself before, but this Muckley
+      is memorable as the occasion on which he first caught himself doing it.
+      The joke grew with the years, until sometimes he laughed in his most
+      emotional moments, suddenly seeing himself in his true light. But it had
+      become a bitter laugh by that time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX &mdash; CORP IS BROUGHT TO HEEL&mdash;GRIZEL DEFIANT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Corp Shiach was a bare-footed colt of a boy, of ungainly build, with a
+      nose so thick and turned up that it was a certificate of character, and
+      his hands were covered with warts, which he had a trick of biting till
+      they bled. Then he rubbed them on his trousers, which were the picturesque
+      part of him, for he was at present "serving" to the masons (he had "earned
+      his keep" since long before he could remember), and so wore the white or
+      yellow ducks which the dust of the quarry stains a rarer orange color than
+      is known elsewhere. The orange of the masons' trousers, the blue of the
+      hearthstones, these are the most beautiful colors to be seen in Thrums,
+      though of course Corp was unaware of it. He was really very good-natured,
+      and only used his fists freely because of imagination he had none, and
+      thinking made him sweat, and consequently the simplest way of proving his
+      case was to say, "I'll fight you." What might have been the issue of a
+      conflict between him and Shovel was a problem for Tommy to puzzle over.
+      Shovel was as quick as Corp was deliberate, and would have danced round
+      him, putting in unexpected ones, but if he had remained just one moment
+      too long within Corp's reach&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They nicknamed him Corp because he took fits, when he lay like one dead.
+      He was proud of his fits, was Corp, but they were a bother to him, too,
+      because he could make so little of them. They interested doctors and other
+      carriage folk, who came to his aunt's house to put their fingers into him,
+      and gave him sixpence, and would have given him more, but when they
+      pressed him to tell them what he remembered about his fits, he could only
+      answer dejectedly, "Not a damned thing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You might as well no have them ava," his wrathful aunt, with whom he
+      lived, would say, and she thrashed him until his size forbade it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon after the Muckley came word that the Lady of the Spittal was to be
+      brought to see Corp by Mr. Ogilvy, the school-master of Glen Quharity, and
+      at first Corp boasted of it, but as the appointed day drew near he became
+      uneasy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The worst o't," he said to anyone who would listen, "is that my auntie is
+      to be away frae hame, and so they'll put a' their questions to me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Haggerty-Taggertys and Birkie were so jealous that they said they were
+      glad <i>they</i> never had fits, but Tommy made no such pretence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, Corp, if I had thae fits of yours!" he exclaimed greedily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If they were mine to give awa'," replied Corp sullenly, "you could have
+      them and welcome." Grown meek in his trouble, he invited Tommy to speak
+      freely, with the result that his eyes were partially opened to the
+      superiority of that boy's attainments. Tommy told him a number of
+      interesting things to say to Mr. Ogilvy and the lady about his fits, about
+      how queer he felt just before they came on, and the visions he had while
+      he was lying stiff. But though the admiring Corp gave attentive ear, he
+      said hopelessly next day, "Not a dagont thing do I mind. When they
+      question me about my fits I'll just say I'm sometimes in them and
+      sometimes out o' them, and if they badger me more, I can aye kick."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy gave him a look that meant, "Fits are just wasted on you," and Corp
+      replied with another that meant, "I ken they are." Then they parted, one
+      of them to reflect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Corp," he said excitedly, when next they met, "has Mr. Ogilvy or the lady
+      ever come to see you afore?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had not, and Corp was able to swear that they did not even know him
+      by sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They dinna ken me either," said Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What does that matter?" asked Corp, but Tommy was too full to speak. He
+      had "found a way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady and Mr. Ogilvy found Corp such a success that the one gave him a
+      shilling and the other took down his reminiscences in a note-book. But if
+      you would hear of the rings of blue and white and yellow Corp saw, and of
+      the other extraordinary experiences he described himself as having when in
+      a fit, you need not search that note-book, for the page has been torn out.
+      Instead of making inquiries of Mr. Ogilvy, try any other dominie in the
+      district, Mr. Cathro, for instance, who delighted to tell the tale. This
+      of course was when it leaked out that Tommy had personated Corp, by
+      arrangement with the real Corp, who was listening in rapture beneath the
+      bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy, who played his part so well that he came out of it in a daze, had
+      Corp at heel from that hour. He told him what a rogue he had been in
+      London, and Corp cried admiringly, "Oh, you deevil! oh, you queer little
+      deevil!" and sometimes it was Elspeth who was narrator, and then Tommy's
+      noble acts were the subject; but still Corp's comment was "Oh, the deevil!
+      oh, the queer little deevil!" Elspeth was flattered by his hero-worship,
+      but his language shocked her, and after consulting Miss Ailie she advised
+      him to count twenty when he felt an oath coming, at the end of which
+      exercise the desire to swear would have passed away. Good-natured Corp
+      willingly promised to try this, but he was never hopeful, and as he
+      explained to Tommy, after a failure, "It just made me waur than ever, for
+      when I had counted the twenty I said a big Damn, thoughtful-like, and syne
+      out jumpit three little damns, like as if the first ane had cleckit in my
+      mouth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was fortunate that Elspeth liked Corp on the whole, for during the
+      three years now to be rapidly passed over, Tommy took delight in his
+      society, though he never treated him as an equal; Corp indeed did not
+      expect that, and was humbly grateful for what he got. In summer, fishing
+      was their great diversion. They would set off as early as four in the
+      morning, fishing wands in hand, and scour the world for trout, plodding
+      home in the gloaming with stones in their fishing-basket to deceive those
+      who felt its weight. In the long winter nights they liked best to listen
+      to Blinder's tales of the Thrums Jacobites, tales never put into writing,
+      but handed down from father to son, and proved true in the oddest of ways,
+      as by Blinder's trick of involuntarily holding out his hands to a fire
+      when he found himself near one, though he might be sweating to the shirt
+      and the time a July forenoon. "I make no doubt," he told them, "as I do
+      that because my forbear, Buchan Osler (called Buchan wi' the Haap after
+      the wars was ower), had to hod so lang frae the troopers, and them so
+      greedy for him that he daredna crawl to a fire once in an eight days."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Lord of the Spittal and handsome Captain Body (whose being "out" made
+      all the women anxious) marched through the Den, flapping their wings at
+      the head of a fearsome retinue, and the Thrums folk looked so glum at them
+      that gay Captain Body said he should kiss every lass who did not cheer for
+      Charlie, and none cheered, but at the same time none ran away. Few in
+      Thrums cared a doit for Charlie, but some hung on behind this troop till
+      there was no turning back for them, and one of these was Buchan. He forced
+      his wife to give Captain Body a white rose from her bush by the door, but
+      a thorn in it pricked the gallant, and the blood from his fingers fell on
+      the bush, and from that year it grew red roses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you dinna believe me," Blinder said, "look if the roses is no red on
+      the bush at Pyotdykes, which was a split frae Buchan's, and speir whether
+      they're no named the blood rose."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe you," Tommy would say breathlessly: "go on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Body was back in the Den by and by, but he had no thought of
+      preeing lasses' mouths now. His face was scratched and haggard and his gay
+      coat torn, and when he crawled to the Cuttle Well he caught some of the
+      water in his bonnet and mixed meal with it, stirring the precious compound
+      with his finger and using the loof of his hand as a spoon. Every stick of
+      furniture Buchan and the other Thrums rebels possessed was seized by the
+      government and rouped in the market-place of Thrums, but few would bid
+      against the late owners, for whom the things were secretly bought back
+      very cheaply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To these and many similar stories Tommy listened open-mouthed, seeing the
+      scene far more vividly than the narrator, who became alarmed at his quick,
+      loud breathing, and advised him to forget them and go back to his lessons.
+      But his lessons never interested Tommy, and he would go into the Den
+      instead, and repeat Blinder's legends, with embellishments which made them
+      so real that Corp and Elspeth and Grizel were afraid to look behind them
+      lest the spectre of Captain Body should be standing there, leaning on a
+      ghostly sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At such times Elspeth kept a firm grip of Tommy's hand, but one evening as
+      they all ran panic-stricken from some imaginary alarm, she lost him near
+      the Cuttle Well, and then, as it seemed to her, the Den became suddenly
+      very dark and lonely. At first she thought she had it to herself, but as
+      she stole timidly along the pink path she heard voices, and she cried
+      "Tommy!" joyously. But no answer came, so it could not be Tommy. Then she
+      thought it must be a pair of lovers, but next moment she stood transfixed
+      with fear, for it was the Painted Lady, who was coming along the path
+      talking aloud to herself. No, not to herself&mdash;to someone she
+      evidently thought was by her side; she called him darling and other sweet
+      names, and waited for his replies and nodded pleased assent to them, or
+      pouted at them, and terrified Elspeth knew that she was talking to the man
+      who never came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she saw Elspeth she stopped irresolutely, and the two stood looking
+      in fear at each other. "You are not my brat, are you?" the Painted Lady
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "N-no," the child gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then why don't you call me nasty names?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dinna never call you names," Elspeth replied, but the woman still
+      looked puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps you are naughty also?" she said doubtfully, and then, as if
+      making up her mind that it must be so, she came closer and said, with a
+      voice full of pity: "I am so sorry."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth did not understand half of it, but the pitying voice, which was of
+      the rarest sweetness, drove away much of her fear, and she said: "Do you
+      no mind me? I was wi' Tommy when he gave you the gold packet on Muckley
+      night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Painted Lady remembered. "He took such a fancy to me," she said,
+      with a pleased simper, and then she looked serious again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you love him?" she asked, and Elspeth nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But is he all the world to you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," Elspeth said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Painted Lady took her by the arm and said impressively, "Don't let him
+      know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But he does know," said Elspeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am so sorry," the Painted Lady said again. "When they know too well,
+      then they have no pity."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I want Tommy to know," Elspeth insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is the woeful thing," the Painted Lady said, rocking her arms in a
+      way that reminded the child of Grizel. "We want them to know, we cannot
+      help liking them to know!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she became confidential. "Do you think I showed my love too
+      openly?" she asked eagerly. "I tried to hide it, you know. I covered my
+      face with my hands, but he pulled them away, and then, of course, he
+      knew."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went on, "I kissed his horse's nose, and he said I did that because it
+      was his horse. How could he know? When I asked him how he knew, he kissed
+      me, and I pretended to be angry and ran away. But I was not angry, and I
+      said to myself, 'I am glad, I am glad, I am glad!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wanted so to be good, but&mdash;It is so difficult to refuse when you
+      love him very much, don't you think?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pathos of that was lost on the girl, and the Painted Lady continued
+      sadly: "It would be so nice, would it not, if they liked us to be good? I
+      think it would be sweet." She bent forward and whispered emphatically,
+      "But they don't, you know&mdash;it bores them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never bore them&mdash;and they are so easily bored! It bores them if you
+      say you want to be married. I think it would be sweet to be married, but
+      you should never ask for a wedding. They give you everything else, but if
+      you say you want a wedding, they stamp their feet and go away. Why are you
+      crying, girl? You should not cry; they don't like it. Put on your
+      prettiest gown and laugh and pretend you are happy, and then they will
+      tell you naughty stories and give you these." She felt her ears and looked
+      at her fingers, on which there may once have been jewels, but there were
+      none now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you cry you lose your complexion, and then they don't love you any
+      more. I had always such a beautiful skin. Some ladies when they lose their
+      complexion paint. Horrid, isn't it? I wonder they can do such a thing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She eyed Elspeth suspiciously. "But of course you might do it just a
+      little," she said, pleadingly&mdash;"just to make them go on loving you,
+      don't you think?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When they don't want to come any more they write you a letter, and you
+      run with it to your room and kiss it, because you don't know what is
+      inside. Then you open it, and that breaks your heart, you know." She
+      nodded her head sagaciously and smiled with tears in her eyes. "Never,
+      never, never open the letter. Keep it unopened on your breast, and then
+      you can always think that he may come to-morrow. And if&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Someone was approaching, and she stopped and listened. "My brat!" she
+      cried, furiously, "she is always following me," and she poured forth a
+      torrent of filthy abuse of Grizel, in the midst of which Tommy (for it was
+      he) appeared and carried Elspeth off hastily. This was the only
+      conversation either child ever had with the Painted Lady, and it bore bad
+      fruit for Grizel. Elspeth told some of the Monypenny women about it, and
+      they thought it their duty to point out to Aaron that the Painted Lady and
+      her child were not desirable acquaintances for Tommy and Elspeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dinna ken," he answered sharply, "whether Tommy's a fit acquaintance
+      for Grizel, but I'm very sure o' this, that she's more than a fit
+      acquaintance for him. And look at what she has done for this house. I
+      kenna what we should do if she didna come in nows and nans."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You ken well, Aaron," they said, "that onything we could do in the way o'
+      keeping your house in order we should do gladly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank you," he replied ungraciously, "but I would rather have her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless he agreed that he ought to forbid any intercourse with the
+      Painted Lady, and unfortunately Grizel heard of this. Probably there never
+      would have been any such intercourse; Grizel guarded against it more than
+      anyone, for reasons she never spoke of, but she resented this veto
+      proudly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why must you not speak to my mamma?" she demanded of Tommy and Elspeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because&mdash;because she is a queer one," he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is not a queer one&mdash;she is just sweet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He tried to evade the question by saying weakly, "We never see her to
+      speak to at any rate, so it will make no difference. It's no as if you
+      ever asked us to come to Double Dykes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I ask you now," said Grizel, with flashing eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, I darena!" cried Elspeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then I won't ever come into your house again," said Grizel, decisively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No to redd up?" asked Tommy, incredulously. "No to bake nor to iron? You
+      couldna help it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes I could."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Think what you'll miss!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grizel might have retorted, "Think what you will miss!" but perhaps the
+      reply she did make had a sharper sting in it. "I shall never come again,"
+      she said loftily, "and my reason for not coming is that&mdash;that my
+      mamma thinks your house is not respectable!" She flung this over her
+      shoulder as she stalked away, and it may be that the tears came when there
+      were none to see them, but hers was a resolute mind, and though she
+      continued to be friendly with Tommy and Elspeth out of doors she never
+      again crossed their threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The house is in a terrible state for want o' you," Tommy would say,
+      trying to wheedle her. "We hinna sanded the floor for months, and the
+      box-iron has fallen ahint the dresser, and my gray sark is rove up the
+      back, and oh, you should just see the holes in Aaron's stockings!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Grizel rocked her arms in agony, but no, she would not go in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX &mdash; THE SHADOW OF SIR WALTER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Tommy was in Miss Ailie's senior class now, though by no means at the top
+      of it, and her mind was often disturbed about his future. On this subject
+      Aaron had never spoken to anyone, and the problem gave Tommy himself so
+      little trouble that all Elspeth knew was that he was to be great and that
+      she was to keep his house. So the school-mistress braved an interview with
+      Aaron for the sake of her favorite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You know he is a remarkable boy," she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "At his lessons, ma'am?" asked Aaron, quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not exactly at his lessons, she had to admit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In what way, then, ma'am?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Really Miss Ailie could not say. There was something wonderful about
+      Tommy, you felt it, but you could not quite give it a name. The warper
+      must have noticed it himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I've heard him saying something o' the kind to Elspeth," was Aaron's
+      reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But sometimes he is like a boy inspired," said the school-mistress. "You
+      must have seen that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When he was thinking o' himsel'," answered Aaron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He has such noble sentiments."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He has."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I think, I really think," said Miss Ailie, eagerly, for this was what
+      she had come to say, "that he has got great gifts for the ministry."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm near sure o't," said Aaron, grimly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah, I see you don't like him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dinna," the warper acknowledged quietly, "but I've been trying to do my
+      duty by him for all that. It's no every laddie that gets three years'
+      schooling straight on end."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was true, but Miss Ailie used it to press her point. "You have done
+      so well by him," she said, "that I think you should keep him at school for
+      another year or two, and so give him a chance of carrying a bursary. If he
+      carries one it will support him at college; if he does not&mdash;well,
+      then I suppose he must be apprenticed to some trade."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," Aaron said, decisively; "if he gets the chance of a college
+      education and flings it awa', I'll waste no more siller on his keep. I'll
+      send him straight to the herding."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I shall not blame you," Miss Ailie declared eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Though I would a hantle rather," continued the warper, "waur my money on
+      Elspeth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What you spend on him," Miss Ailie argued, "you will really be spending
+      on her, for if he rises in the world he will not leave Elspeth behind. You
+      are prejudiced against him, but you cannot deny that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dinna deny but what he's fond o' her," said Aaron, and after
+      considering the matter for some days he decided that Tommy should get his
+      chance. The school-mistress had not acted selfishly, for this decision, as
+      she knew, meant that the boy must now be placed in the hands of Mr.
+      Cathro, who was a Greek and Latin scholar. She taught Latin herself, it is
+      true, but as cautiously as she crossed a plank bridge, and she was never
+      comfortable in the dominie's company, because even at a tea-table he would
+      refer familiarly to the ablative absolute instead of letting sleeping dogs
+      lie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But Elspeth couldna be happy if we were at different schools," Tommy
+      objected instantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, I could," said Elspeth, who had been won over by Miss Ailie; "it
+      will be so fine, Tommy, to see you again after I hinna seen you for three
+      hours."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy was little known to Mr. Cathro at this time, except as the boy who
+      had got the better of a rival teacher in the affair of Corp, which had
+      delighted him greatly. "But if the sacket thinks he can play any of his
+      tricks on me," he told Aaron, "there is an awakening before him," and he
+      began the cramming of Tommy for a bursary with perfect confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But before the end of the month, at the mere mention of Tommy's name, Mr.
+      Cathro turned red in the face, and the fingers of his laying-on hand would
+      clutch an imaginary pair of tawse. Already Tommy had made him
+      self-conscious. He peered covertly at Tommy, and Tommy caught him at it
+      every time, and then each quickly looked another way, and Cathro vowed
+      never to look again, but did it next minute, and what enraged him most was
+      that he knew Tommy noted his attempts at self-restraint as well as his
+      covert glances. All the other pupils knew that a change for the worse had
+      come over the dominie's temper. They saw him punish Tommy frequently
+      without perceptible cause, and that he was still unsatisfied when the
+      punishment was over. This apparently was because Tommy gave him a look
+      before returning to his seat. When they had been walloped they gave Cathro
+      a look also, but it merely meant, "Oh, that this was a dark road and I had
+      a divot in my hand!" while his look was unreadable, that is unreadable to
+      them, for the dominie understood it and writhed. What it said was, "You
+      think me a wonder, and therefore I forgive you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And sometimes he fair beats Cathro!" So Tommy's schoolmates reported at
+      home, and the dominie had to acknowledge its truth to Aaron. "I wish you
+      would give that sacket a thrashing for me," he said, half furiously, yet
+      with a grin on his face, one day when he and the warper chanced to meet on
+      the Monypenny road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll no lay a hand on bairn o' Jean Myles," Aaron replied. "Ay, and I
+      understood you to say that he should meet his match in you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did I ever say that, man? Well, well, we live and learn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What has he been doing now?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What has he been doing!" echoed Cathro. "He has been making me look
+      foolish in my own class-room. Yes, sir, he has so completely got the
+      better of me (and not for the first time) that when I tell the story of
+      how he diddled Mr. Ogilvy, Mr. Ogilvy will be able to cap it with the
+      story of how the little whelp diddled me. Upon my soul, Aaron, he is
+      running away with all my self-respect and destroying my sense of humor."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What had so crushed the dominie was the affair of Francie Crabb. Francie
+      was now a pupil, like Gavin Dishart and Tommy, of Mr. Cathro's, who
+      detested the boy's golden curls, perhaps because he was bald himself. They
+      were also an incentive to evil-doing on the part of other boys, who must
+      give them a tug in passing, and on a day the dominie said, in a fury,
+      "Give your mother my compliments, Francie, and tell her I'm so tired of
+      seeing your curls that I mean to cut them off to-morrow morning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Say he shall not," whispered Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You shanna!" blurted out Francie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I will," said Cathro; "I would do it now if I had the shears."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was only an empty threat, but an hour afterwards the dominie caught
+      Tommy wagering in witchy marbles and other coin that he would not do it,
+      and then instead of taking the tawse to him he said, "Keep him to his
+      bargains, laddies, for whatever may have been my intention at the time, I
+      mean to be as good as my word now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked triumphantly at Tommy, who, however, instead of seeming
+      crestfallen, continued to bet, and now the other boys were eager to close
+      with him, for great was their faith in Cathro. These transactions were
+      carried out on the sly, but the dominie knew what was going on, and
+      despite his faith in himself he had his twitches of uneasiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "However, the boy can only be trusting to fear of Mrs. Crabb restraining
+      me," he decided, and he marched into the school-room next morning,
+      ostentatiously displaying his wife's largest scissors. His pupils crowded
+      in after him, and though he noticed that all were strangely quiet and many
+      wearing scared faces, he put it down to the coming scene. He could not
+      resist giving one triumphant glance at Tommy, who, however, instead of
+      returning it, looked modestly down. Then&mdash;"Is Francie Crabb here?"
+      asked Mr. Cathro, firmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's hodding ahint the press," cried a dozen voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come forward, Francie," said the dominie, clicking the shears to
+      encourage him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a long pause, and then Francie emerged in fear from behind the
+      press. Yes, it was Francie, but his curls were gone!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shears fell to the floor. "Who did this?" roared the terrible Cathro.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was Tommy Sandys," blurted out Francis, in tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The school-master was unable to speak, and, alarmed at the stillness,
+      Francie whined, "He said it would be done at ony rate, and he promised me
+      half his winnings."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is still remembered by bearded men and married women who were at school
+      that day how Cathro leaped three forms to get at Tommy, and how Tommy
+      cried under the tawse and yet laughed ecstatically at the same time, and
+      how subsequently he and Francie collected so many dues that the pockets of
+      them stood out like brackets from their little persons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dominie could not help grinning a little at his own discomfiture as he
+      told this story, but Aaron saw nothing amusing in it. "As I telled you,"
+      he repeated, "I winna touch him, so if you're no content wi' what you've
+      done yoursel', you had better put Francie's mither on him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hear she has taken him in hand already," Mr. Cathro replied dryly.
+      "But, Aaron, I wish you would at least keep him closer to his lessons at
+      night, for it is seldom he comes to the school well prepared."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I see him sitting lang ower his books," said Aaron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, maybe, but is he at them?" responded the dominie with a shake of the
+      head that made Aaron say, with his first show of interest in the
+      conversation, "You have little faith in his carrying a bursary, I see."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this Mr. Cathro would not admit, for if he thought Tommy a numskull
+      the one day he often saw cause to change his mind the next, so he answered
+      guardedly, "It's too soon to say, Aaron, for he has eighteen months'
+      stuffing to undergo yet before we send him to Aberdeen to try his fortune,
+      and I have filled some gey toom wimes in eighteen months. But you must
+      lend me a hand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The weaver considered, and then replied stubbornly, "No, I give him his
+      chance, but I'll have nocht to do wi' his use o't. And, dominie, I want
+      you to say not another word to me about him atween this and examination
+      time, for my mind's made up no to say a word to him. It's well kent that
+      I'm no more fit to bring up bairns than to have them (dinna conter me,
+      man, for the thing was proved lang syne at the Cuttle Well), and so till
+      that time I'll let him gang his ain gait. But if he doesna carry a
+      bursary, to the herding he goes. I've said it and I'll stick to it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, as far as Aaron was concerned, Tommy was left in peace to the glory of
+      collecting his winnings from those who had sworn by Cathro, and among them
+      was Master Gavin Ogilvy Dishart, who now found himself surrounded by a
+      debt of sixpence, a degrading position for the son of an Auld Licht
+      minister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy would not give him time, but was willing to take his copy of
+      "Waverley" as full payment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gavin offered him "Ivanhoe" instead, because his mother had given a read
+      of "Waverley" to Gavinia, Miss Ailie's servant, and she read so slowly,
+      putting her finger beneath each word, that she had not yet reached the
+      middle. Also, she was so enamoured of the work that she would fight anyone
+      who tried to take it from her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy refused "Ivanhoe," as it was not about Jacobites, but suggested that
+      Gavinia should be offered it in lieu of "Waverley," and told that it was a
+      better story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The suggestion came too late, as Gavinia had already had a loan of
+      "Ivanhoe," and read it with rapture, inch by inch. However, if Tommy would
+      wait a month, or&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy was so eager to read more about the Jacobites that he found it
+      trying to wait five minutes. He thought Gavin's duty was to get his father
+      to compel Gavinia to give the book up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was Tommy daft? Mr. Dishart did not know that his son possessed these
+      books. He did not approve of story books, and when Mrs. Dishart gave them
+      to Gavin on his birthday she&mdash;she had told him to keep them out of
+      his father's sight. (Mr. and Mrs. Dishart were very fond of each other,
+      but there were certain little matters that she thought it unnecessary to
+      trouble him about.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So if Tommy was to get "Waverley" at once, he must discover another way.
+      He reflected, and then set off to Miss Ailie's (to whom he still read
+      sober works of an evening, but novels never), looking as if he had found a
+      way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For some time Miss Ailie had been anxious about her red-armed maid, who
+      had never before given pain unless by excess of willingness, as when she
+      offered her garter to tie Miss Ailie's parcels with. Of late, however,
+      Gavinia had taken to blurting out disquieting questions, to the
+      significance of which she withheld the key, such as&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is there ony place nowadays, ma'am, where there's tourniements? And could
+      an able-bodied lassie walk to them? and what might be the charge to win
+      in?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Or, "Would you no like to be so michty beautiful, ma'am, that as soon as
+      the men saw your bonny face they just up wi' you in their arms and ran?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Or again, "What's the heaviest weight o' a woman a grand lusty man could
+      carry in his arms as if she were an infant?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This method of conveyance seemed to have a peculiar fascination for
+      Gavinia, and she got herself weighed at the flesher's. On another occasion
+      she broke a glass candlestick, and all she said to the pieces was, "Wha
+      carries me, wears me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This mystery was troubling the school-mistress sadly when Tommy arrived
+      with the key to it. "I'm doubting Gavinia's reading ill books on the sly,"
+      he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never!" exclaimed Miss Ailie, "she reads nothing but the <i>Mentor</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy shook his head, like one who would fain hope so, but could not
+      overlook facts. "I've been hearing," he said, "that she reads books as are
+      full o' Strokes and Words We have no Concern with."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ailie could not believe it, but she was advised to search the
+      kitchen, and under Gavinia's mattress was found the dreadful work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you are only fifteen!" said Miss Ailie, eying her little maid
+      sorrowfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The easier to carry," replied Gavinia, darkly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you named after a minister!" Miss Ailie continued, for her maid had
+      been christened Gavinia because she was the first child baptized in his
+      church after the Rev. Gavin Dishart came to Thrums. "Gavinia, I must tell
+      him of this. I shall take this book to Mr. Dishart this very day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The right man to take it to," replied the maid, sullenly, "for it's his
+      ain."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Gavinia!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it was Mrs. Dishart that lended it to me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I&mdash;I never saw it on the manse shelves."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm thinking," said the brazen Gavinia, "as there's hoddy corners in
+      manses as well as in&mdash;blue-and-white rooms."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This dark suggestion was as great a shock to the gentle school-mistress as
+      if out of a clear sky had come suddenly the word&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Stroke!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She tottered with the book that had so demoralized the once meek Gavinia
+      into the blue-and-white room, where Tommy was restlessly awaiting her, and
+      when she had told him all, he said, with downcast eyes:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was never sure o' Mrs. Dishart. When I hand her the <i>Mentor</i> she
+      looks as if she didna care a stroke for't&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tommy!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm doubting," he said sadly, "that she's ower fond o' Words We have no
+      Concern with."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ailie would not listen to such talk, but she approved of the
+      suggestion that "Waverley" should be returned not to the minister, but to
+      his wife, and she accepted gratefully Tommy's kindly offer to act as
+      bearer. Only happening to open the book in the middle, she&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm waiting," said Tommy, after ten minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not hear him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm waiting," he said again, but she was now in the next chapter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Maybe you would like to read it yoursel'!" he cried, and then she came
+      to, and, with a shudder handed him the book. But after he had gone she
+      returned to the kitchen to reprove Gavinia at greater length, and in the
+      midst of the reproof she said faintly: "You did not happen to look at the
+      end, did you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That I did," replied Gavinia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And did she&mdash;did he&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Gavinia, sorrowfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ailie sighed. "That's what I think too," said Gavinia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why didn't they?" asked the school-mistress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because he was just a sumph," answered Gavinia, scornfully. "If he had
+      been like Fergus, or like the chield in 'Ivanhoe,' he wouldna have ta'en a
+      'no.' He would just have whipped her up in his arms and away wi' her.
+      That's the kind for me, ma'am."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is a fascination about them," murmured Miss Ailie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A what?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But again Miss Ailie came to. "For shame, Gavinia, for shame!" she said,
+      severely; "these are disgraceful sentiments."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime Tommy had hurried with the book, not to the manse, but to
+      a certain garret, and as he read, his imagination went on fire. Blinder's
+      stories had made him half a Jacobite, and now "Waverley" revealed to him
+      that he was born neither for the ministry nor the herding, but to restore
+      to his country its rightful king. The first to whom he confided this was
+      Corp, who immediately exclaimed: "Michty me! But what will the police
+      say?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ken a wy," answered Tommy, sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI &mdash; THE LAST JACOBITE RISING
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      On the evening of the Queen's birthday, bridies were eaten to her honor in
+      a hundred Thrums homes, and her health was drunk in toddy, Scotch toddy
+      and Highland toddy. Patullo, the writer, gave a men's party, and his sole
+      instructions to his maid were "Keep running back and forrit wi' the hot
+      water." At the bank there was a ladies' party and ginger wine. From
+      Cathro's bedroom-window a flag was displayed with <i>Vivat Regina</i> on
+      it, the sentiment composed by Cathro, the words sewn by the girls of his
+      McCulloch class. The eight-o'clock bell rang for an hour, and a loyal
+      crowd had gathered in the square to shout. To a superficial observer, such
+      as the Baron Bailie or Todd, the new policeman, all seemed well and fair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But a very different scene was being enacted at the same time in the
+      fastnesses of the Den, where three resolute schemers had met by
+      appointment. Their trysting-place was the Cuttle Well, which is most
+      easily reached by the pink path made for that purpose; but the better to
+      further their dark and sinister design, the plotters arrived by three
+      circuitous routes, one descending the Reekie Broth Pot, a low but
+      dangerous waterfall, the second daring the perils of the crags, and the
+      third walking stealthily up the burn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that you, Tommy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Whist! Do you mind the password?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stroke!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Right. Have you heard Gav Dishart coming?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hinna. I doubt his father had grippit him as he was slinking out o' the
+      manse."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I fear it, Corp. I'm thinking his father is in the Woman's pay."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What woman?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Woman of Hanover?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's the queen, is it no?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She'll never get me to call her queen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nor yet me. I think I hear Gav coming."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gav Dishart was the one who had come by the burn, and his boots were
+      cheeping like a field of mice. He gave the word "Stroke," and the three
+      then looked at each other firmly. The lights of the town were not visible
+      from the Cuttle Well, owing to an arm of cliff that is outstretched
+      between, but the bell could be distinctly heard, and occasionally a shout
+      of revelry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They little ken!" said Tommy, darkly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They hinna a notion," said Corp, but he was looking somewhat perplexed
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's near time I was back for family exercise," said Gav, uneasily, "so
+      we had better do it quick, Tommy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you bring the wineglasses?" Tommy asked him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," Gav said, "the press was lockit, but I've brought egg-cups."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stand round then."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three boys now presented a picturesque appearance, but there was none
+      save the man in the moon to see them. They stood round the Cuttle Well,
+      each holding an egg-cup, and though the daring nature of their undertaking
+      and the romantic surroundings combined to excite them, it was not fear but
+      soaring purpose that paled their faces and caused their hands to tremble,
+      when Tommy said solemnly, "Afore we do what we've come here to do, let's
+      swear."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stroke!" he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stroke!" said Gav.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stroke!" said Corp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They then filled their cups and holding them over the well, so that they
+      clinked, they said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To the king ower the water!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To the king ower the water!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To the king ower the water!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they had drunk Tommy broke his cup against a rock, for he was
+      determined that it should never be used to honor a meaner toast, and the
+      others followed his example, Corp briskly, though the act puzzled him, and
+      Gav with a gloomy look because he knew that the cups would be missed
+      to-morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that a' now?" whispered Corp, wiping his forehead with his sleeve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All!" cried Tommy. "Man, we've just begood."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As secretly as they had entered it, they left the Den, and anon three
+      figures were standing in a dark trance, cynically watching the revellers
+      in the square.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If they just kent!" muttered the smallest, who was wearing his jacket
+      outside in to escape observation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But they little ken!" said Gav Dishart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They hinna a notion!" said Corp, contemptuously, but still he was a
+      little puzzled, and presently he asked softly: "Lads, what just is it that
+      they dinna ken?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had Gav been ready with an answer he could not have uttered it, for just
+      then a terrible little man in black, who had been searching for him in
+      likely places, seized him by the cuff of the neck, and, turning his face
+      in an easterly direction, ran him to family worship. But there was still
+      work to do for the other two. Walking home alone that night from Mr.
+      Patullo's party, Mr. Cathro had an uncomfortable feeling that he was being
+      dogged. When he stopped to listen, all was at once still, but the moment
+      he moved onward he again heard stealthy steps behind. He retired to rest
+      as soon as he reached his house, to be wakened presently by a slight noise
+      at the window, whence the flag-post protruded. It had been but a gust of
+      wind, he decided, and turned round to go to sleep again, when crash! the
+      post was plucked from its place and cast to the ground. The dominie sprang
+      out of bed, and while feeling for a light, thought he heard scurrying
+      feet, but when he looked out at the window no one was to be seen; <i>Vivat
+      Regina</i> lay ignobly in the gutters. That it could have been the object
+      of an intended theft was not probable, but the open window might have
+      tempted thieves, and there was a possible though risky way up by the
+      spout. The affair was a good deal talked about at the time, but it
+      remained shrouded in a mystery which even we have been unable to
+      penetrate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the heels of the Queen's birthday came the Muckley, the one that was to
+      be known to fame, if fame was willing to listen to Corp, as Tommy's
+      Muckley. Unless he had some grand aim in view never was a boy who yielded
+      to temptations more blithely than Tommy, but when he had such aim never
+      was a boy so firm in withstanding them. At this Muckley he had a mighty
+      reason for not spending money, and with ninepence in his pocket clamoring
+      to be out he spent not one halfpenny. There was something uncanny in the
+      sight of him stalking unscathed between rows of stands and shows, everyone
+      of them aiming at his pockets. Corp and Gav, of course, were in the secret
+      and did their humble best to act in the same unnatural manner, but now and
+      again a show made a successful snap at Gav, and Corp had gloomy fears that
+      he would lose his head in presence of the Teuch and Tasty, from which
+      humiliation indeed he was only saved by the happy idea of requesting Tommy
+      to shout "Deuteronomy!" in a warning voice, every time they drew nigh
+      Californy's seductive stand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was there nothing for sale, then, that the three thirsted to buy? There
+      were many things, among them weapons of war, a pack of cards, more
+      properly called Devil's books, blue bonnets suitable for Highland
+      gentlemen, feathers for the bonnets, a tin lantern, yards of tartan cloth,
+      which the deft fingers of Grizel would convert into warriors' sashes. Corp
+      knew that these purchases were in Tommy's far-seeing eye, but he thought
+      the only way to get them was to ask the price and then offer half. Gav,
+      the scholar, who had already reached daylight through the first three
+      books of Euclid, and took a walk every Saturday morning with his father
+      and Herodotus, even Gav, the scholar, was as thick-witted as Corp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We'll let other laddies buy them," Tommy explained in his superior way,
+      "and then after the Muckley is past, we'll buy them frae them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The others understood now. After a Muckley there was always a great dearth
+      of pence, and a moneyed man could become owner of Muckley purchases at a
+      sixth part of the Muckley price.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You crittur!" exclaimed Corp, in abject admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Gav saw an objection. "The feck of them," he pointed out, "will waur
+      their siller on shows and things to eat, instead of on what we want them
+      to buy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So they will, the nasty sackets!" cried Corp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You couldna blame a laddie for buying Teuch and Tasty," continued Gav
+      with triumph, for he was a little jealous of Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You couldna," agreed Corp, "no, I'll be dagont, if you could," and his
+      hand pressed his money feverishly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Deuteronomy!" roared Tommy, and Corp's hand jumped as if it had been
+      caught in some other person's, pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But how are we to do?" he asked. "If you like, I'll take Birkie and the
+      Haggerty-Taggertys round the Muckley and fight ilka ane that doesna buy&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Corp," said Tommy, calmly, "I wonder at you. Do you no ken yet that the
+      best plan is to leave a thing to me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Blethering gowks that we are, of course it is!" cried Corp, and he turned
+      almost fiercely upon Gav. "Lippen all to him," he said with grand
+      confidence, "he'll find a wy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Tommy found a way. Birkie was the boy who bought the pack of cards. He
+      saw Tommy looking so-woe-begone that it was necessary to ask the reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, Birkie, lend me threepence," sobbed Tommy, "and I'll give you
+      sixpence the morn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're daft," said Birkie, "there's no a laddie in Thrums that will have
+      one single lonely bawbee the morn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Him that buys the cards," moaned Tommy, "will never be without siller,
+      for you tell auld folks fortunes on them at a penny every throw. Lend me
+      threepence, Birkie. They cost a sic, and I have just&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Na, na," said greedy Birkie, "I'm no to be catched wi' chaff. If it's
+      true, what you say, I'll buy the cards mysel'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having thus got hold of him, Tommy led Birkie to a stand where the King of
+      Egypt was telling fortunes with cards, and doing a roaring trade among the
+      Jocks and Jennys. He also sold packs at sixpence each, and the elated
+      Birkie was an immediate purchaser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're no so clever as you think yoursel'!" he said triumphantly to
+      Tommy, who replied with his inscrutable smile. But to his satellites he
+      said, "Not a soul will buy a fortune frae Birkie. I'll get thae cards for
+      a penny afore next week's out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Francie Crabb found Tommy sniggering to himself in the back wynd. "What
+      are you goucking at?" asked Francie, in surprise, for, as a rule, Tommy
+      only laughed behind his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I winna tell you," chuckled Tommy, "but what a bar, oh, what a divert!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come on, tell me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it's at the man as is swallowing swords ahint the menagerie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I see nothing to laugh at in that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm no laughing at that. I'm laughing at him for selling the swords for
+      ninepence the piece. Oh, what ignorant he is, oh, what a bar!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ninepence is a mislaird price for a soord," said Francie. "I never gave
+      ninepence."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy looked at him in the way that always made boys fidget with their
+      fists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're near as big a bar as him," he said scornfully. "Did you ever see
+      the sword that's hanging on the wall in the backroom at the post-office?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, but my father has telled me about it. It has a grand name."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's an Andrea Ferrara, that's what it is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, I mind the name now; there has been folk killed wi' that soord."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was true, for the post-office Andrea Ferrara has a stirring history,
+      but for the present its price was the important thing. "Dr. McQueen
+      offered a pound note for it," said Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ken that, but what has it to do wi' the soord-swallower?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just this; that the swords he is selling for ninepence are Andrea
+      Ferraras, the same as the post-office ones, and he could get a pound a
+      piece for them if he kent their worth. Oh, what a bar, oh, what&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Francie's eyes lit up greedily, and he looked at his two silver shillings,
+      and took two steps in the direction of the sword-swallower's, and faltered
+      and could not make up his agitated mind. Tommy set off toward the square
+      at a brisk walk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Whaur are you off to?" asked Francie, following him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To tell the man what his swords is worth. It would be ill done no to tell
+      him." To clinch the matter, off went Tommy at a run, and off went Francie
+      after him. As a rule Tommy was the swifter, but on this occasion he lagged
+      of fell purpose, and reached the sword-swallower's tent just in time to
+      see Francie emerge elated therefrom, carrying two Andrea Ferraras. Francie
+      grinned when they met.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What a bar!" he crowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What a bar!" agreed Tommy, and sufficient has now been told to show that
+      he had found a way. Even Gav acknowledged a master, and, when the
+      accoutrements of war were bought at second hand as cheaply as Tommy had
+      predicted, applauded him with eyes and mouth for a full week, after which
+      he saw things in a new light. Gav of course was to enter the bursary lists
+      anon, and he had supposed that Cathro would have the last year's schooling
+      of him; but no, his father decided to send him for the grand final grind
+      to Mr. Ogilvy of Glen Quharity, a famous dominie between whom and Mr.
+      Dishart existed a friendship that none had ever got at the root of. Mr.
+      Cathro was more annoyed than he cared to show, Gav being of all the boys
+      of that time the one likeliest to do his teacher honor at the university
+      competitions, but Tommy, though the decision cost him an adherent, was not
+      ill-pleased, for he had discovered that Gav was one of those irritating
+      boys who like to be leader. Gav, as has been said, suddenly saw Tommy's
+      victory over Messrs. Birkie, Francie, etc., in a new light; this was
+      because when he wanted back the shilling which he had contributed to the
+      funds for buying their purchases, Tommy replied firmly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I canna give you the shilling, but I'll give you the lantern and the
+      tartan cloth we bought wi' it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What use could they be to me at Glen Quharity?" Gav protested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, if they are no use to you," Tommy said sweetly, "me and Corp is
+      willing to buy them off you for threepence."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Gav became a scorner of duplicity, but he had to consent to the
+      bargain, and again Corp said to Tommy, "Oh, you crittur!" But he was sorry
+      to lose a fellow-conspirator. "There's just the twa o' us now," he sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just twa!" cried Tommy. "What are you havering about, man? There's as
+      many as I like to whistle for."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You mean Grizel and Elspeth, I ken, but&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wasna thinking of the womenfolk," Tommy told him, with a contemptuous
+      wave of the hand. He went closer to Corp, and said, in a low voice, "The
+      McKenzies are waiting!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are they, though?" said Corp, perplexed, as he had no notion who the
+      McKenzies might be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And Lochiel has twa hunder spearsmen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you say so?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Young Kinnordy's ettling to come out, and I meet Lord Airlie, when the
+      moon rises, at the Loups o' Kenny, and auld Bradwardine's as spunky as
+      ever, and there's fifty wild Highlandmen lying ready in the muckle cave of
+      Clova."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke so earnestly that Corp could only ejaculate, "Michty me!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But of course they winna rise," continued Tommy, darkly, "till he lands."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of course no," said Corp, "but&mdash;wha is he?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Himsel'," whispered Tommy, "the Chevalier!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Corp hesitated. "But, I thought," he said diffidently, "I thought you&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So I am," said Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you said he hadna landed yet?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Neither he has."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're here, are you no?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy stamped his foot in irritation. "You're slow in the uptak," he said.
+      "I'm no here. How can I be here when I'm at St. Germains?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dinna be angry wi' me," Corp begged. "I ken you're ower the water, but
+      when I see you, I kind of forget; and just for the minute I think you're
+      here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, think afore you speak."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll try, but that's teuch work. When do you come to Scotland?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm no sure; but as soon as I'm ripe."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At nights Tommy now sometimes lay among the cabbages of the school-house
+      watching the shadow of Black Cathro on his sitting-room blind. Cathro
+      never knew he was there. The reason Tommy lay among the cabbages was that
+      there was a price upon his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But if Black Cathro wanted to get the blood-money," Corp said
+      apologetically, "he could nab you any day. He kens you fine."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy smiled meaningly. "Not him," he answered, "I've cheated him bonny,
+      he hasna a notion wha I am. Corp, would you like a good laugh?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That I would."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Weel, then, I'll tell you wha he thinks I am. Do you ken a little house
+      yont the road a bitty irae Monypenny?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ken no sic house," said Corp, "except Aaron's."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Aaron's the man as bides in it," Tommy continued hastily, "at least I
+      think that's the name. Well, as you ken the house, you've maybe noticed a
+      laddie that bides there too?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's no laddie," began Corp, "except&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let me see," interrupted Tommy, "what was his name? Was it Peter? No. Was
+      it Willie? Stop, I mind, it was Tommy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He glared so that Corp dared not utter a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you notitched him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I've&mdash;I've seen him," Corp gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, this is the joke," said Tommy, trying vainly to restrain his mirth,
+      "Cathro thinks I'm that laddie! Ho! ho! ho!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Corp scratched his head, then he bit his warts, then he spat upon his
+      hands, then he said "Damn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The crisis came when Cathro, still ignorant that the heather was on fire,
+      dropped some disparaging remarks about the Stuarts to his history class.
+      Tommy said nothing, but&mdash;but one of the school-windows was without a
+      snib, and next morning when the dominie reached his desk he was surprised
+      to find on it a little cotton glove. He raised it on high, greatly
+      puzzled, and then, as ever when he suspected knavery, his eyes sought
+      Tommy, who was sitting on a form, his arms proudly folded. That the whelp
+      had put the glove there, Cathro no longer doubted, and he would have liked
+      to know why, but was reluctant to give him the satisfaction of asking. So
+      the gauntlet&mdash;for gauntlet it was&mdash;was laid aside, the while
+      Tommy, his head humming like a beeskep, muttered triumphantly through his
+      teeth, "But he lifted it, he lifted it!" and at closing time it was flung
+      in his face with this fair tribute:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm no a rich man, laddie, but I would give a pound note to know what
+      you'll be at ten years from now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There could be no mistaking the dire meaning of these words, and Tommy
+      hurried, pale but determined, to the quarry, where Corp, with a barrow in
+      his hands, was learning strange phrases by heart, and finding it a help to
+      call his warts after the new swears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Corp," cried Tommy, firmly, "I've set sail!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the following Saturday evening Charles Edward landed in the Den. In his
+      bonnet was the white cockade, and round his waist a tartan sash; though he
+      had long passed man's allotted span his face was still full of fire, his
+      figure lithe and even boyish. For state reasons he had assumed the name of
+      Captain Stroke. As he leapt ashore from the bark, the Dancing Shovel, he
+      was received right loyally by Corp and other faithful adherents, of whom
+      only two, and these of a sex to which his House was ever partial, were
+      visible, owing to the gathering gloom. Corp of that Ilk sank on his knees
+      at the water's edge, and kissing his royal master's hand said, fervently,
+      "Welcome, my prince, once more to bonny Scotland!" Then he rose and
+      whispered, but with scarcely less emotion, "There's an egg to your tea."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXII &mdash; THE SIEGE OF THRUMS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The man in the moon is a native of Thrums, who was put up there for
+      hacking sticks on the Sabbath, and as he sails over the Den his interest
+      in the bit placey is still sufficient to make him bend forward and cry
+      "Boo!" at the lovers. When they jump apart you can see the aged reprobate
+      grinning. Once out of sight of the den, he cares not a boddle how the moon
+      travels, but the masterful crittur enrages him if she is in a hurry here,
+      just as he is cleverly making out whose children's children are courting
+      now. "Slow, there!" he cries to the moon, but she answers placidly that
+      they have the rest of the world to view to-night. "The rest of the world
+      be danged!" roars the man, and he cranes his neck for a last glimpse of
+      the Cuttle Well, until he nearly falls out of the moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never had the man such a trying time as during the year now before him. It
+      was the year when so many scientific magnates sat up half the night in
+      their shirts, spying at him through telescopes. But every effort to
+      discover why he was in such a fidget failed, because the spy-glasses were
+      never levelled at the Thrums den. Through the whole of the incidents now
+      to tell, you may conceive the man (on whom sympathy would be wasted)
+      dagoning horribly, because he was always carried past the den before he
+      could make head or tail of the change that had come over it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The spot chosen by the ill-fated Stuart and his gallant remnant for their
+      last desperate enterprise was eminently fitted for their purpose. Being
+      round the corner from Thrums, it was commanded by no fortified place save
+      the farm of Nether Drumgley, and on a recent goustie night nearly all the
+      trees had been blown down, making a hundred hiding-places for bold
+      climbers, and transforming the Den into a scene of wild and mournful
+      grandeur. In no bay more suitable than the flooded field called the Silent
+      Pool could the hunted prince have cast anchor, for the Pool is not only
+      sheltered from observation, but so little troubled by gales that it had
+      only one drawback: at some seasons of the year it was not there. This,
+      however, did not vex Stroke, as it is cannier to call him, for he burned
+      his boats on the night he landed (and a dagont, tedious job it was too),
+      and pointed out to his followers that the drouth which kept him in must
+      also keep the enemy out. Part of the way to the lair they usually
+      traversed in the burn, because water leaves no trace, and though they
+      carried turnip lanterns and were armed to the teeth, this was often a
+      perilous journey owing to the lovers close at hand on the pink path, from
+      which the trees had been cleared, for lads and lasses must walk whate'er
+      betide. Ronny-On's Jean and Peter Scrymgeour, little Lisbeth Doak and long
+      Sam'l from Pyotdykes were pairing that year, and never knew how near they
+      were to being dirked by Corp of Corp, who, lurking in the burn till there
+      were no tibbits in his toes, muttered fiercely, "Cheep one single cheep,
+      and it will be thy hinmost, methinks!" under the impression that Methinks
+      was a Jacobite oath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For this voluntary service, Stroke clapped Corp of Corp on the shoulder
+      with a naked sword, and said, "Rise, Sir Joseph!" which made Corp more
+      confused than ever, for he was already Corp of Corp, Him of Muckle Kenny,
+      Red McNeil, Andrew Ferrara, and the Master of Inverquharity (Stroke's
+      names), as well as Stab-in-the-Dark, Grind-them-to-Mullins, and Warty Joe
+      (his own), and which he was at any particular moment he never knew, till
+      Stroke told him, and even then he forgot and had to be put in irons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other frequenters of the lair on Saturday nights (when alone the
+      rebellion was active) were the proud Lady Grizel and Widow Elspeth. It had
+      been thought best to make Elspeth a widow, because she was so religious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lair was on the right bank of the burn, near the waterfall, and you
+      climbed to it by ropes, unless you preferred an easier way. It is now a
+      dripping hollow, down which water dribbles from beneath a sluice, but at
+      that time it was hidden on all sides by trees and the huge clods of sward
+      they had torn from the earth as they fell. Two of these clods were the
+      only walls of the lair, which had at times a ceiling not unlike Aaron
+      Latta's bed coverlets, and the chief furniture was two barrels, marked
+      "Usquebach" and "Powder." When the darkness of Stroke's fortunes sat like
+      a pall upon his brow, as happened sometimes, he sought to drive it away by
+      playing cards on one of these barrels with Sir Joseph, but the approach of
+      the Widow made him pocket them quickly with a warning sign to his trusty
+      knight, who did not understand, and asked what had become of them,
+      whereupon Elspeth cried, in horror:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cards! Oh, Tommy, you promised&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Stroke rode her down with, "Cards! Wha has been playing cards? You,
+      Muckle Kenny, and you, Sir Joseph, after I forbade it! Hie, there,
+      Inverquharity, all of you, seize those men."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Corp blinked, came to his senses and marched himself off to the
+      prison on the lonely promontory called the Queen's Bower, saying
+      ferociously, "Jouk, Sir Joseph, and I'll blaw you into posterity."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is sable night when Stroke and Sir Joseph reach a point in the Den
+      whence the glimmering lights of the town are distinctly visible. Neither
+      speaks. Presently the distant eight-o'clock bell rings, and then Sir
+      Joseph looks anxiously at his warts, for this is the signal to begin, and
+      as usual he has forgotten the words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Go on," says someone in a whisper. It cannot be Stroke, for his head is
+      brooding on his breast. This mysterious voice haunted all the doings in
+      the Den, and had better be confined in brackets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("Go on.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Methinks," says Sir Joseph, "methinks the borers&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("Burghers.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Methinks the burghers now cease from their labors."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay," replied Stroke, "'tis so, would that they ceased from them forever!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Methinks the time is at hand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ha!" exclaims Stroke, looking at his lieutenant curiously, "what makest
+      thou say so? For three weeks these fortifications have defied my cannon,
+      there is scarce a breach yet in the walls of yonder town."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Methinks thou wilt find a way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It may be so, my good Sir Joseph, it may be so, and yet, even when I am
+      most hopeful of success, my schemes go a gley."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Methinks thy dark&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("Dinna say Methinks so often.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("Tommy, I maun. If I dinna get that to start me off, I go through
+      other.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("Go on.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Methinks thy dark spirit lies on thee to-night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, 'tis too true. But canst thou blame me if I grow sad? The town still
+      in the enemy's hands, and so much brave blood already spilt in vain.
+      Knowest thou that the brave Kinnordy fell last night? My noble Kinnordy!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Stroke covers his face with his hands, weeping silently, and&mdash;and
+      there is an awkward pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("Go on&mdash;'Still have me.'")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("So it is.") "Weep not, my royal scone&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("Scion.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Weep not, my royal scion, havest thou not still me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well said, Sir Joseph," cries Stroke, dashing the sign of weakness from
+      his face. "I still have many brave fellows, and with their help I shall be
+      master of this proud town."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And then ghost we to fair Edinburgh?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, 'tis so, but, Sir Joseph, thinkest thou these burghers love the
+      Stuart not?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'<i>Nay,</i> methinks they are true to thee, but their starch commander&mdash;(give
+      me my time, this is a lang ane,) but their arch commander is thy bitterest
+      foe. Vile spoon that he is! (It's no spoon, it's spawn.)"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thou meanest the craven Cathro?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Methinks ay. (I like thae short anes.)"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Tis well!" says Stroke, sternly. "That man hath ever slipped between me
+      and my right. His time will come."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He floppeth thee&mdash;he flouteth thee from the battlements."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ha, 'tis well!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("You've said that already.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("I say it twice.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("That's what aye puts me wrang.) Ghost thou to meet the proud Lady Grizel
+      to-night?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ghost thou alone?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("What easy anes you have!) I fear it is not chancey for thee to go."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I must dree my dreed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "These women is kittle cattle."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Stuart hath ever a soft side for them. Ah, my trusty foster-brother,
+      knowest thou not what it is to love?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Alas, I too have had my fling. (Does Grizel kiss your hand yet?)"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "(No, she winna, the limmer.) Sir Joseph, I go to her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Methinks she is a haughty onion. I prithee go not to-night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have given my word."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thy word is a band."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Adieu, my friend."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Methinks thou ghost to thy damn. (Did we no promise Elspeth there should
+      be no swearing?)"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The raft Vick Lan Vohr is dragged to the shore, and Stroke steps on board,
+      a proud solitary figure. "Farewell!" he cries hoarsely, as he seizes the
+      oar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Farewell, my leech," answers Corp, and then helps him to disembark. Their
+      hands chance to meet, and Stroke's is so hot that Corp quails.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tommy," he says, with a shudder, "do you&mdash;you dinna think it's a'
+      true, do you?" But the ill-fated prince only gives him a warning look and
+      plunges into the mazes of the forest. For a long time silence reigns over
+      the Den. Lights glint fitfully, a human voice imitates the plaintive cry
+      of the peewit, cautious whistling follows, comes next the clash of arms,
+      and the scream of one in the death-throes, and again silence falls. Stroke
+      emerges near the Reekie Broth Pot, wiping his sword and muttering, "Faugh!
+      it drippeth!" At the same moment the air is filled with music of more than
+      mortal&mdash;well, the air is filled with music. It seems to come from but
+      a few yards away, and pressing his hand to his throbbing brow the
+      Chevalier presses forward till, pushing aside the branches of a fallen
+      fir, he comes suddenly upon a scene of such romantic beauty that he stands
+      rooted to the ground. Before him, softly lit by a half-moon (the man in it
+      perspiring with curiosity), is a miniature dell, behind which rise
+      threatening rocks, overgrown here and there by grass, heath, and bracken,
+      while in the centre of the dell is a bubbling spring called the Cuttle
+      Well, whose water, as it overflows a natural basin, soaks into the
+      surrounding ground and so finds a way into the picturesque stream below.
+      But it is not the loveliness of the spot which fascinates the prince;
+      rather is it the exquisite creature who sits by the bubbling spring, a
+      reed from a hand-loom in her hands, from which she strikes mournful
+      sounds, the while she raises her voice in song. A pink scarf and a blue
+      ribbon are crossed upon her breast, her dark tresses kiss her lovely neck,
+      and as she sits on the only dry stone, her face raised as if in wrapt
+      communion with the heavens, and her feet tucked beneath her to avoid the
+      mud, she seems not a human being, but the very spirit of the place and
+      hour. The royal wanderer remains spellbound, while she strikes her lyre
+      and sings (with but one trivial alteration) the song of MacMurrough:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Awake on your hills, on your islands awake, Brave sons of the mountains,
+      the frith and the lake! 'Tis the bugle&mdash;but not for the chase is the
+      call; 'Tis the pibroch's shrill summons&mdash;but not to the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'Tis the summons of heroes for conquest or death, When the banners are
+      blazing on mountain and heath; They call to the dirk, the claymore and the
+      targe, To the march and the muster, the line and the charge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Be the brand of each Chieftain like Stroke's in his ire! May the blood
+      through his veins flow like currents of fire! Burst the base foreign yoke
+      as your sires did of yore, Or die like your sires, and endure it no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the fair singer concluded, Stroke, who had been deeply moved, heaved a
+      great sigh, and immediately, as if in echo of it, came a sigh from the
+      opposite side of the dell. In a second of time three people had learned
+      that a certain lady had two lovers. She starts to her feet, still
+      carefully avoiding the puddles, but it is not she who speaks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("Did you hear me?")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("Ay.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("You're ready?")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("Ca' awa'.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stroke dashes to the girl's side, just in time to pluck her from the arms
+      of a masked man. The villain raises his mask and reveals the face of&mdash;it
+      looks like Corp, but the disguise is thrown away on Stroke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ha, Cathro," he exclaims joyfully, "so at last we meet on equal terms!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Back, Stroke, and let me pass."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nay, we fight for the wench."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So be it. The prideful onion is his who wins her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have at thee, caitiff!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A terrible conflict ensues. Cathro draws first blood. 'Tis but a scratch.
+      Ha! well thrust, Stroke. In vain Cathro girns his teeth. Inch by inch he
+      is driven back, he slips, he recovers, he pants, he is apparently about to
+      fling himself down the steep bank and so find safety in flight, but he
+      comes on again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("What are you doing? You run now.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("I ken, but I'm sweer!")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("Off you go.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even as Stroke is about to press home, the cowardly foe flings himself
+      down the steep bank and rolls out of sight. He will give no more trouble
+      to-night; and the victor turns to the Lady Grizel, who had been repinning
+      the silk scarf across her breast, while the issue of the combat was still
+      in doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("Now, then, Grizel, you kiss my hand.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("I tell you I won't.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("Well, then, go on your knees to me.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("You needn't think it.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("Dagon you! Then ca' awa' standing.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My liege, thou hast saved me from the wretch Cathro."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "May I always be near to defend thee in time of danger, my pretty chick."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("Tommy, you promised not to call me by those silly names.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("They slip out, I tell you. That was aye the way wi' the Stuarts.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("Well, you must say 'Lady Grizel.') Good, my prince, how can I thank
+      thee?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By being my wife. (Not a word of this to Elspeth.)"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nay, I summoned thee here to tell thee that can never be. The Grizels of
+      Grizel are of ancient lineage, but they mate not with monarchs. My sire,
+      the nunnery gates will soon close on me forever."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then at least say thou lovest me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Alas, I love thee not."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("What haver is this? I telled you to say 'Charles, would that I loved
+      thee less.'")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("And I told you I would not.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("Well, then, where are we now?")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("We miss out all that about my wearing your portrait next my heart, and
+      put in the rich apparel bit, the same as last week.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("Oh! Then I go on?) Bethink thee, fair jade&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("Lady.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bethink thee, fair lady, Stuart is not so poor but that, if thou come
+      with him to his lowly lair, he can deck thee with rich apparel and ribbons
+      rare."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I spurn thy gifts, unhappy man, but if there are holes in&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("Miss that common bit out. I canna thole it.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("I like it.) If there are holes in the garments of thy loyal followers, I
+      will come and mend them, and have a needle and thread in my pocket.
+      (Tommy, there is another button off your shirt! Have you got the button?")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "(It's down my breeks.) So be it, proud girl, come!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Grizel who made masks out of tin rags, picked up where tinkers had
+      passed the night, and musical instruments out of broken reeds that smelled
+      of caddis and Jacobite head-gear out of weaver's night-caps; and she kept
+      the lair so clean and tidy as to raise a fear that intruders might mistake
+      its character. Elspeth had to mind the pot, which Aaron Latta never
+      missed, and Corp was supposed to light the fire by striking sparks from
+      his knife, a trick which Tommy considered so easy that he refused to show
+      how it was done. Many strange sauces were boiled in that pot, a sort of
+      potato-turnip pudding often coming out even when not expected, but there
+      was an occasional rabbit that had been bowled over by Corp's unerring
+      hand, and once Tommy shot a&mdash;a haunch of venison, having first, with
+      Corp's help, howked it out of Ronny-On's swine, then suspended head
+      downward, and open like a book at the page of contents, steaming,
+      dripping, a tub beneath, boys with bladders in the distance. When they had
+      supped they gathered round the fire, Grizel knitting a shawl for they knew
+      whom, but the name was never mentioned, and Tommy told the story of his
+      life at the French court, and how he fought in the '45 and afterward hid
+      in caves, and so did he shudder, as he described the cold of his bracken
+      beds, and so glowed his face, for it was all real to him, that Grizel let
+      the wool drop on her knee, and Corp whispered to Elspeth, "Dinna be fleid
+      for him; I'se uphaud he found a wy." Those quiet evenings were not the
+      least pleasant spent in the Den.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But sometimes they were interrupted by a fierce endeavor to carry the
+      lair, when boys from Cathro's climbed to it up each other's backs, the
+      rope, of course, having been pulled into safety at the first sound, and
+      then that end of the Den rang with shouts, and deeds of valor on both
+      sides were as common as pine needles, and once Tommy and Corp were only
+      saved from captors who had them down, by Grizel rushing into the midst of
+      things with two flaring torches, and another time bold Birkie, most daring
+      of the storming party, was seized with two others and made to walk the
+      plank. The plank had been part of a gate, and was suspended over the bank
+      of the Silent Pool, so that, as you approached the farther end, down you
+      went. It was not a Jacobite method, but Tommy feared that rows of bodies,
+      hanging from the trees still standing in the Den, might attract attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIII &mdash; GRIZEL PAYS THREE VISITS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Less alarming but more irritating was the attempt of the youth of
+      Monypenny and the West town end, to establish a rival firm of Jacobites
+      (without even being sure of the name). They started business (Francie
+      Crabb leader, because he had a kilt) on a flagon of porter and an ounce of
+      twist, which they carried on a stick through the Den, saying "Bowf!" like
+      dogs, when they met anyone, and then laughing doubtfully. The twist and
+      porter were seized by Tommy and his followers, and Haggerty-Taggerty,
+      Major, arrived home with his head so firmly secured in the flagon that the
+      solder had to be melted before he saw the world again. Francie was in
+      still worse plight, for during the remainder of the evening he had to hide
+      in shame among the brackens, and Tommy wore a kilt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One cruel revenge the beaten rivals had. They waylaid Grizel, when she was
+      alone, and thus assailed her, she answering not a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's a father?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She'll soon no have a mither either!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Painted Lady needs to paint her cheeks no longer!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Na, the red spots comes themsels now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you heard her hoasting?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, it's the hoast o' a dying woman."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The joiner heard it, and gave her a look, measuring her wi' his eye for
+      the coffin. 'Five and a half by one and a half would hold her snod,' he
+      says to himsel'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ronny-On's auld wife heard it, and says she, 'Dinna think, my leddy, as
+      you'll be buried in consecrated ground.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Na, a'body kens she'll just be hauled at the end o' a rope to the hole
+      where the witches was shooled in."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wi' a paling spar through her, to keep her down on the day o' judgment."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, well, these children became men and women in time, one of them even
+      a bit of a hero, though he never knew it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Are you angry with them? If so, put the cheap thing aside, or think only
+      of Grizel, and perhaps God will turn your anger into love for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Great-hearted, solitary child! She walked away from them without
+      flinching, but on reaching the Den, where no one could see her&mdash;she
+      lay down on the ground, and her cheeks were dry, but little wells of water
+      stood in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She would not be the Lady Grizel that night. She went home instead, but
+      there was something she wanted to ask Tommy now, and the next time she saw
+      him she began at once. Grizel always began at once, often in the middle,
+      she saw what she was making for so clearly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know what it means when there are red spots in your cheeks, that
+      used not to be there?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy knew at once to whom she was referring, for he had heard the gossip
+      of the youth of Monypenny, and he hesitated to answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And if, when you cough, you bring up a tiny speck of blood?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I would get a bottle frae the doctor," said Tommy, evasively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She won't have the doctor," answered Grizel, unguardedly, and then with a
+      look dared Tommy to say that she spoke of her mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Does it mean you are dying?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I&mdash;I&mdash;oh, no, they soon get better."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said this because he was so sorry for Grizel. There never was a more
+      sympathetic nature than Tommy's. At every time of his life his pity was
+      easily roused for persons in distress, and he sought to comfort them by
+      shutting their eyes to the truth as long as possible. This sometimes
+      brought relief to them, but it was useless to Grizel, who must face her
+      troubles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why don't you answer truthfully?" she cried, with vehemence. "It is so
+      easy to be truthful!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, then," said Tommy, reluctantly, "I think they generally die."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth often carried in her pocket a little Testament, presented to her
+      by the Rev. Mr. Dishart for learning by heart one of the noblest of books,
+      the Shorter Catechism, as Scottish children do or did, not understanding
+      it at the time, but its meaning comes long afterwards and suddenly, when
+      you have most need of it. Sometimes Elspeth read aloud from her Testament
+      to Grizel, who made no comment, but this same evening, when the two were
+      alone, she said abruptly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you your Testament?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," Elspeth said, producing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Which is the page about saving sinners?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's all about that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But the page when you are in a hurry?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth read aloud the story of the Crucifixion, and Grizel listened
+      sharply until she heard what Jesus said to the malefactor: "To-day shalt
+      thou be with me in Paradise."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And was he?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of course."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But he had been wicked all his life, and I believe he was only good, just
+      that minute, because they were crucifying him. If they had let him come
+      down.&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, he repented, you know. That means he had faith, and if you have faith
+      you are saved. It doesna matter how bad you have been. You have just to
+      say 'I believe' before you die, and God lets you in. It's so easy,
+      Grizel," cried Elspeth, with shining eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grizel pondered. "I don't believe it is so easy as that," she said,
+      decisively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless she asked presently what the Testament cost, and when Elspeth
+      answered "Fourpence," offered her the money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't want to sell it," Elspeth remonstrated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you don't give it to me, I shall take it from you," said Grizel,
+      determinedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You can buy one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, the shop people would guess."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Guess what?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I won't tell you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll lend it to you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I won't take it that way." So Elspeth had to part with her Testament,
+      saying wonderingly, "Can you read?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, and write too. Mamma taught me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I thought she was daft," Elspeth blurted out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is only daft now and then," Grizel replied, without her usual spirit.
+      "Generally she is not daft at all, but only timid."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning the Painted Lady's child paid three calls, one in town, two
+      in the country. The adorable thing is that, once having made up her mind,
+      she never flinched, not even when her hand was on the knocker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first gentleman received her in his lobby. For a moment he did not
+      remember her; then suddenly the color deepened on his face, and he went
+      back and shut the parlor-door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did anybody see you coming here?" he asked, quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What does she want?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She did not send me, I came myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When you come to our house&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I never come to your house."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is a lie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Speak lower!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When you come to our house you tell me to go out and play. But I don't. I
+      go and cry."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No doubt he was listening, but his eyes were on the parlor-door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know why I cry, but you know, you wicked man! Why is it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why is it?" she demanded again, like a queen-child, but he could only
+      fidget with his gold chain and shuffle uneasily in his parnella shoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are not coming to see my mamma again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gentleman gave her an ugly look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you do," she said at once, "I shall come straight here and open that
+      door you are looking at, and tell your wife."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dared not swear. His hand&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you offer me money," said Grizel, "I shall tell her now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He muttered something to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it true?" she asked, "that mamma is dying?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a genuine shock to him, for he had not been at Double Dykes since
+      winter, and then the Painted Lady was quite well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nonsense!" he said, and his obvious disbelief brought some comfort to the
+      girl. But she asked, "Why are there red spots on her cheeks, then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Paint," he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," cried Grizel, rocking her arms, "it is not paint now. I thought it
+      might be and I tried to rub it off while she was sleeping, but it will not
+      come off. And when she coughs there is blood on her handkerchief."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked alarmed now, and Grizel's fears came back. "If mamma dies," she
+      said determinedly, "she must be buried in the cemetery."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is not dying, I tell you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you must come to the funeral."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you gyte?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With crape on your hat."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His mouth formed an emphatic "No."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You must," said Grizel, firmly, "you shall! If you don't&mdash;" She
+      pointed to the parlor-door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her remaining two visits were to a similar effect, and one of the
+      gentlemen came out of the ordeal somewhat less shamefully than the first,
+      the other worse, for he blubbered and wanted to kiss her. It is
+      questionable whether many young ladies have made such a profound
+      impression in a series of morning calls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The names of these gentlemen are not known, but you shall be told
+      presently where they may be found. Every person in Thrums used to know the
+      place, and many itched to get at the names, but as yet no one has had the
+      nerve to look for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not at this time did Grizel say a word of these interviews to her friends,
+      though Tommy had to be told of them later, and she never again referred to
+      her mother at the Saturday evenings in the Den. But the others began to
+      know a queer thing, nothing less than this, that in their absence the lair
+      was sometimes visited by a person or persons unknown, who made use of
+      their stock of firewood. It was a startling discovery, but when they
+      discussed it in council, Grizel never contributed a word. The affair
+      remained a mystery until one Saturday evening, when Tommy and Elspeth,
+      reaching the lair first, found in it a delicate white shawl. They both
+      recognized in it the pretty thing the Painted Lady had pinned across her
+      shoulders on the night they saw her steal out of Double Dykes, to meet the
+      man of long ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even while their eyes were saying this, Grizel climbed in without giving
+      the password, and they knew from her quick glance around that she had come
+      for the shawl. She snatched it out of Tommy's hand with a look that
+      prohibited questions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's the pair o' them," Tommy said to Elspeth at the first opportunity,
+      "that sometimes comes here at nights and kindles the fire and warms
+      themsels at the gloze. And the last time they came they forgot the shawl."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dinna like to think the Painted Lady has been up here, Tommy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But she has. You ken how, when she has a daft fit, she wanders the Den
+      trysting the man that never comes. Has she no been seen at all hours o'
+      the night, Grizel following a wee bit ahint, like as if to take tent o
+      her?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They say that, and that Grizel canna get her to go home till the daft fit
+      has passed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, she has that kechering hoast and spit now, and so Grizel brings her
+      up here out o' the blasts."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But how could she be got to come here, if she winna go home?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because frae here she can watch for the man."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth shuddered. "Do you think she's here often, Tommy?" she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just when she has a daft fit on, and they say she's wise sax days in
+      seven."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This made the Jacobite meetings eerie events for Elspeth, but Tommy liked
+      them the better; and what were they not to Grizel, who ran to them with
+      passionate fondness every Saturday night? Sometimes she even outdistanced
+      her haunting dreads, for she knew that her mother did not think herself
+      seriously ill; and had not the three gentlemen made light of that curious
+      cough? So there were nights when the lair saw Grizel go riotous with glee,
+      laughing, dancing, and shouting over-much, like one trying to make up for
+      a lost childhood. But it was also noticed that when the time came to leave
+      the Den she was very loath, and kissed her hands to the places where she
+      had been happiest, saying, wistfully, and with pretty gestures that were
+      foreign to Thrums, "Good-night, dear Cuttle Well! Good-by, sweet, sweet
+      Lair!" as if she knew it could not last. These weekly risings in the Den
+      were most real to Tommy, but it was Grizel who loved them best.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIV &mdash; A ROMANCE OF TWO OLD MAIDS AND A STOUT BACHELOR
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Came Gavinia, a burgess of the besieged city, along the south shore of the
+      Silent Pool. She was but a maid seeking to know what love might be, and as
+      she wandered on, she nibbled dreamily at a hot sweet-smelling bridie,
+      whose gravy oozed deliciously through a bursting paper-bag.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a fit night for dark deeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Methinks she cometh to her damn!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The speaker was a masked man who had followed her&mdash;he was sniffing
+      ecstatically&mdash;since she left the city walls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She seemed to possess a charmed life. He would have had her in Shovel
+      Gorge, but just then Ronny-On's Jean and Peter Scrymgeour turned the
+      corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Gavinia felt an exquisite thrill: a man was pursuing her. She
+      slipped the paper-bag out of sight, holding it dexterously against her
+      side with her arm, so that the gravy should not spurt out, and ran. Lights
+      flashed, a kingly voice cried "Now!" and immediately a petticoat was flung
+      over her head. (The Lady Griselda looked thin that evening.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gavinia was dragged to the Lair, and though many a time they bumped her,
+      she still tenderly nursed the paper-bag with her arm, or fondly thought
+      she did so, for when unmuffled she discovered that it had been removed, as
+      if by painless surgery. And her captors' tongues were sweeping their chins
+      for stray crumbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wench was offered her choice of Stroke's gallant fellows, but "Wha
+      carries me wears me," said she, promptly, and not only had he to carry her
+      from one end of the Den to the other, but he must do it whistling as if
+      barely conscious that she was there. So after many attempts (for she was
+      always willing to let them have their try) Corp of Corp, speaking for Sir
+      Joseph and the others, announced a general retreat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead of taking this prisoner's life, Stroke made her his tool,
+      releasing her on condition that every seventh day she appeared at the Lair
+      with information concerning the doings in the town. Also, her name was
+      Agnes of Kingoldrum, and, if she said it was not, the plank. Bought thus,
+      Agnes proved of service, bringing such bags of news that Stroke was often
+      occupied now in drawing diagrams of Thrums and its strongholds, including
+      the residence of Cathro, with dotted lines to show the direction of
+      proposed underground passages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And presently came by this messenger disquieting rumors indeed. Another
+      letter, being the third in six months, had reached the Dovecot, addressed,
+      not to Miss Ailie, but to Miss Kitty. Miss Kitty had been dead fully six
+      years, and Archie Piatt, the post, swore that this was the eighteenth, if
+      not the nineteenth, letter he had delivered to her name since that time.
+      They were all in the same hand, a man's, and there had been similar
+      letters while she was alive, but of these he kept no record. Miss Ailie
+      always took these letters with a trembling hand, and then locked herself
+      in her bedroom, leaving the key in such a position in its hole that you
+      might just as well go straight back to the kitchen. Within a few hours of
+      the arrival of these ghostly letters, tongues were wagging about them, but
+      to the two or three persons who (after passing a sleepless night) bluntly
+      asked Miss Ailie from whom they came, she only replied by pursing her
+      lips. Nothing could be learned at the post-office save that Miss Ailie
+      never posted any letters there, except to two Misses and a Mrs., all
+      resident in Redlintie. The mysterious letters came from Australy or
+      Manchester, or some such part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What could Stroke make of this? He expressed no opinion, but oh, his face
+      was grim. Orders were immediately given to double the sentinels. A barrel
+      was placed in the Queen's Bower. Sawdust was introduced at immense risk
+      into the Lair. A paper containing this writing, "248xho317
+      Oxh4591AWS314dd5," was passed round and then solemnly burned. Nothing was
+      left to chance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Agnes of Kingoldrum (Stroke told her) did not know Miss Ailie, but she was
+      commanded to pay special attention to the gossip of the town regarding
+      this new move of the enemy. By next Saturday the plot had thickened.
+      Previous letters might have reddened Miss Ailie's eyes for an hour or two,
+      but they gladdened her as a whole. Now she sat crying all evening with
+      this one on her lap; she gave up her daily walk to the Berlin wool shop,
+      with all its romantic possibilities; at the clatter of the tea-things she
+      would start apprehensively; she had let a red shawl lie for two days in
+      the blue-and-white room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stroke never blanched. He called his faithful remnant around him, and told
+      them the story of Bell the Cat, with its application in the records of his
+      race. Did they take his meaning? This Miss Ailie must be watched closely.
+      In short, once more, in Scottish history, someone must bell the cat. Who
+      would volunteer?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Corp of Corp and Sir Joseph stepped forward as one man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thou couldst not look like Gavinia," the prince said, shaking his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wha wants him to look like Gavinia?" cried an indignant voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Peace, Agnes!" said Stroke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Agnes, why bletherest thou?" said Sir Joseph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If onybody's to watch Miss Ailie," insisted the obstinate woman, "surely
+      it should be me!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ha!" Stroke sprang to his feet, for something in her voice, or the
+      outline of her figure, or perhaps it was her profile, had given him an
+      idea. "A torch!" he cried eagerly and with its aid he scanned her face
+      until his own shone triumphant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He kens a wy, methinks!" exclaimed one of his men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir Joseph was right. It had been among the prince's exploits to make his
+      way into Thrums in disguise, and mix with the people as one of themselves,
+      and on several of these occasions he had seen Miss Ailie's attendant.
+      Agnes's resemblance to her now struck him for the first time. It should be
+      Agnes of Kingoldrum's honorable though dangerous part to take this
+      Gavinia's place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But how to obtain possession of Gavinia's person? Agnes made several
+      suggestions, but was told to hold her prating peace. It could only be done
+      in one way. They must kidnap her. Sir Joseph was ordered to be ready to
+      accompany his liege on this perilous enterprise in ten minutes. "And
+      mind," said Stroke, gravely, "we carry our lives in our hands."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In our hands!" gasped Sir Joseph, greatly puzzled, but he dared ask no
+      more, and when the two set forth (leaving Agnes of Kingoldrum looking very
+      uncomfortable), he was surprised to see that Stroke was carrying nothing.
+      Sir Joseph carried in his hand his red hanky, mysteriously knotted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is yours?" he whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What meanest thou?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir Joseph replied, "Oh, nothing," and thought it best to slip his
+      handkerchief into his trouser-pocket, but the affair bothered him for long
+      afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they returned through the Den, there still seemed (to the unpiercing
+      eye) to be but two of them; nevertheless, Stroke re-entered the Lair to
+      announce to Agnes and the others that he had left Gavinia below in charge
+      of Sir Joseph. She was to walk the plank anon, but first she must be
+      stripped that Agnes might don her garments. Stroke was every inch a
+      prince, so he kept Agnes by his side, and sent down the Lady Griselda and
+      Widow Elspeth to strip the prisoner, Sir Joseph having orders to stand
+      back fifty paces. (It is a pleasure to have to record this.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The signal having been given that this delicate task was accomplished,
+      Stroke whistled shrilly, and next moment was heard from far below a thud,
+      as of a body falling in water, then an agonizing shriek, and then again
+      all was still, save for the heavy breathing of Agnes of Kingoldrum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir Joseph (very wet) returned to the Lair, and Agnes was commanded to
+      take off her clothes in a retired spot and put on those of the deceased,
+      which she should find behind a fallen tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I winna be called the deceased," cried Agnes hotly, but she had to do as
+      she was bid, and when she emerged, from behind the tree she was the very
+      image of the ill-fated Gavinia. Stroke showed her a plan of Miss Ailie's
+      backdoor, and also gave her a kitchen key (when he produced this, she felt
+      in her pockets and then snatched it from him), after which she set out for
+      the Dovecot in a scare about her own identity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And now, what doest thou think about it a'?" inquired Sir Joseph eagerly,
+      to which Stroke made answer, looking at him fixedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The wind is in the west!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir Joseph should have kept this a secret, but soon Stroke heard
+      Inverquharity prating of it, and he called his lieutenant before him. Sir
+      Joseph acknowledged humbly that he had been unable to hide it from
+      Inverquharity, but he promised not to tell Muckle Kenny, of whose loyalty
+      there were doubts. Henceforth, when the faithful fellow was Muckle Kenny,
+      he would say doggedly to himself, "Dinna question me, Kenny. I ken nocht
+      about it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dark indeed were now the fortunes of the Pretender, but they had one
+      bright spot. Miss Ailie had been taken in completely by the trick played
+      on her, and thus Stroke now got full information of the enemy's doings.
+      Cathro having failed to dislodge the Jacobites, the seat of war had been
+      changed by Victoria to the Dovecot, whither her despatches were now
+      forwarded. That this last one, of which Agnes of Kingoldrum tried in vain
+      to obtain possession, doubled the price on the Pretender's head, there
+      could be no doubt; but as Miss Ailie was a notorious Hanoverian, only the
+      hunted prince himself knew why this should make her cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hinted with a snigger something about an affair he had once had with
+      the lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Widow and Sir Joseph accepted this explanation, but it made Lady
+      Griselda rock her arms in irritation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reports about Miss Ailie's behavior became more and more alarming. She
+      walked up and down her bedroom now in the middle of the night. Every time
+      the knocker clanked she held herself together with both hands. Agnes had
+      orders not to answer the door until her mistress had keeked through the
+      window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She's expecting a veesitor, methinks," said Corp. This was his bright
+      day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay," answered Agnes, "but is't a man-body, or just a woman-body?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leaving the rebels in the Lair stunned by Victoria's latest move, we now
+      return to Thrums, where Miss Ailie's excited state had indeed been the
+      talk of many. Even the gossips, however, had underestimated her distress
+      of mind, almost as much as they misunderstood its cause. You must listen
+      now (will you?) to so mild a thing as the long thin romance of two maiden
+      ladies and a stout bachelor, all beginning to be old the day the three of
+      them first drank tea together, and that was ten years ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ailie and Miss Kitty, you may remember, were not natives of Thrums.
+      They had been born and brought up at Redlintie, and on the death of their
+      parents they had remained there, the gauger having left them all his
+      money, which was just sufficient to enable them to live like ladies, if
+      they took tiny Magenta Cottage, and preferred an inexperienced maid. At
+      first their life was very quiet, the walk from eleven to one for the good
+      of fragile Miss Kitty's health its outstanding feature. When they strolled
+      together on the cliffs, Miss Ailie's short thick figure, straight as an
+      elvint, cut the wind in two, but Miss Kitty was swayed this way and that,
+      and when she shook her curls at the wind, it blew them roguishly in her
+      face, and had another shot at them, as soon as they were put to rights. If
+      the two walked by the shore (where the younger sometimes bathed her feet,
+      the elder keeping a sharp eye on land and water), the sea behaved like the
+      wind, dodging Miss Ailie's ankles and snapping playfully at Miss Kitty's.
+      Thus even the elements could distinguish between the sisters, who
+      nevertheless had so much in common that at times Miss Ailie would look
+      into her mirror and sigh to think that some day Miss Kitty might be like
+      this. How Miss Ailie adored Miss Kitty! She trembled with pleasure if you
+      said Miss Kitty was pretty, and she dreamed dreams in which she herself
+      walked as bridesmaid only. And just as Miss Ailie could be romantic, Miss
+      Kitty, the romantic, could be prim, and the primness was her own as much
+      as the curls, but Miss Ailie usually carried it for her, like a cloak in
+      case of rain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not often have two sweeter women grown together on one stem. What were the
+      men of Redlintie about? The sisters never asked each other this question,
+      but there were times when, apparently without cause, Miss Ailie hugged
+      Miss Kitty vehemently, as if challenging the world, and perhaps Miss Kitty
+      understood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus a year or more passed uneventfully, until the one romance of their
+      lives befell them. It began with the reappearance in Redlintie of Magerful
+      Tarn, who had come to torment his father into giving him more money, but,
+      finding he had come too late, did not harass the sisters. This is perhaps
+      the best thing that can be told of him, and, as if he knew this, he had
+      often told it himself to Jean Myles, without however telling her what
+      followed. For something to his advantage did follow, and it was greatly to
+      the credit of Miss Ailie and Miss Kitty, though they went about it as
+      timidly as if they were participating in a crime. Ever since they learned
+      of the sin which had brought this man into the world their lives had been
+      saddened, for on the same day they realized what a secret sorrow had long
+      lain at their mother's heart. Alison Sibbald was a very simple, gracious
+      lady, who never recovered from the shock of discovering that she had
+      married a libertine; yet she had pressed her husband to do something for
+      his son, and been greatly pained when he refused with a coarse laugh. The
+      daughters were very like her in nature, and though the knowledge of what
+      she had suffered increased many fold their love for her, so that in her
+      last days their passionate devotion to her was the talk of Redlintie, it
+      did not blind them to what seemed to them to be their duty to the man. As
+      their father's son, they held, he had a right to a third of the gauger's
+      money, and to withhold it from him, now that they knew his whereabouts,
+      would have been a form of theft. But how to give T. his third? They called
+      him T. from delicacy, and they had never spoken to him. When he passed
+      them in the streets, they turned pale, and, thinking of their mother,
+      looked another way. But they knew he winked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, looking red in one street, and white in another, but resolute in
+      all, they took their business to the office of Mr. John McLean, the
+      writer, who had once escorted Miss Kitty home from a party without
+      anything coming of it, so that it was quite a psychological novel in
+      several volumes. Now Mr. John happened to be away at the fishing, and a
+      reckless maid showed them into the presence of a strange man, who was no
+      other than his brother Ivie, home for a year's holiday from India, and
+      naturally this extraordinary occurrence so agitated them that Miss Ailie
+      had told half her story before she realized that Miss Kitty was titting at
+      her dress. Then indeed she sought to withdraw, but Ivie, with the alarming
+      yet not unpleasing audacity of his sex, said he had heard enough to
+      convince him that in this matter he was qualified to take his brother's
+      place. But he was not, for he announced, "My advice to you is not to give
+      T. a halfpenny," which showed that he did not even understand what they
+      had come about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They begged permission to talk to each other behind the door, and
+      presently returned, troubled but brave. Miss Kitty whispered "Courage!"
+      and this helped Miss Ailie to the deed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We have quite made up our minds to let T. have the money," she said, "but&mdash;but
+      the difficulty is the taking it to him. Must we take it in person?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why not?" asked Ivie, bewildered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It would be such a painful meeting to us." said Miss Ailie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And to him," added simple Miss Kitty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You see we have thought it best not to&mdash;not to know him," said Miss
+      Ailie, faintly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mother&mdash;" faltered Miss Kitty, and at the word the eyes of both
+      ladies began to fill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, of course, Mr. McLean discovered the object of their visit, and
+      promised that his brother should take this delicate task off their hands,
+      and as he bowed them out he said, "Ladies, I think you are doing a very
+      foolish thing, and I shall respect you for it all my life." At least Miss
+      Kitty insisted that respect was the word, Miss Ailie thought he said
+      esteem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was how it began, and it progressed for nearly a year at a rate that
+      will take away your breath. On the very next day he met Miss Kitty in High
+      Street, a most awkward encounter for her ("for, you know, Ailie, we were
+      never introduced, so how could I decide all in a moment what to do?"), and
+      he raised his hat (the Misses Croall were at their window and saw the
+      whole thing). But we must gallop, like the friendship. He bowed the first
+      two times, the third time he shook hands (by a sort of providence Miss
+      Kitty had put on her new mittens), the fourth, fifth, and sixth times he
+      conversed, the seventh time he&mdash;they replied that they really could
+      not trouble him so much, but he said he was going that way at any rate;
+      the eighth time, ninth time, and tenth time the figures of two ladies and
+      a gentleman might have been observed, etc., and either the eleventh or
+      twelfth time ("Fancy our not being sure, Ailie"&mdash;"It has all come so
+      quickly, Kitty") he took his first dish of tea at Magenta Cottage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were many more walks after this, often along the cliffs to a little
+      fishing village, over which the greatest of magicians once stretched his
+      wand, so that it became famous forever, as all the world saw except
+      himself; and tea at the cottage followed, when Ivie asked Miss Kitty to
+      sing "The Land o' the Leal," and Miss Ailie sat by the window, taking in
+      her merino, that it might fit Miss Kitty, cutting her sable muff (once
+      Alison Sibbald's) into wristbands for Miss Kitty's astrakhan; they did not
+      go quite all the way round, but men are blind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ivie was not altogether blind. The sisters, it is to be feared, called him
+      the dashing McLean, but he was at this time nearly forty years old, an age
+      when bachelors like to take a long rest from thinking of matrimony, before
+      beginning again. Fifteen years earlier he had been in love, but the girl
+      had not cared to wait for him, and, though in India he had often pictured
+      himself returning to Redlintie to gaze wistfully at her old home, when he
+      did come back he never went, because the house was a little out of the
+      way. But unknown to him two ladies went, to whom he had told this as a
+      rather dreary joke. They were ladies he esteemed very much, though having
+      a sense of humor he sometimes chuckled on his way home from Magenta
+      Cottage, and he thought out many ways of adding little pleasures to their
+      lives. It was like him to ask Miss Kitty to sing and play, though he
+      disliked music. He understood that it is a hard world for single women,
+      and knew himself for a very ordinary sort of man. If it ever crossed his
+      head that Miss Kitty would be willing to marry him, he felt genuinely
+      sorry at the same time that she had not done better long ago. He never
+      flattered himself that he could be accepted now, save for the good home he
+      could provide (he was not the man to blame women for being influenced by
+      that), for like most of his sex he was unaware that a woman is never too
+      old to love or to be loved; if they do know it, the mean ones among them
+      make a jest of it, at which (God knows why) their wives laugh. Mr. McLean
+      had been acquainted with the sisters for months before he was sure even
+      that Miss Kitty was his favorite. He found that out one evening when
+      sitting with an old friend, whose wife and children were in the room,
+      gathered round a lamp and playing at some child's game. Suddenly Ivie
+      McLean envied his friend, and at the same moment he thought tenderly of
+      Miss Kitty. But the feeling passed. He experienced it next and as suddenly
+      when arriving at Bombay, where some women were waiting to greet their
+      husbands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before he went away the two gentlewomen knew that he was not to speak.
+      They did not tell each other what was in their minds. Miss Kitty was so
+      bright during those last days, that she must have deceived anyone who did
+      not love her, and Miss Ailie held her mouth very tight, and if possible
+      was straighter than ever, but oh, how gentle she was with Miss Kitty!
+      Ivie's last two weeks in the old country were spent in London, and during
+      that time Miss Kitty liked to go away by herself, and sit on a rock and
+      gaze at the sea. Once Miss Ailie followed her and would have called him a&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't, Ailie!" said Miss Kitty, imploringly. But that night, when Miss
+      Kitty was brushing her hair, she said, courageously, "Ailie, I don't think
+      I should wear curls any longer. You know I&mdash;I shall be thirty-seven
+      in August." And after the elder sister had become calm again. Miss Kitty
+      said timidly, "You don't think I have been unladylike, do you, Ailie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a trifle now remains to tell. Miss Kitty was the better business
+      woman of the two, and kept the accounts, and understood, as Miss Ailie
+      could not understand, how their little income was invested, and even knew
+      what consols were, though never quite certain whether it was their fall or
+      rise that is matter for congratulation. And after the ship had sailed, she
+      told Miss Ailie that nearly all their money was lost, and that she had
+      known it for a month.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you kept it from me! Why?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought, Ailie, that you, knowing I am not strong&mdash;that you&mdash;would
+      perhaps tell him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I would!" cried Miss Ailie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And then," said Miss Kitty, "perhaps he, out of pity, you know!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, even if he had!" said Miss Ailie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I could not, oh, I could not," replied Miss Kitty, flushing; "it&mdash;it
+      would not have been ladylike, Ailie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus forced to support themselves, the sisters decided to keep school
+      genteelly, and, hearing that there was an opening in Thrums, they settled
+      there, and Miss Kitty brushed her hair out now, and with a twist and a
+      twirl ran it up her fingers into a net, whence by noon some of it had
+      escaped through the little windows and was curls again. She and Miss Ailie
+      were happy in Thrums, for time took the pain out of the affair of Mr.
+      McLean, until it became not merely a romantic memory, but, with the
+      letters he wrote to Miss Kitty and her answers, the great quiet pleasure
+      of their lives. They were friendly letters only, but Miss Kitty wrote hers
+      out in pencil first and read them to Miss Ailie, who had been taking notes
+      for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the last weeks of Miss Kitty's life Miss Ailie conceived a passionate
+      unspoken hatred of Mr. McLean, and her intention was to write and tell him
+      that he had killed her darling. But owing to the illness into which she
+      was flung by Miss Kitty's death, that unjust letter was never written.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But why did Mr. McLean continue to write to Miss Kitty?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, have pity or be merciless as you choose. For several years Mr.
+      McLean's letters had been the one thing the sisters looked forward to, and
+      now, when Miss Ailie was without Miss Kitty, must she lose them also? She
+      never doubted, though she may have been wrong, that, if Ivie knew of Miss
+      Kitty's death, one letter would come in answer, and that the last. She
+      could not tell him. In the meantime he wrote twice asking the reason of
+      this long silence, and at last Miss Ailie, whose handwriting was very like
+      her sister's, wrote him a letter which was posted at Tilliedrum and signed
+      "Katherine Cray." The thing seems monstrous, but this gentle lady did it,
+      and it was never so difficult to do again. Latterly, it had been easy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This last letter of Mr. McLean's announced to Miss Kitty that he was about
+      to start for home "for good," and he spoke in it of coming to Thrums to
+      see the sisters, as soon as he reached Redlintie. Poor Miss Ailie! After
+      sleepless nights she trudged to the Tilliedrum post-office with a full
+      confession of her crime, which would be her welcome home to him when he
+      arrived at his brother's house. Many of the words were written on damp
+      blobs. After that she could do nothing but wait for the storm, and waiting
+      she became so meek, that Gavinia, who loved her because she was "that
+      simple," said sorrowfully:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How is't you never rage at me now, ma'am? I'm sure it keepit you
+      lightsome, and I likit to hear the bum o't."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And instead o' the raging I was prigging for," the soft-hearted maid told
+      her friends, "she gave me a flannel petticoat!" Indeed, Miss Ailie had
+      taken to giving away her possessions at this time, like a woman who
+      thought she was on her death-bed. There was something for each of her
+      pupils, including&mdash;but the important thing is that there was a gift
+      for Tommy, which had the effect of planting the Hanoverian Woman (to whom
+      he must have given many uneasy moments) more securely on the British
+      Throne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXV &mdash; A PENNY PASS-BOOK
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth conveyed the gift to Tommy in a brown paper wrapping, and when it
+      lay revealed as an aging volume of <i>Mamma's Boy</i>, a magazine for the
+      Home, nothing could have looked more harmless. But, ah, you never know.
+      Hungrily Tommy ran his eye through the bill of fare for something choice
+      to begin with, and he found it. "The Boy Pirate" it was called. Never
+      could have been fairer promise, and down he sat confidently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a paper on the boys who have been undone by reading pernicious
+      fiction. It gave their names, and the number of pistols they had bought,
+      and what the judge said when he pronounced sentence. It counted the
+      sensational tales found beneath the bed, and described the desolation of
+      the mothers and sisters. It told the color of the father's hair before and
+      afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy flung the thing from him, picked it up again, and read on uneasily,
+      and when at last he rose he was shrinking from himself. In hopes that he
+      might sleep it off he went early to bed, but his contrition was still with
+      him in the morning. Then Elspeth was shown the article which had saved
+      him, and she, too, shuddered at what she had been, though her remorse was
+      but a poor display beside his, he was so much better at everything than
+      Elspeth. Tommy's distress of mind was so genuine and so keen that it had
+      several hours' start of his admiration of it; and it was still sincere,
+      though he himself had become gloomy, when he told his followers that they
+      were no more. Grizel heard his tale with disdain, and said she hated Miss
+      Ailie for giving him the silly book, but he reproved these unchristian
+      sentiments, while admitting that Miss Ailie had played on him a scurvy
+      trick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you're glad you've repented, Tommy," Elspeth reminded him, anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, I'm glad," he answered, without heartiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, gin you repent I'll repent too," said Corp, always ready to accept
+      Tommy without question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You'll be happier," replied Tommy, sourly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, to be good's the great thing," Corp growled; "but, Tommy, could we no
+      have just one michty blatter, methinks, to end up wi'?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, of course, could not be, and Saturday forenoon found Tommy wandering
+      the streets listlessly, very happy, you know, but inclined to kick at any
+      one who came near, such, for instance, as the stranger who asked him in
+      the square if he could point out the abode of Miss Ailie Cray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy led the way, casting some converted looks at the gentleman, and
+      judging him to be the mysterious unknown in whom the late Captain Stroke
+      had taken such a reprehensible interest. He was a stout, red-faced man,
+      stepping firmly into the fifties, with a beard that even the most
+      converted must envy, and a frown sat on his brows all the way, proving him
+      possibly ill-tempered, but also one of the notable few who can think hard
+      about one thing for at least five consecutive minutes. Many took a glint
+      at him as he passed, but missed the frown, they were wondering so much why
+      the fur of his heavy top-coat was on the inside, where it made little
+      show, save at blasty corners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ailie was in her parlor, trying to give her mind to a blue and white
+      note-book, but when she saw who was coming up the garden she dropped the
+      little volume and tottered to her bedroom. She was there when Gavinia came
+      up to announce that she had shown a gentleman into the blue-and-white
+      room, who gave the name of Ivie McLean. "Tell him&mdash;I shall come down&mdash;presently,"
+      gasped Miss Ailie, and then Gavinia was sure this was the man who was
+      making her mistress so unhappy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She's so easily flichtered now," Gavinia told Tommy in the kitchen, "that
+      for fear o' starting her I never whistle at my work without telling her
+      I'm to do't, and if I fall on the stair, my first thought is to jump up
+      and cry, 'It was just me tum'ling.' And now I believe this brute'll be the
+      death o' her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what can he do to her?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dinna ken, but she's greeting sair, and yon can hear how he's rampaging
+      up and down the blue-and-white room. Listen to his thrawn feet! He's
+      raging because she's so long in coming down, and come she daurna. Oh, the
+      poor crittur!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, Tommy was very fond of his old school-mistress, and he began to be
+      unhappy with Gavinia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She hasna a man-body in the world to take care o' her," sobbed the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Has she no?" cried Tommy, fiercely, and under one of the impulses that so
+      easily mastered him he marched into the blue-and-white room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, my young friend, and what may you want?" asked Mr. McLean,
+      impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy sat down and folded his arms. "I'm going to sit here and see what
+      you do to Miss Ailie," he said, determinedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean said "Oh!" and then seemed favorably impressed, for he added
+      quietly: "She is a friend of yours, is she? Well, I have no intention of
+      hurting her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You had better no," replied Tommy, stoutly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did she send you here?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No; I came mysel'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To protect her?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was the irony in it that so puts up a boy's dander. "Dinna think,"
+      said Tommy, hotly, "that I'm fleid at you, though I have no beard&mdash;at
+      least, I hinna it wi' me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this unexpected conclusion a smile crossed Mr. McLean's face, but was
+      gone in an instant. "I wish you had laughed," said Tommy, on the watch;
+      "once a body laughs he canna be angry no more," which was pretty good even
+      for Tommy. It made Mr. McLean ask him why he was so fond of Miss Ailie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm the only man-body she has," he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh? But why are you her man-body?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy could think of no better reason than this: "Because&mdash;because
+      she's so sair in need o' are." (There were moments when one liked Tommy.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean turned to the window, and perhaps forgot that he was not alone.
+      "Well, what are you thinking about so deeply?" he asked by and by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was trying to think o' something that would gar you laugh," answered
+      Tommy, very earnestly, and was surprised to see that he had nearly done
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The blue and white note-book was lying on the floor where Miss Ailie had
+      dropped it. Often in Tommy's presence she had consulted this work, and
+      certainly its effect on her was the reverse of laughter; but once he had
+      seen Dr. McQueen pick it up and roar over every page. With an inspiration
+      Tommy handed the book to Mr. McLean. "It made the doctor laugh," he said
+      persuasively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Go away," said Ivie, impatiently; "I am in no mood for laughing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I tell you what," answered Tommy, "I'll go, if you promise to look at
+      it," and to be rid of him the man agreed. For the next quarter of an hour
+      Tommy and Gavinia were very near the door of the blue-and-white room,
+      Tommy whispering dejectedly, "I hear no laughing," and Gavinia replying,
+      "But he has quieted down."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean had a right to be very angry, but God only can say whether he
+      had a right to be as angry as he was. The book had been handed to him
+      open, and he was laying it down unread when a word underlined caught his
+      eye. It was his own name. Nothing in all literature arrests our attention
+      quite so much as that. He sat down to the book. It was just about this
+      time that Miss Ailie went on her knees to pray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was only a penny pass-book. On its blue cover had been pasted a slip of
+      white paper, and on the paper was written, in blue ink, "Alison Cray,"
+      with a date nearly nine years old. The contents were in Miss Ailie's prim
+      handwriting; jottings for her own use begun about the time when the
+      sisters, trembling at their audacity, had opened school, and consulted and
+      added to fitfully ever since. Hours must have been spent in erasing the
+      blots and other blemishes so carefully. The tiny volume was not yet full,
+      and between its two last written pages lay a piece of blue blotting-paper
+      neatly cut to the size of the leaf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of these notes were transcripts from books, some contained the advice
+      of friends, others were doubtless the result of talks with Miss Kitty
+      (from whom there were signs that the work had been kept a secret), many
+      were Miss Ailie's own. An entry of this kind was frequent: "If you are
+      uncertain of the answer to a question in arithmetic, it is advisable to
+      leave the room on some pretext and work out the sum swiftly in the
+      passage." Various pretexts were suggested, and this one (which had an
+      insufficient line through it) had been inserted by Dr. McQueen on that day
+      when Tommy saw him chuckling, "You pretend that your nose is bleeding and
+      putting your handkerchief to it, retire hastily, the supposition being
+      that you have gone to put the key of the blue-and-white room down your
+      back." Evidently these small deceptions troubled Miss Ailie, for she had
+      written, "Such subterfuge is, I hope, pardonable, the object being the
+      maintenance of scholastic discipline." On another page, where the
+      arithmetic was again troubling her, this appeared: "If Kitty were aware
+      that the squealing of the slate-pencils gave me such headaches, she would
+      insist on again taking the arithmetic class, though it always makes her
+      ill. Surely, then, I am justified in saying that the sound does not
+      distress me." To this the doctor had added, "You are a brick."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were two pages headed NEVER, which mentioned ten things that Miss
+      Ailie must never do; among them, "<i>Never</i> let the big boys know you
+      are afraid of them. To awe them, stamp with the foot, speak in a loud
+      ferocious voice, and look them unflinchingly in the face."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Punishments" was another heading, but she had written it small, as if to
+      prevent herself seeing it each time she opened the book. Obviously her
+      hope had been to dispose of Punishment in a few lines, but it would have
+      none of that, and Mr. McLean found it stalking from page to page. Miss
+      Ailie favored the cane in preference to tawse, which, "often flap round
+      your neck as yon are about to bring them down." Except in desperate cases
+      "it will probably be found sufficient to order the offender to bring the
+      cane to you." Then followed a note about rubbing the culprit's hand "with
+      sweet butter or dripping" should you have struck too hard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dispiriting item, that on resuming his seat the chastised one is a hero to
+      his fellows for the rest of the day. Item, that Master John James Rattray
+      knows she hurts her own hand more than his. Item, that John James promised
+      to be good throughout the session if she would let him thrash the bad
+      ones. Item, that Master T. Sandys, himself under correction, explained to
+      her (the artistic instinct again) how to give the cane a waggle when
+      descending, which would double its nip. Item, that Elsie Dundas offered to
+      receive Francie Crabb's punishment for two snaps. Item, that Master Gavin
+      Dishart, for what he considered the honor of his school, though aware he
+      was imperilling his soul, fought Hendry Dickie of Cathro's for saying Miss
+      Ailie could not draw blood with one stroke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The effect on Miss Ailie of these mortifying discoveries could be read in
+      the paragraph headed A MOTHER'S METHOD, which was copied from a newspaper.
+      Mrs. E&mdash;&mdash;, it seems, was the mother of four boys (residing at D&mdash;&mdash;),
+      and she subjected them frequently to corporal chastisement without
+      permanent spiritual result. Mrs. E&mdash;&mdash;, by the advice of another
+      lady, Mrs. K&mdash;&mdash; (mother of six), then had recourse to the
+      following interesting experiment. Instead of punishing her children
+      physically when they misbehaved, she now in their presence wounded herself
+      by striking her left hand severely with a ruler held in the right. Soon
+      their better natures were touched, and the four implored her to desist,
+      promising with tears never to offend again. From that hour Mrs. E&mdash;&mdash;
+      had little trouble with her boys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was recorded in the blue and white book how Miss Ailie gave this plan a
+      fair trial, but her boys must have been darker characters than Mrs. E&mdash;&mdash;'s,
+      for it merely set them to watching each other, so that they might cry out,
+      "Pandy yourself quick, Miss Ailie; Gavin Dishart's drawing the devil on
+      his slate." Nevertheless, when Miss Ailie announced a return to more
+      conventional methods, Francie was put up (with threats) to say that he
+      suffered agonies of remorse every time she pandied herself for him, but
+      the thing had been organized in a hurry and Francie was insufficiently
+      primed, and on cross-examination he let out that he thought remorse was a
+      swelling of the hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ailie was very humble-minded, and her entries under THE TEACHER
+      TAUGHT were all admonitions for herself. Thus she chided herself for
+      cowardice because "Delicate private reasons have made me avoid all mention
+      of India in the geography classes. Kitty says quite calmly that this is
+      fair neither to our pupils nor to I&mdash;&mdash; M&mdash;&mdash;. The
+      courage of Kitty in this matter is a constant rebuke to me." Except on a
+      few occasions Mr. McLean found that he was always referred to as I&mdash;&mdash;
+      M&mdash;&mdash;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quite early in the volume Miss Ailie knew that her sister's hold on life
+      was loosening. "How bright the world suddenly seems," Mr. McLean read,
+      "when there is the tiniest improvement in the health of an invalid one
+      loves." Is it laughable that such a note as this is appended to a recipe
+      for beef-tea? "It is surely not very wicked to pretend to Kitty that I
+      keep some of it for myself; she would not take it all if she knew I dined
+      on the beef it was made from." Other entries showed too plainly that Miss
+      Ailie stinted herself of food to provide delicacies for Miss Kitty. No
+      doubt her expenses were alarming her when she wrote this: "An interesting
+      article in the <i>Mentor</i> says that nearly all of us eat and drink too
+      much. Were we to mortify our stomachs we should be healthier animals and
+      more capable of sustained thought. The word animal in this connection is
+      coarse, but the article is most impressive, and a crushing reply to Dr.
+      McQueen's assertion that the editor drinks. In the school-room I have
+      frequently found my thoughts of late wandering from classwork, and I
+      hastily ascribed it to sitting up during the night with Kitty or to my
+      habit of listening lest she should be calling for me. Probably I had
+      over-eaten, and I must mortify the stomach. A glass of hot water with half
+      a spoonful of sugar in it is highly recommended as a light supper."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How long ago it may seem since yesterday!" Do you need to be told on what
+      dark day Miss Ailie discovered that? "I used to pray that I should be
+      taken first, but I was both impious and selfish, for how could fragile
+      Kitty have fought on alone?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In time happiness again returned to Miss Ailie; of all our friends it is
+      the one most reluctant to leave us on this side of the grave. It came at
+      first disguised, in the form of duties, old and new; and stealthily, when
+      Miss Ailie was not looking, it mixed with the small worries and joys that
+      had been events while Miss Kitty lived, and these it converted once more
+      into events, where Miss Ailie found it lurking, and at first she would not
+      take it back to her heart, but it crept in without her knowing. And still
+      there were I&mdash;&mdash; M&mdash;&mdash;'s letters. "They are all I have
+      to look forward to," she wrote in self-defence. "I shall never write to I&mdash;&mdash;
+      M&mdash;&mdash; again," was another entry, but Mr. McLean found on the
+      same page, "I have written to I&mdash;&mdash; M&mdash;&mdash;, but do not
+      intend posting it," and beneath that was, "God forgive me, I have posted
+      it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The troubles with arithmetic were becoming more terrible. "I am never <i>really</i>
+      sure about the decimals," she wrote.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A Professor of Memory had appeared at the Muckley, and Miss Ailie admits
+      having given him half-a-crown to explain his system to her. But when he
+      was gone she could not remember whether you multiplied everything by ten
+      before dividing by five and subtracting a hundred, or began by dividing
+      and doing something underhand with the cube root. Then Mr. Dishart, who
+      had a microscope, wanted his boy to be taught science, and several
+      experiments were described at length in the book, one of them dealing with
+      a penny, <i>H</i>, and a piston, <i>X Y</i>, and you do things to the
+      piston "and then the penny comes to the surface." "But it never does,"
+      Miss Ailie wrote sorrowfully; perhaps she was glad when Master Dishart was
+      sent to another school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Though I teach the girls the pianoforte I find that I cannot stretch my
+      fingers as I used to do. Kitty used to take the music, and I often
+      remember this suddenly when superintending a lesson. It is a pain to me
+      that so many wish to acquire 'The Land o' the Leal,' which Kitty sang so
+      often to I&mdash;&mdash; M&mdash;&mdash; at Magenta Cottage."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even the French, of which Miss Ailie had once been very proud, was
+      slipping from her. "Kitty and I kept up our French by translating I&mdash;&mdash;
+      M&mdash;&mdash;'s letters and comparing our versions, but now that this
+      stimulus is taken away I find that I am forgetting my French. Or is it
+      only that I am growing old? too old to keep school?" This dread was
+      beginning to haunt Miss Ailie, and the pages between which the
+      blotting-paper lay revealed that she had written to the editor of the <i>Mentor</i>
+      asking up to what age he thought a needy gentlewoman had a right to teach.
+      The answer was not given, but her comment on it told everything. "I asked
+      him to be severely truthful, so that I cannot resent his reply. But if I
+      take his advice, how am I to live? And if I do not take it, I fear I am
+      but a stumbling-block in the way of true education."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That is a summary of what Mr. McLean read in the blue and white book;
+      remember, you were warned not to expect much. And Tommy and Gavinia
+      listened, and Tommy said, "I hear no laughing," and Gavinia answered, "But
+      he has quieted down," and upstairs Miss Ailie was on her knees. A time
+      came when Mr. McLean could find something to laugh at in that little
+      pass-book, but it was not then, not even when he reached the end. He left
+      something on the last page instead. At least I think it must have been he:
+      Miss Ailie's tears could not have been so long a-drying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You may rise, now, Miss Ailie; your prayer is granted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVI &mdash; TOMMY REPENTS, AND IS NONE THE WORSE FOR IT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean wrote a few reassuring words to Miss Ailie, and having told
+      Gavinia to give the note to her walked quietly out of the house; he was
+      coming back after he had visited Miss Kitty's grave. Gavinia, however, did
+      not knew this, and having delivered the note she returned dolefully to the
+      kitchen to say to Tommy, "His letter maun have been as thraun as himsel',
+      for as soon as she read it, down she plumped on her knees again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Tommy was not in the kitchen; he was on the garden-wall watching Miss
+      Ailie's persecutor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Would it no be easier to watch him frae the gate?" suggested Gavinia, who
+      had not the true detective instinct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy disregarded her womanlike question; a great change had come over him
+      since she went upstairs; his bead now wobbled on his shoulders like a
+      little balloon that wanted to cut its connection with earth and soar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What makes you look so queer?" cried the startled maid. "I thought you
+      was converted."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So I am," he shouted, "I'm more converted than ever, and yet I can do it
+      just the same! Gavinia, I've found a wy!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was hurrying off on Mr. McLean's trail, but turned to say, "Gavinia, do
+      you ken wha that man is?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ower weel I ken," she answered, "it's Mr. McLean."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "McLean!" he echoed scornfully, "ay, I've heard that's one of the names he
+      goes by, but hearken, and I'll tell you wha he really is. That's the
+      scoundrel Stroke!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No wonder Gavinia was flabbergasted. "Wha are you then?" she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm the Champion of Dames," he replied loftily, and before she had
+      recovered from this he was stalking Mr. McLean in the cemetery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Kitty sleeps in a beautiful hollow called the Basin, but the stone
+      put up to her memory hardly marks the spot now, for with a score of others
+      it was blown on its face by the wind that uprooted so many trees in the
+      Den, and as it fell it lies. From the Basin to the rough road that clings
+      like a belt to the round cemetery dyke is little more than a jump, and
+      shortly after Miss Kitty's grave had been pointed out to him. Mr. McLean
+      was seen standing there hat in hand by a man on the road. This man was Dr.
+      McQueen hobbling home from the Forest Muir; he did not hobble as a rule,
+      but hobble everyone must on that misshapen brae, except Murdoch Gelatley,
+      who, being short in one leg elsewhere, is here the only straight man.
+      McQueen's sharp eyes, however, picked out not only the stranger but Tommy
+      crouching behind Haggart's stone, and him did the doctor's famous crook
+      staff catch in the neck and whisk across the dyke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What man is that you're watching, you mysterious loon?" McQueen demanded,
+      curiously; but of course Tommy would not divulge so big a secret. Now the
+      one weakness of this large-hearted old bachelor (perhaps it is a
+      professional virtue) was a devouring inquisitiveness, and he would be
+      troubled until he discovered who was the stranger standing in such obvious
+      emotion by the side of an old grave. "Well, you must come back with me to
+      the surgery, for I want you to run an errand for me," he said testily,
+      hoping to pump the boy by the way, but Tommy dived beneath his stick and
+      escaped. This rasped the doctor's temper, which was unfortunate for
+      Grizel, whom he caught presently peeping in at his surgery window. A dozen
+      times of late she had wondered whether she should ask him to visit her
+      mamma, and though the Painted Lady had screamed in terror at the proposal,
+      being afraid of doctors, Grizel would have ventured ere now, had it not
+      been for her mistaken conviction that he was a hard man, who would only
+      flout her. It had once come to her ears that he had said a woman like her
+      mamma could demoralize a whole town, with other harsh remarks, doubtless
+      exaggerated in the repetition, and so he was the last man she dared think
+      of going to for help, when he should have been the first. Nevertheless she
+      had come now, and a soft word from him, such as he gave most readily to
+      all who were in distress, would have drawn her pitiful tale from her, but
+      he was in a grumpy mood, and had heard none of the rumors about her
+      mother's being ill, which indeed were only common among the Monypenny
+      children, and his first words checked her confidences. "What are you
+      hanging about my open window for?" he cried sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you think I wanted to steal anything?" replied the indignant child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I won't say but what I had some such thait."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned to leave him, but he hooked her with his staff. "As you're
+      here," he said, "will you go an errand for me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," she told him promptly; "I don't like you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's no love lost between us," he replied, "for I think you're the
+      dourest lassie I ever clapped eyes on, but there's no other litlin handy,
+      so you must do as you are bid, and take this bottle to Ballingall's."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it a medicine bottle?" she asked, with sudden interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, it's medicine. Do you know Ballingall's house in the West town end?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ballingall who has the little school?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The same, but I doubt he'll keep school no longer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is he dying?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm afraid there's no doubt of it. Will you go?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should love to go," she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Love!" he echoed, looking at her with displeasure. "You can't love to go,
+      so talk no more nonsense, but go, and I'll give you a bawbee."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't want a bawbee," she said. "Do you think they will let me go in to
+      see Ballingall?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor frowned. "What makes you want to see a dying man?" he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should just love to see him!" she exclaimed, and she added
+      determinedly, "I won't give up the bottle until they let me in."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought her an unpleasant, morbid girl, but "that is no affair of
+      mine," he said shrugging his shoulders, and he gave her the bottle to
+      deliver. Before taking it to Ballingall's, however, she committed a little
+      crime. She bought an empty bottle at the 'Sosh, and poured into it some of
+      the contents of the medicine bottle, which she then filled up with water.
+      She dared try no other way now of getting medicine for her mother, and was
+      too ignorant to know that there are different drugs for different
+      ailments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grizel not only contrived to get in to see Ballingan but stayed by his
+      side for several hours, and when she came out it was night-time. On her
+      way home she saw a light moving in the Den, where she had expected to play
+      no more, and she could not prevent her legs from running joyously toward
+      it. So when Corp, rising out of the darkness, deftly cut her throat, she
+      was not so angry as she should have been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm so glad we are to play again, after all, Corp," she said; but he
+      replied grandly, "Thou little kennest wha you're speaking to, my gentle
+      jade."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave a curious hitch to his breeches, but it only puzzled her. "I wear
+      gallowses no more," he explained, lifting his waistcoat to show that his
+      braces now encircled him as a belt, but even then she did not understand.
+      "Know, then," said Corp, sternly, "I am Ben the Boatswain."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And am I not the Lady Griselda any more?" she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm no sure," he confessed; "but if you are, there's a price on your
+      head."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is Tommy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dinna ken yet, but Gavinia says he telled her he's Champion of Damns. I
+      kenna what Elspeth'll say to that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grizel was starting for the Lair, but he caught her by the skirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is he not at the Lair?" she inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We knowest it not," he answered gravely. "We're looking for't," he added
+      with some awe; "we've been looking for't this three year." Then, in a
+      louder voice, "If you can guide us to it, my pretty trifle, you'll be
+      richly rewarded."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But where is he? Don't you know?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fine I knowest, but it wouldna be mous to tell you, for I kenna whether
+      you be friend or foe. What's that you're carrying?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is a&mdash;a medicine bottle."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Gie me a sook!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just one," begged Corp, "and I'll tell you where he is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He got his way, and smacked his lips unctuously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, where is Tommy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Put your face close to mine," said Corp, and then he whispered hoarsely,
+      "He's in a spleet new Lair, writing out bills wi' a' his might, offering
+      five hunder crowns reward for Stroke's head, dead or alive!"
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      The new haunt was a deserted house, that stood, very damp, near a little
+      waterfall to the east of the Den. Bits of it well planted in the marsh
+      adhere doggedly together to this day, but even then the roof was off and
+      the chimney lay in a heap on the ground, like blankets that have slipped
+      off a bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the good ship Ailie, lying at anchor, man-of-war, thirty guns, a
+      cart-wheel to steer it by, T. Sandys, commander.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the following Saturday, Ben the Boatswain piped all hands, and Mr.
+      Sandys delivered a speech, of the bluff, straightforward kind that sailors
+      love. Here, unfortunately, it must be condensed. He reminded them that
+      three years had passed since their gracious queen (cheers) sent them into
+      these seas to hunt down the Pretender (hisses). Their ship had been
+      christened the Ailie, because its object was to avenge the insults offered
+      by the Pretender to a lady of that name for whom everyone of them would
+      willingly die. Like all his race the Pretender, or Stroke, as he called
+      himself, was a torment to single women; he had not only stolen all this
+      lady's wealth, but now he wanted to make her walk the plank, a way of
+      getting rid of enemies the mere mention of which set the blood of all
+      honest men boiling (cheers). As yet they had not succeeded in finding
+      Stroke's Lair, though they knew it to be in one of the adjoining islands,
+      but they had suffered many privations, twice their gallant vessel had been
+      burned to the water's edge, once she had been sunk, once blown into the
+      air, but had that dismayed them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the Boatswain sent round a whisper, and they all cried loyally, "Ay,
+      ay, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had now news for them that would warm their hearts like grog. He had
+      not discovered the Lair, but he had seen Stroke, he had spoken to him!
+      Disguised as a boy he had tracked the Jacobite and found him skulking in
+      the house of the unhappy Ailie. After blustering for a little Stroke had
+      gone on his knees and offered not only to cease persecuting this lady but
+      to return to France. Mr. Sandys had kicked him into a standing posture and
+      then left him. But this clemency had been ill repaid. Stroke had not
+      returned to France. He was staying at the Quharity Arms, a Thrums inn,
+      where he called himself McLean. It had gone through the town like wildfire
+      that he had written to someone in Redlintie to send him on another suit of
+      clothes and four dickies. No one suspected his real character, but all
+      noted that he went to the unhappy Ailie's house daily, and there was a
+      town about it. Ailie was but a woman, and women could not defend
+      themselves "(Boatswain, put Grizel in irons if she opens her mouth)," and
+      so the poor thing had been forced to speak to him, and even to go walks
+      with him. Her life was in danger, and before now Mr. Sandys would have
+      taken him prisoner, but the queen had said these words, "Noble Sandys,
+      destroy the Lair," and the best way to discover this horrid spot was to
+      follow Stroke night and day until he went to it. Then they would burn it
+      to the ground, put him on board the Ailie, up with the jib-boom sail, and
+      away to the Tower of London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the words "Tower of London," Ben cried "Tumble up there!" which was the
+      signal for three such ringing cheers as only British tars are capable of.
+      Three? To be exact only two and a half, for the third stopped in the
+      middle, as if the lid had suddenly been put on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What so startled them was the unexpected appearance in their midst of the
+      very man Tommy had been talking of. Taking a stroll through the Den, Mr.
+      McLean had been drawn toward the ruin by the first cheers, and had arrived
+      in time to learn who and what he really was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stroke!" gasped one small voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The presumptuous man folded his arms. "So, Sandys," he said, in hollow
+      tones, "we meet again!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even Grizel got behind Tommy, and perhaps it was this that gave him spunk
+      to say tremulously, "Wh-what are you doing her?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have come," replied the ruddy Pretender, "to defy you, ay, proud
+      Sandys, to challenge thee to the deed thou pratest of. I go from here to
+      my Lair. Follow me, if thou darest!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He brought his hand down with a bang upon the barrel, laughed
+      disdainfully, and springing over the vessel's side was at once lost in the
+      darkness. Instead of following, all stood transfixed, gazing at the
+      barrel, on which lay five shillings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He put them there when he slammed it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Losh behears! there's a shilling to ilka ane o' us."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I winna touch the siller," said Sandys, moodily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What?" cried Gavinia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I tell you it's a bribe."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you hear him?" screamed Gavinia. "He says we're no to lay hands on't!
+      Corp, where's your tongue?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But even in that trying moment Corp's trust in Tommy shone out beautiful
+      and strong. "Dinna be feared, Gavinia," he whispered, "he'll find a wy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Lights out and follow Stroke!" was the order, and the crew at once
+      scattered in pursuit, Mr. Sandys remaining behind a moment to&mdash;to put
+      something in his pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean gave them a long chase, walking demurely when lovers were in
+      sight, but at other times doubling, jumping, even standing on eminences
+      and crowing insultingly, like a cock, and not until he had only breath
+      left to chuckle did the stout man vanish from the Den. Elspeth, now a
+      cabin-boy, was so shaken by the realism of the night's adventures that
+      Gavinia (able seaman) took her home, and when Mr. Sandys and his Boatswain
+      met at the Cuttle Well neither could tell where Grizel was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She had no business to munt without my leave," Tommy said sulkily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, she hadna. Is she the Lady Griselda yet?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not her, she's the Commander's wife."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben shook his head, for this, he felt, was the one thing Tommy could not
+      do. "Well, then," growled Tommy, "if she winna be that, she'll have to
+      serve before the mast, for I tell you plain I'll have no single women on
+      board."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what am I, forby Ben the Boatswain?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing. Honest men has just one name."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What! I'm just one single man?" Corp was a little crestfallen. "It's a
+      come down," he said, with a sigh, "mind, I dinna grumble, but it's a come
+      down."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you dinna have 'Methinks' now either," Tommy announced pitilessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Corp had dreaded this. "I'll be gey an' lonely without it," he said, with
+      some dignity, "and it was the usefulest swear I kent o'. 'Methinks!' I
+      used to roar at Mason Malcolm's collie, and the crittur came in ahint in a
+      swite o' fear. Losh, Tommy, is that you blooding?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was indeed an ugly gash on Tommy's hand. "You've been hacking at
+      yoursel' again," said the distressed Corp, who knew that in his enthusiasm
+      Tommy had more than once drawn blood from himself. "When you take it a' so
+      real as that," he said, uncomfortably "I near think we should give it up."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy stamped his foot. "Take tent o' yoursel'!" he cried threateningly.
+      "When I was tracking Stroke I fell in with one of his men, and we had a
+      tussle. He pinked me in the hand, but 'tis only a scratch, bah! He was
+      carrying treasure, and I took it from him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben whistled. "Five shillings?" he asked, slapping his knee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How did you know?" demanded Tommy, frowning, and then they tried to stare
+      each other down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought I saw you pouching it," Corp ventured to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Boatswain!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I mean," explained Corp hurriedly, "I mean that I kent you would find a
+      wy. Didest thou kill the Jacobite rebel?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He lies but a few paces off," replied Tommy, "and already the vultures
+      are picking his bones."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So perish all Victoria's enemies," said Ben the Boatswain, loyally, but a
+      sudden fear made him add, with a complete change of voice, "You dinna
+      chance to ken his name?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, I had marked him before," answered Tommy, "he was called Corp of
+      Corp."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben the Boatswain rose, sat down, rose again, "Tommy," he said, wiping his
+      brow with his sleeve, "come awa' hame!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVII &mdash; THE LONGER CATECHISM
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime Mr. McLean was walking slowly to the Quharity Arms,
+      fanning his face with his hat, and in the West town end he came upon some
+      boys who had gathered with offensive cries round a girl in a lustre
+      jacket. A wave of his stick put them to flight, but the girl only thanked
+      him with a look, and entered a little house the window of which showed a
+      brighter light than its neighbors. Dr. McQueen came out of this house a
+      moment afterwards, and as the two men now knew each other slightly, they
+      walked home together, McLean relating humorously how he had spent the
+      evening. "And though Commander Sandys means to incarcerate me in the Tower
+      of London," he said, "he did me a good service the other day, and I feel
+      an interest in him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What did the inventive sacket do?" the doctor asked inquisitively; but
+      McLean, who had referred to the incident of the pass-book, affected not to
+      hear. "Miss Ailie has told me his history," he said, "and that he goes to
+      the University next year."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Or to the herding," put in McQueen, dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, I heard that was the alternative, but he should easily carry a
+      bursary; he is a remarkable boy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, but I'm no sure that it's the remarkable boys who carry the
+      bursaries. However, if you have taken a fancy to him you should hear what
+      Mr. Cathro has to say on the subject; for my own part I have been more
+      taken up with one of his band lately than with himself&mdash;a lassie,
+      too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She who went into that house just before you came out?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The same, and she is the most puzzling bit of womankind I ever fell in
+      with."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She looked an ordinary girl enough," said Mr. McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor chuckled. "Man," he said, "in my time I have met all kinds of
+      women except ordinary ones. What would you think if I told you that this
+      ordinary girl had been spending three or four hours daily in that house
+      entirely because there was a man dying in it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Some one she had an affection for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My certie, no! I'm afraid it is long since anybody had an affection for
+      shilpit, hirpling, old Ballingall, and as for this lassie Grizel, she had
+      never spoken to him until I sent her on an errand to his house a week ago.
+      He was a single man (like you and me), without womenfolk, a school-master
+      of his own making, and in the smallest way, and his one attraction to her
+      was that he was on his death-bed. Most lassies of her age skirl to get
+      away from the presence of death, but she prigged, sir, fairly prigged, to
+      get into it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah, I prefer less uncommon girls," McLean said. "They should not have let
+      her have her wish; it can only do her harm."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is another curious thing," replied the doctor. "It does not seem to
+      have done her harm; rather it has turned her from being a dour, silent
+      crittur into a talkative one, and that, I take it, is a sign of grace."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sighed, and added: "Not that I can get her to talk of herself and her
+      mother. (There is a mystery about them, you understand.) No, the obstinate
+      brat will tell me nothing on that subject; instead of answering my
+      questions she asks questions of me&mdash;an endless rush of questions, and
+      all about Ballingall. How did I know he was dying? When you put your
+      fingers on their wrist, what is it you count? which is the place where the
+      lungs are? when you tap their chest what do you listen for? are they not
+      dying as long as they can rise now and then, and dress and go out? when
+      they are really dying do they always know it themselves? If they don't
+      know it, is that a sign that they are not so ill as you think them? When
+      they don't know they are dying, is it best to keep it from them in case
+      they should scream with terror? and so on in a spate of questions, till I
+      called her the Longer Catechism."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And only morbid curiosity prompted her?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing else," said the confident doctor; "if there had been anything
+      else I should have found it out, you may be sure. However, unhealthily
+      minded though she be, the women who took their turn at Ballingall's
+      bedside were glad of her help."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The more shame to them," McLean remarked warmly; but the doctor would let
+      no one, save himself, miscall the women of Thrums.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ca' canny," he retorted. "The women of this place are as overdriven as
+      the men, from the day they have the strength to turn a pirn-wheel to the
+      day they crawl over their bed-board for the last time, but never yet have
+      I said, 'I need one of you to sit up all night wi' an unweel body,' but
+      what there were half a dozen willing to do it. They are a grand race, sir,
+      and will remain so till they find it out themselves."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But of what use could a girl of twelve or fourteen be to them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Use!" McQueen cried. "Man, she has been simply a treasure, and but for
+      one thing I would believe it was less a morbid mind than a sort of divine
+      instinct for nursing that took her to Ballingall's bedside. The women do
+      their best in a rough and ready way; but, sir, it cowed to see that lassie
+      easying a pillow for Ballingall's head, or changing a sheet without
+      letting in the air, or getting a poultice on his back without disturbing
+      the one on his chest. I had just to let her see how to do these things
+      once, and after that Ballingall complained if any other soul touched him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah," said McLean, "then perhaps I was uncharitable, and the nurse's
+      instinct is the true explanation."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, you're wrong again, though I might have been taken in as well as you
+      but for the one thing I spoke of. Three days ago Ballingall had a ghost of
+      a chance of pulling through, I thought, and I told the lassie that if he
+      did, the credit would be mainly hers. You'll scarcely believe it, but,
+      upon my word, she looked disappointed rather than pleased, and she said to
+      me, quite reproachfully, 'You told me he was sure to die!' What do you
+      make of that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It sounds unnatural."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It does, and so does what followed. Do you know what straiking is?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Arraying the corpse for the coffin, laying it out, in short, is it not?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, ay. Well, it appears that Grizel had prigged with the women to let
+      her be present at Ballingall's straiking, and they had refused."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should think so," exclaimed McQueen, with a shudder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But that's not all. She came to me in her difficulty, and said that if I
+      didna promise her this privilege she would nurse Ballingall no more."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ugh! That shows at least that pity for him had not influenced her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, she cared not a doit for him. I question if she's the kind that could
+      care for anyone. It's plain by her thrawn look when you speak to her about
+      her mother that she has no affection even for her. However, there she was,
+      prepared to leave Ballingall to his fate if I did not grant her request,
+      and I had to yield to her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You promised?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I did, sore against the grain, but I accept the responsibility. You are
+      pained, but you don't know what a good nurse means to a doctor."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, he died after all, and the straiking is going on now. You saw her
+      go in."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think you could have been excused for breaking your word and turning
+      her out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To tell the truth," said the doctor, "I had the same idea when I saw her
+      enter, and I tried to shoo her to the door, but she cried, 'You promised,
+      you <i>can't</i> break a promise!' and the morbid brat that she is looked
+      so horrified at the very notion of anybody's breaking a promise that I
+      slunk away as if she had right on her side."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No wonder the little monster is unpopular," was McLean's comment. "The
+      children hereabout seem to take to her as little as I do, for I had to
+      drive away some who were molesting her. I am sorry I interfered now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can tell you why they t'nead her," replied the doctor, and he repeated
+      the little that was known in Thrums of the Painted Lady, "And you see the
+      womenfolk are mad because they can find out so little about her, where she
+      got her money, for instance, and who are the 'gentlemen' that are said to
+      visit her at Double Dykes. They have tried many ways of drawing Grizel,
+      from heckle biscuits and parlies to a slap in the face, but neither by
+      coaxing nor squeezing will you get an egg out of a sweer hen, and so they
+      found. 'The dour little limmer,' they say, 'stalking about wi' all her
+      blinds down,' and they are slow to interfere when their laddies call her
+      names. It's a pity for herself that she's not more communicative, for if
+      she would just satisfy the women's curiosity she would find them full of
+      kindness. A terrible thing, Mr. McLean, is curiosity. The Bible says that
+      the love of money is the root of all evil, but we must ask Mr. Dishart if
+      love of money is not a misprint for curiosity. And you won't find men
+      boring their way into other folk's concerns; it is a woman's failing,
+      essentially a woman's." This was the doctor's pet topic, and he pursued it
+      until they had to part. He had opened his door and was about to enter when
+      he saw Gavinia passing on her way home from the Den.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come here, my lass," he called to her, and then said inquisitively, "I'm
+      told Mr. McLean is at his tea with Miss Ailie every day?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And it's true," replied Gavinia, in huge delight, "and what's more, she
+      has given him some presents."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You say so, lassie! What were they now?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dinna ken," Gavinia had to admit, dejectedly. "She took them out o' the
+      ottoman, and it has aye been kept looked."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      McQueen looked very knowingly at her. "Will he, think you?" he asked
+      mysteriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The maid seemed to understand, for she replied, promptly, "I hope he
+      will."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But he hasna spiered her as yet, you think?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," she said, "no, but he calls her Ailie, and wi' the gentry it's but
+      one loup frae that to spiering."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Maybe," answered the doctor, "but it's a loup they often bogle at. I'se
+      uphaud he's close on fifty, Gavinia?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's no denying he is by his best," she said regretfully, and then
+      added, with spirit, "but Miss Ailie's no heavy, and in thae grite arms o'
+      his he could daidle her as if she were an infant."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This bewildered McQueen, and he asked, "What are you blethering about,
+      Gavinia?" to which she replied, regally, "Wha carries me, wears me!" The
+      doctor concluded that it must be Den language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I hope he's good enough for her," continued Miss Ailie's warm-hearted
+      maid, "for she deserves a good ane."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She does," McQueen agreed heartily; "ay, and I believe he is, for he
+      breathes through his nose instead of through his mouth; and let me tell
+      you, Gavinia, that's the one thing to be sure of in a man before you take
+      him for better or worse."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The astounded maid replied, "I'll ken better things than that about my lad
+      afore I take him," but the doctor assured her that it was the box which
+      held them all, "though you maun tell no one, lassie, for it's my one
+      discovery in five and thirty years of practice."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing that, despite his bantering tone, he was speaking seriously, she
+      pressed him for his meaning, but he only replied sadly, "You're like the
+      rest, Gavinia, I see it breaking out on you in spots."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "An illness!" she cried, in alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, lassie, an illness called curiosity. I had just been telling Mr.
+      McLean that curiosity is essentially a woman's ailment, and up you come
+      ahint to prove it." He shook a finger at her reprovingly, and was probably
+      still reflecting on woman's ways when Grizel walked home at midnight
+      breathing through her nose, and Tommy fell asleep with his mouth open. For
+      Tommy could never have stood the doctor's test of a man. In the painting
+      of him, aged twenty-four, which was exhibited in the Royal Academy, his
+      lips meet firmly, but no one knew save himself how he gasped after each
+      sitting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVIII &mdash; BUT IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN MISS KITTY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The ottoman whence, as Gavinia said, Miss Ailie produced the presents she
+      gave to Mr. McLean, stood near the door of the blue-and-white room, with a
+      reel of thread between, to keep them apart forever. Except on washing days
+      it was of a genteel appearance, for though but a wooden kist, it had a gay
+      outer garment with frills, which Gavinia starched, and beneath this was
+      apparel of a private character that tied with tapes. When Miss Ailie, pins
+      in her mouth, was on her knees arraying the ottoman, it might almost have
+      been mistaken for a female child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The contents of the ottoman were a few trivial articles sewn or knitted by
+      Miss Kitty during her last illness, "just to keep me out of languor," she
+      would explain wistfully to her sister. She never told Miss Ailie that they
+      were intended for any special person; on the contrary, she said, "Perhaps
+      you may find someone they will be useful to," but almost without her
+      knowing it they always grew into something that would be useful to Ivie
+      McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The remarkable thing is that they are an exact fit," the man said about
+      the slippers, and Miss Ailie nodded, but she did not think it remarkable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were also two fluffy little bags, and Miss Ailie had to explain
+      their use. "If you put your feet into them in bed," she faltered, "they&mdash;they
+      keep you warm."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      McLean turned hastily to something else, a smoking-cap. "I scarcely think
+      this can have been meant for me," he said; "you have forgotten how she
+      used to chide me for smoking."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ailie had not forgotten. "But in a way," she replied, flushing a
+      little, "we&mdash;that is, Kitty&mdash;could not help admiring you for
+      smoking. There is something so&mdash;so dashing about it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was little worthy all the friendship you two gave me, Ailie," he told
+      her humbly, and he was nearly saying something to her then that he had
+      made up his mind to say. The time came a few days later. They had been
+      walking together on the hill, and on their return to the Dovecot he had
+      insisted, "in his old imperious way," on coming in to tea. Hearing talking
+      in the kitchen Miss Ailie went along the passage to discover what company
+      her maid kept; but before she reached the door, which was ajar, she turned
+      as if she had heard something dreadful and hurried upstairs, signing to
+      Mr. McLean, with imploring eyes, to follow her. This at once sent him to
+      the kitchen door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gavinia was alone. She was standing in the middle of the floor, with one
+      arm crooked as if making believe that another's arm rested on it, and over
+      her head was a little muslin window-blind, representing a bride's veil.
+      Thus she was two persons, but she was also a third, who addressed them in
+      clerical tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ivie McLean," she said as solemnly as tho' she were the Rev. Mr. Dishart,
+      "do you take this woman to be thy lawful wedded wife?" With almost
+      indecent haste she answered herself, "I do."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Alison Cray," she said next, "do you take this man to be thy lawful
+      wedded husband?" "I do."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then the door shut softly; and Gavinia ran to see who had been
+      listening, with the result that she hid herself in the coal-cellar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While she was there, Miss Ailie and Mr. McLean were sitting in the
+      blue-and-white room very self-conscious, and Miss Ailie was speaking
+      confusedly of anything and everything, saying more in five minutes than
+      had served for the previous hour, and always as she slackened she read an
+      intention in his face that started her tongue upon another journey. But,
+      "Timid Ailie," he said at last, "do you think you can talk me down?" and
+      then she gave him a look of reproach that turned treacherously into one of
+      appeal, but he had the hardihood to continue; "Ailie, do you need to be
+      told what I want to say?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ailie stood quite still now, a stiff, thick figure, with a soft,
+      plain face and nervous hands. "Before you speak," she said, nervously, "I
+      have something to tell you that&mdash;perhaps then you will not say it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have always led you to believe," she began, trembling, "that I am
+      forty-nine. I am fifty-one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He would have spoken, but the look of appeal came back to her face, asking
+      him to make it easier for her by saying nothing. She took a pair of
+      spectacles from her pocket, and he divined what this meant before she
+      spoke. "I have avoided letting you see that I need them," she said. "You&mdash;men
+      don't like&mdash;" She tried to say it all in a rush, but the words would
+      not come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am beginning to be a little deaf," she went on. "To deceive you about
+      that, I have sometimes answered you without really knowing what you said."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Anything more, Ailie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My accomplishments&mdash;they were never great, but Kitty and I thought
+      my playing of classical pieces&mdash;my fingers are not sufficiently
+      pliable now. And I&mdash;I forget so many things."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But, Ailie&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Please let me tell you. I was reading a book, a story, last winter, and
+      one of the characters, an old maid, was held up to ridicule in it for many
+      little peculiarities that&mdash;that I recognized as my own. They had
+      grown upon me without my knowing that they made me ridiculous, and now I&mdash;I
+      have tried, but I cannot alter them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that all, Ailie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last seemed to be the hardest to say. Dusk had come on, and they could
+      not see each other well. She asked him to light the lamp, and his back was
+      toward her while he did it, wondering a little at her request. When he
+      turned, her hands rose like cowards to hide her head, but she pulled them
+      down. "Do you not see?" she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I see that you have done something to your hair," he answered, "I liked
+      it best the other way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Most people would have liked it best the other way. There was still a good
+      deal of it, but the "bun" in which it ended had gone strangely small. "The
+      rest was false," said Miss Ailie, with a painful effort; "at least, it is
+      my own, but it came out when&mdash;when Kitty died."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped, but he was silent. "That is all now," she said, softly; and
+      she waited for him to speak if he chose. He turned his head away sharply,
+      and Miss Ailie mistook his meaning. If she gave one little sob&mdash;Well,
+      it was but one, and then all the glory of womanhood came rushing to her
+      aid, and it unfurled its flag over her, whispering, "Now, sweet daughter,
+      now, strike for me," and she raised her head gallantly, and for a moment
+      in her life the old school-mistress was a queen. "I shall ring for tea,"
+      she said, quietly and without a tremor; "do you think there is anything so
+      refreshing after a walk as a dish of tea?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She rang the bell, but its tinkle only made Gavinia secede farther into
+      the cellar, and that summons has not been answered to this day, and no one
+      seems to care, for while the wires were still vibrating Mr. McLean had
+      asked Miss Ailie to forgive him and marry him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ailie said she would, but, "Oh," she cried, "ten years ago it might
+      have been my Kitty. I would that it had been Kitty!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ailie was dear to him now, and ten years is a long time, and men are
+      vain. Mr. McLean replied, quite honestly, "I am not sure that I did not
+      always like you best," but that hurt her, and he had to unsay the words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was a thoughtless fool ten years ago," he said, bitterly, and Miss
+      Ailie's answer came strangely from such timid lips. "Yes, you were!" she
+      exclaimed, passionately, and all the wrath, long pent up, with very
+      different feelings, in her gentle bosom, against the man who should have
+      adored her Kitty, leapt at that reproachful cry to her mouth and eyes, and
+      so passed out of her forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIX &mdash; TOMMY THE SCHOLAR
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      So Miss Ailie could be brave, but what a poltroon she was also! Three
+      calls did she make on dear friends, ostensibly to ask how a cold was or to
+      instruct them in a new device in Shetland wool, but really to announce
+      that she did not propose keeping school after the end of the term&mdash;because&mdash;in
+      short, Mr. Ivie McLean and she&mdash;that is he&mdash;and so on. But
+      though she had planned it all out so carefully, with at least three
+      capital ways of leading up to it, and knew precisely what they would say,
+      and pined to hear them say it, on each occasion shyness conquered and she
+      came away with the words unspoken. How she despised herself, and how Mr.
+      McLean laughed! He wanted to take the job off her hands by telling the
+      news to Dr. McQueen, who could be depended on to spread it through the
+      town, and Miss Ailie discovered with horror that his simple plan was to
+      say, "How are you, doctor? I just looked in to tell you that Miss Ailie
+      and I are to be married. Good afternoon." The audacity of this captivated
+      Miss Ailie even while it outraged her sense of decency. To Redlintie went
+      Mr. McLean, and returning next day drew from his pocket something which he
+      put on Miss Ailie's finger, and then she had the idea of taking off her
+      left glove in church, which would have announced her engagement as loudly
+      as though Mr. Dishart had included it in his pulpit intimations. Religion,
+      however, stopped her when she had got the little finger out, and the
+      Misses Finlayson, who sat behind and knew she had an itchy something
+      inside her glove, concluded that it was her threepenny for the plate. As
+      for Gavinia, like others of her class in those days, she had never heard
+      of engagement rings, and so it really seemed as if Mr. McLean must call on
+      the doctor after all. But "No," said he, "I hit upon a better notion
+      to-day in the Den," and to explain this notion he produced from his pocket
+      a large, vulgar bottle, which shocked Miss Ailie, and indeed that bottle
+      had not passed through the streets uncommented on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean having observed this bottle afloat on the Silent Pool, had
+      fished it out with his stick, and its contents set him chuckling. They
+      consisted of a sheet of paper which stated that the bottle was being flung
+      into the sea in lat. 20, long. 40, by T. Sandys, Commander of the Ailie,
+      then among the breakers. Sandys had little hope of weathering the gale,
+      but he was indifferent to his own fate so long as his enemy did not
+      escape, and he called upon whatsoever loyal subjects of the Queen should
+      find this document to sail at once to lat. 20, long. 40, and there cruise
+      till they had captured the Pretender, <i>alias</i> Stroke, and destroyed
+      his Lair. A somewhat unfavorable personal description of Stroke was
+      appended, with a map of the coast, and a stern warning to all loyal
+      subjects not to delay as one Ailie was in the villain's hands and he might
+      kill her any day. Victoria Regina would give five hundred pounds for his
+      head. The letter ended in manly style with the writer's sending an
+      affecting farewell message to his wife and little children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And so while we are playing ourselves," said Mr. McLean to Miss Ailie,
+      "your favorite is seeking my blood."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Our favorite," interposed the school-mistress, and he accepted the
+      correction, for neither of them could forget that their present relations
+      might have been very different had it not been for Tommy's faith in the
+      pass-book. The boy had shown a knowledge of the human heart, in Miss
+      Ailie's opinion, that was simply wonderful; inspiration she called it, and
+      though Ivie thought it a happy accident, he did not call it so to her.
+      Tommy's father had been the instrument in bringing these two together
+      originally, and now Tommy had brought them together again; there was fate
+      in it, and if the boy was of the right stuff McLean meant to reward him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I see now," he said to Miss Ailie, "a way of getting rid of our fearsome
+      secret and making my peace with Sandys at one fell blow." He declined to
+      tell her more, but presently he sought Gavinia, who dreaded him nowadays
+      because of his disconcerting way of looking at her inquiringly and saying
+      "I do!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You don't happen to know, Gavinia," he asked, "whether the good ship
+      Ailie weathered the gale of the 15th instant? If it did," he went on,
+      "Commander Sandys will learn something to his advantage from a bottle that
+      is to be cast into the ocean this evening."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gavinia thought she heard the chink of another five shillings, and her
+      mouth opened so wide that a chaffinch could have built therein. "Is he to
+      look for a bottle in the pond?" she asked, eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do," replied McLean with such solemnity that she again retired to the
+      coal-cellar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That evening Mr. McLean cast a bottle into the Silent Pool, and
+      subsequently called on Mr. Cathro, to whom he introduced himself as one
+      interested in Master Thomas Sandys. He was heartily received, but at the
+      name of Tommy, Cathro heaved a sigh that could not pass unnoticed. "I see
+      you don't find him an angel," said Mr. McLean, politely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Deed, sir, there are times when I wish he was an angel," the dominie
+      replied so viciously that McLean laughed. "And I grudge you that laugh,"
+      continued Cathro, "for your Tommy Sandys has taken from me the most
+      precious possession a teacher can have&mdash;my sense of humor."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He strikes me as having a considerable sense of humor himself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well he may, Mr. McLean, for he has gone off with all mine. But bide a
+      wee till I get in the tumblers, and. I'll tell you the latest about him&mdash;if
+      what you want to hear is just the plain exasperating truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "His humor that you spoke of," resumed the school-master presently,
+      addressing his words to the visitor, and his mind to a toddy ladle of
+      horn, "is ill to endure in a school where the understanding is that the
+      dominie makes all the jokes (except on examination-day, when the ministers
+      get their yearly fling), but I think I like your young friend worst when
+      he is deadly serious. He is constantly playing some new part&mdash;playing
+      is hardly the word though, for into each part he puts an earnestness that
+      cheats even himself, until he takes to another. I suppose you want me to
+      give you some idea of his character, and I could tell you what it is at
+      any particular moment; but it changes, sir, I do assure you, almost as
+      quickly as the circus-rider flings off his layers of waistcoats. A single
+      puff of wind blows him from one character to another, and he may be noble
+      and vicious, and a tyrant and a slave, and hard as granite and melting as
+      butter in the sun, all in one forenoon. All you can be sure of is that
+      whatever he is he will be it in excess."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I understood," said McLean, "that at present he is solely engaged on
+      a war of extermination in the Den."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah, those exploits, I fancy, are confined to Saturday nights, and
+      unfortunately his Saturday debauch does not keep him sober for the rest of
+      the week, which we demand of respectable characters in these parts. For
+      the last day or two, for instance, he has been in mourning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I had not heard of that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, I daresay not, and I'll give you the facts, if you'll fill your glass
+      first. But perhaps&mdash;" here the dominie's eyes twinkled as if a gleam
+      of humor had been left him after all&mdash;"perhaps you have been more
+      used of late to ginger wine?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The visitor received the shock impassively as if he did not know he had
+      been hit, and Cathro proceeded with his narrative. "Well, for a day or two
+      Tommy Sandys has been coming to the school in a black jacket with crape on
+      the cuffs, and not only so, he has sat quiet and forlorn-like at his desk
+      as if he had lost some near and dear relative. Now I knew that he had not,
+      for his only relative is a sister whom you may have seen at the Hanky
+      School, and both she and Aaron Latta are hearty. Yet, sir (and this shows
+      the effect he has on me), though I was puzzled and curious I dared not ask
+      for an explanation."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But why not?" was the visitor's natural question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because, sir, he is such a mysterious little sacket," replied Cathro,
+      testily, "and so clever at leading you into a hole, that it's not chancey
+      to meddle with him, and I could see through the corner of my eye that, for
+      all this woeful face, he was proud of it, and hoped I was taking note. For
+      though sometimes his emotion masters him completely, at other times he can
+      step aside as it were, and take an approving look at it. That is a
+      characteristic of him, and not the least maddening one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you solved the mystery somehow, I suppose?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I got at the truth to-day by an accident, or rather my wife discovered it
+      for me. She happened to call in at the school on a domestic matter I need
+      not trouble you with (sal, she needna have troubled me with it either!),
+      and on her way up the yard she noticed a laddie called Lewis Doig playing
+      with other ungodly youths at the game of kickbonnety. Lewis's father, a
+      gentleman farmer, was buried jimply a fortnight since, and such want of
+      respect for his memory made my wife give the loon a dunt on the head with
+      a pound of sugar, which she had just bought at the 'Sosh. He turned on
+      her, ready to scart or spit or run, as seemed wisest, and in a klink her
+      woman's eye saw what mine had overlooked, that he was not even wearing a
+      black jacket. Well, she told him what the slap was for, and his little
+      countenance cleared at once. 'Oh' says he, 'that's all right, Tommy and me
+      has arranged it,' and he pointed blithely to a corner of the yard where
+      Tommy was hunkering by himself in Lewis's jacket, and wiping his mournful
+      eyes with Lewis's hanky. I daresay you can jalouse the rest, but I kept
+      Lewis behind after the school skailed, and got a full confession out of
+      him. He had tried hard, he gave me to understand, to mourn fittingly for
+      his father, but the kickbonnety season being on, it was up-hill work, and
+      he was relieved when Tommy volunteered to take it off his hands. Tommy's
+      offer was to swop jackets every morning for a week or two, and thus
+      properly attired to do the mourning for him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dominie paused, and regarded his guest quizzically. "Sir," he said at
+      length, "laddies are a queer growth; I assure you there was no persuading
+      Lewis that it was not a right and honorable compact."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what payment," asked McLean, laughing, "did Tommy demand from Lewis
+      for this service?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not a farthing, sir&mdash;which gives another uncanny glint into his
+      character. When he wants money there's none so crafty at getting it, but
+      he did this for the pleasure of the thing, or, as he said to Lewis, 'to
+      feel what it would be like.' That, I tell you, is the nature of the
+      sacket, he has a devouring desire to try on other folk's feelings, as if
+      they were so many suits of clothes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And from your account he makes them fit him too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My certie, he does, and a lippie in the bonnet more than that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So far the school-master had spoken frankly, even with an occasional grin
+      at his own expense, but his words came reluctantly when he had to speak of
+      Tommy's prospects at the bursary examinations. "I would rather say nothing
+      on that head," he said, almost coaxingly, "for the laddie has a year to
+      reform in yet, and it's never safe to prophesy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Still I should have thought that you could guess pretty accurately how
+      the boys you mean to send up in a year's time are likely to do? You have
+      had a long experience, and, I am told, a glorious one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Deed, there's no denying it," answered the dominie, with a pride he had
+      won the right to wear. "If all the ministers, for instance, I have turned
+      out in this bit school were to come back together, they could hold the
+      General Assembly in the square."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lay back in his big chair, a complacent dominie again. "Guess the
+      chances of my laddies!" he cried, forgetting what he had just said, and
+      that there was a Tommy to bother him. "I tell you, sir, that's a matter on
+      which I'm never deceived, I can tell the results so accurately that a wise
+      Senatus would give my lot the bursaries I say they'll carry, without
+      setting them down to examination-papers at all." And for the next
+      half-hour he was reciting cases in proof of his sagacity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wonderful!" chimed in McLean. "I see it is evident you can tell me how
+      Tommy Sandys will do," but at that Cathro's rush of words again subsided
+      into a dribble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's the worst Latinist that ever had the impudence to think of
+      bursaries," he groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And his Greek&mdash;" asked McLean, helping on the conversation as far as
+      possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "His Greek, sir, could be packed in a pill-box."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That does not sound promising. But the best mathematicians are sometimes
+      the worst linguists."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "His Greek is better than his mathematics," said Cathro, and he fell into
+      lamentation. "I have had no luck lately," he sighed. "The laddies I have
+      to prepare for college are second-raters, and the vexing thing is, that
+      when a real scholar is reared in Thrums, instead of his being handed over
+      to me for the finishing, they send him to Mr. Ogilvy in Glenquharity. Did
+      Miss Ailie ever mention Gavin Dishart to you&mdash;the minister's son? I
+      just craved to get the teaching of that laddie, he was the kind you can
+      cram with learning till there's no room left for another spoonful, and
+      they bude send him to Mr. Ogilvy, and you'll see he'll stand high above my
+      loons in the bursary list. And then Ogilvy will put on sic airs that there
+      will be no enduring him. Ogilvy and I, sir, we are engaged in an
+      everlasting duel; when we send students to the examinations, it is we two
+      who are the real competitors, but what chance have I, when he is
+      represented by a Gavin Dishart and my man is Tommy Sandys?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      McLean was greatly disappointed. "Why send Tommy up at all if he is so
+      backward?" he said. "You are sure you have not exaggerated his
+      deficiencies?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, not much at any rate. But he baffles me; one day I think him a
+      perfect numskull, and the next he makes such a show of the small drop of
+      scholarship he has that I'm not sure but what he may be a genius."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That sounds better. Does he study hard?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Study! He is the most careless whelp that ever&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But if I were to give him an inducement to study?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Such as?" asked Cathro, who could at times be as inquisitive as the
+      doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We need not go into that. But suppose it appealed to him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cathro considered. "To be candid," he said, "I don't think he could study,
+      in the big meaning of the word. I daresay I'm wrong, but I have a feeling
+      that whatever knowledge that boy acquires he will dig out of himself.
+      There is something inside him, or so I think at times, that is his master,
+      and rebels against book-learning. No, I can't tell what it is; when we
+      know that we shall know the real Tommy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And yet," said McLean, curiously, "you advise his being allowed to
+      compete for a bursary. That, if you will excuse my saying so, sounds
+      foolish to me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It can't seem so foolish to you," replied Cathro, scratching his head,
+      "as it seems to me six days in seven."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you know that Aaron Latta has sworn to send him to the herding if he
+      does not carry a bursary. Surely the wisest course would be to apprentice
+      him now to some trade&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What trade would not be the worse of him? He would cut off his fingers
+      with a joiner's saw, and smash them with a mason's mell; put him in a brot
+      behind a counter, and in some grand, magnanimous mood he would sell off
+      his master's things for nothing; make a clerk of him, and he would only
+      ravel the figures; send him to the soldiering, and he would have a sudden
+      impulse to fight on the wrong side. No, no, Miss Ailie says he has a gift
+      for the ministry, and we must cling to that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In thus sheltering himself behind Miss Ailie, where he had never skulked
+      before, the dominie showed how weak he thought his position, and he added,
+      with a brazen laugh, "Then if he does distinguish himself at the
+      examinations I can take the credit for it, and if he comes back in
+      disgrace I shall call you to witness that I only sent him to them at her
+      instigation."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All which," maintained McLean, as he put on his top-coat, "means that
+      somehow, against your better judgment, you think he may distinguish
+      himself after all."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You've found me out," answered Cathro, half relieved, half sorry. "I had
+      no intention of telling you so much, but as you have found me out I'll
+      make a clean breast of it. Unless something unexpected happens to the
+      laddie&mdash;unless he take to playing at scholarship as if it were a
+      Jacobite rebellion, for instance&mdash;he shouldna have the ghost of a
+      chance of a bursary, and if he were any other boy as ill-prepared I should
+      be ashamed to send him up, but he is Tommy Sandys, you see, and&mdash;it
+      is a terrible thing to say, but it's Gospel truth, it's Gospel truth&mdash;I'm
+      trusting to the possibility of his diddling the examiners!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a startling confession for a conscientious dominie, and Cathro
+      flung out his hands as if to withdraw the words, but his visitor would
+      have no tampering with them. "So that sums up Tommy, so far as you know
+      him," he said as he bade his host good-night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It does," Cathro admitted, grimly, "but if what you wanted was a written
+      certificate of character I should like to add this, that never did any boy
+      sit on my forms whom I had such a pleasure in thrashing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXX &mdash; END OF THE JACOBITE RISING
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In the small hours of the following night the pulse of Thrums stopped for
+      a moment, and then went on again, but the only watcher remained silent,
+      and the people rose in the morning without knowing that they had lost one
+      of their number while they slept. In the same ignorance they toiled
+      through a long day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a close October day in the end of a summer that had lingered to
+      give the countryside nothing better than a second crop of haws. Beneath
+      the beeches leaves lay in yellow heaps like sliced turnip, and over all
+      the strath was a pink haze; the fields were singed brown, except where a
+      recent ploughing gave them a mourning border. From early morn men, women
+      and children (Tommy among them) were in the fields taking up their
+      potatoes, half-a-dozen gatherers at first to every drill, and by noon it
+      seemed a dozen, though the new-comers were but stout sacks, now able to
+      stand alone. By and by heavy-laden carts were trailing into Thrums,
+      dog-tired toilers hanging on behind, not to be dragged, but for an
+      incentive to keep them trudging, boys and girls falling asleep on top of
+      the load, and so neglecting to enjoy the ride which was their recompense
+      for lifting. A growing mist mixed with the daylight, and still there were
+      a few people out, falling over their feet with fatigue; it took silent
+      possession, and then the shadowy forms left in the fields were motionless
+      and would remain there until carted to garrets and kitchen corners and
+      other winter quarters on Monday morning. There were few gad-abouts that
+      Saturday night. Washings were not brought in, though Mr. Dishart had
+      preached against the unseemly sight of linen hanging on the line on the
+      Sabbath-day. Innes, stravaiging the square and wynds in his apple-cart,
+      jingled his weights in vain, unable to shake even moneyed children off
+      their stools, and when at last he told his beast to go home they took with
+      them all the stir of the town. Family exercise came on early in many
+      houses, and as the gude wife handed her man the Bible she said
+      entreatingly, "A short ane." After that one might have said that no
+      earthly knock could bring them to their doors, yet within an hour the town
+      was in a ferment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Tommy and Elspeth reached the Den the mist lay so thick that they had
+      to feel their way through it to the <i>Ailie</i>, where they found Gavinia
+      alone and scared. "Was you peeping in, trying to fleg me twa three minutes
+      syne?" she asked, eagerly, and when they shook their heads, she looked
+      cold with fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As sure as death," she said, "there was some living thing standing there;
+      I couldna see it for the rime, but I heard it breathing hard."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy felt Elspeth's hand begin to tremble, and he said "McLean!" hastily,
+      though he knew that McLean had not yet left the Quharity Arms. Next moment
+      Corp arrived with another story as unnerving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Has Grizel no come yet?" he asked, in a troubled voice. "Tommy, hearken
+      to this, a light has been burning in Double Dykes and the door swinging
+      open a' day! I saw it mysel', and so did Willum Dods."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you go close?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Na faags! Willum was hol'ing and I was lifting, so we hadna time in the
+      daylight, and wha would venture near the Painted Lady's house on sic a
+      night?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even Tommy felt uneasy, but when Gavinia cried, "There's something uncanny
+      in being out the night; tell us what was in Mr. McLean's bottle, Tommy,
+      and syne we'll run hame," he became Commander Sandys again, and replied,
+      blankly, "What bottle?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The ane I warned you he was to fling into the water; dinna dare tell me
+      you hinna got it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know not what thou art speaking about," said Tommy; "but it's a queer
+      thing, it's a queer thing, Gavinia"&mdash;here he fixed her with his
+      terrifying eye&mdash;"I happen to have found a&mdash;another bottle," and
+      still glaring at her he explained that he had found his bottle floating on
+      the horizon. It contained a letter to him, which he now read aloud. It was
+      signed "The Villain Stroke, his mark," and announced that the writer,
+      "tired of this relentless persecution," had determined to reform rather
+      than be killed. "Meet me at the Cuttle Well, on Saturday, when the
+      eight-o'clock bell is ringing," he wrote, "and I shall there make you an
+      offer for my freedom."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The crew received this communication with shouts, Gavinia's cry of "Five
+      shillings, if no ten!" expressing the general sentiment, but it would not
+      have been like Tommy to think with them. "You poor things," he said, "you
+      just believe everything you're telled! How do I know that this is not a
+      trick of Stroke's to bring me here when he is some other gait working
+      mischief?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Corp was impressed, but Gavinia said, short-sightedly, "There's no sign
+      o't."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's ower much sign o't," retorted Tommy. "What's this story about
+      Double Dykes? And how do we ken that there hasna been foul work there, and
+      this man at the bottom o't? I tell you, before the world's half an hour
+      older, I'll find out," and he looked significantly at Corp, who answered,
+      quaking, "I winna gang by mysel', no, Tommy, I winna!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Tommy had to accompany him, saying, valiantly, "I'm no feared, and this
+      rime is fine for hodding in," to which Corp replied, as firmly, "Neither
+      am I, and we can aye keep touching cauld iron." Before they were half way
+      down the Double Dykes they got a thrill, for they realized,
+      simultaneously, that they were being followed. They stopped and gripped
+      each other hard, but now they could hear nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Painted Lady!" Corp whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stroke!" Tommy replied, as cautiously. He was excited rather than afraid,
+      and had the pluck to cry, "Wha's that? I see you!"&mdash;but no answer
+      came back through the mist, and now the boys had a double reason for
+      pressing forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Can you see the house, Corp?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It should be here about, but it's smored in rime."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm touching the paling. I ken the road to the window now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hark! What's that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It sounded like devil's music in front of them, and they fell back until
+      Corp remembered, "It maun be the door swinging open, and squealing and
+      moaning on its hinges. Tommy, I take ill wi' that. What can it mean?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm here to find out." They reached the window where Tommy had watched
+      once before, and looking in together saw the room plainly by the light of
+      a lamp which stood on the spinet. There was no one inside, but otherwise
+      Tommy noticed little change. The fire was out, having evidently burned
+      itself done, the bed-clothes were in some disorder. To avoid the creaking
+      door, the boys passed round the back of the house to the window of the
+      other room. This room was without a light, but its door stood open and
+      sufficient light came from the kitchen to show that it also was
+      untenanted. It seemed to have been used as a lumber-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boys turned to go, passing near the front of the empty house, where
+      they shivered and stopped, mastered by a feeling they could not have
+      explained. The helpless door, like the staring eyes of a dead person,
+      seemed to be calling to them to shut it, and Tommy was about to steal
+      forward for this purpose when Corp gripped him and whispered that the
+      light had gone out. It was true, though Tommy disbelieved until they had
+      returned to the east window to make sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There maun be folk in the hoose, Tommy!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You saw it was toom. The lamp had gone out itself, or else&mdash;what's
+      that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the unmistakable closing of a door, softly but firmly. "The wind
+      has blown it to," they tried to persuade themselves, though aware that
+      there was not sufficient wind for this. After a long period of stillness
+      they gathered courage to go to the door and shake it. It was not only
+      shut, but locked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On their way back through the Double Dykes they were silent, listening
+      painfully but hearing nothing. But when they reached the Coffin Brig Tommy
+      said, "Dinna say nothing about this to Elspeth, it would terrify her;" he
+      was always so thoughtful for Elspeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what do you think o't a'?" Corp said, imploringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I winna tell you yet," replied Tommy, cautiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they boarded the <i>Ailie</i>, where the two girls were very glad to
+      see them again, the eight-o'clock bell had begun to ring, and thus Tommy
+      had a reasonable excuse for hurrying his crew to the Cuttle Well without
+      saying anything of his expedition to Double Dykes, save that he had not
+      seen Grizel. At the Well they had not long to wait before Mr. McLean
+      suddenly appeared out of the mist, and to their astonishment Miss Ailie
+      was leaning on his arm. She was blushing and smiling too, in a way pretty
+      to see, though it spoilt the effect of Stroke's statement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first thing Stroke did was to give up his sword to Tommy and to
+      apologize for its being an umbrella on account of the unsettled state of
+      the weather, and then Corp led three cheers, the captain alone declining
+      to join in, for he had an uneasy feeling that he was being ridiculed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I thought there were five of you," Mr. McLean said; "where is the
+      fifth?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You ken best," replied Tommy, sulkily, and sulky he remained throughout
+      the scene, because he knew he was not the chief figure in it. Having this
+      knowledge to depress him, it is to his credit that he bore himself with
+      dignity throughout, keeping his crew so well in hand that they dared not
+      give expression to their natural emotions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As you are aware, Mr. Sandys," McLean began solemnly, "I have come here
+      to sue for pardon. It is not yours to give, you reply, the Queen alone can
+      pardon, and I grant it; but, sir, is it not well known to all of us that
+      you can get anything out of her you like?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy's eyes roved suspiciously, but the suppliant proceeded in the same
+      tone. "What are my offences? The first is that I have been bearing arms
+      (unwittingly) against the Throne; the second, that I have brought trouble
+      to the lady by my side, who has the proud privilege of calling you her
+      friend. But, Sandys, such amends as can come from an erring man I now
+      offer to make most contritely. Intercede with Her Majesty on my behalf,
+      and on my part I promise to war against her no more. I am willing to
+      settle down in the neighboring town as a law-abiding citizen, whom you can
+      watch with eagle eye. Say, what more wouldst thou of the unhappy Stuart?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Tommy would say nothing, he only looked doubtfully at Miss Ailie, and
+      that set McLean off again. "You ask what reparation I shall make to this
+      lady? Sandys, I tell thee that here also thou hast proved too strong for
+      me. In the hope that she would plead for me with you, I have been driven
+      to offer her my hand in marriage, and she is willing to take me if thou
+      grantest thy consent."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this Gavinia jumped with joy, and then cried, "Up wi' her!" words whose
+      bearing the school-mistress fortunately did not understand. All save Tommy
+      looked at Miss Ailie, and she put her arm on Mr. McLean's, and, yes, it
+      was obvious, Miss Ailie was a lover at the Cuttle Well at last, like so
+      many others. She had often said that the Den parade was vulgar, but she
+      never said it again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was unexpected news to Tommy, but that was not what lowered his head in
+      humiliation now. In the general rejoicing he had been nigh forgotten; even
+      Elspeth was hanging on Miss Ailie's skirts, Gavinia had eyes for none but
+      lovers, Corp was rapturously examining five half-crowns that had been
+      dropped into his hands for distribution. Had Tommy given an order now, who
+      would have obeyed it? His power was gone, his crew would not listen to
+      another word against Mr. McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tommy thought Mr. McLean hated you!" said Elspeth to Miss Ailie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was queer you made sic a mistake!" said Corp to Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, the tattie-doolie!" cried Gavinia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So they knew that Mr. McLean had only been speaking sarcastically; of a
+      sudden they saw through and despised their captain. Tears of mortification
+      rose in Tommy's eyes, and kind-hearted Miss Ailie saw them, and she
+      thought it was her lover's irony that made him smart. She had said little
+      hitherto, but now she put her hand on his shoulder, and told them all that
+      she did indeed owe the supreme joy that had come to her to him. "No,
+      Gavinia," she said, blushing, "I will not give you the particulars, but I
+      assure you that had it not been for Tommy, Mr. McLean would never have
+      asked me to marry him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elspeth crossed proudly to the side of her noble brother (who could
+      scarcely trust his ears), and Gavinia cried, in wonder, "What did he do?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now McLean had seen Tommy's tears also, and being a kindly man he dropped
+      the satirist and chimed in warmly, "And if I had not asked Miss Ailie to
+      marry me I should have lost the great happiness of my life, so you may all
+      imagine how beholden I feel to Tommy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Tommy was the centre-piece, and though these words were as puzzling
+      to him as to his crew, their sincerity was unmistakable, and once more his
+      head began to waggle complacently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And to show how grateful we are," said Miss Ailie, "we are to give him a&mdash;a
+      sort of marriage present. We are to double the value of the bursary he
+      wins at the university&mdash;" She could get no farther, for now Elspeth
+      was hugging her, and Corp cheering frantically, and Mr. McLean thought it
+      necessary to add the warning, "If he does carry a bursary, you understand,
+      for should he fail I give him nothing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Him fail!" exclaimed Corp, with whom Miss Ailie of course agreed. "And he
+      can spend the money in whatever way he chooses," she said, "what will you
+      do with it, Tommy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lucky boy answered, instantly, "I'll take Elspeth to Aberdeen to bide
+      with me," and then Elspeth hugged him, and Miss Ailie said, in a delighted
+      aside to Mr. McLean, "I told you so," and he, too, was well pleased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was the one thing needed to make him work," the school-mistress
+      whispered. "Is not his love for his sister beautiful?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      McLean admitted that it was, but half-banteringly he said to Elspeth:
+      "What could you do in lodgings, you excited mite?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can sit and look at Tommy," she answered, quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But he will be away for hours at his classes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll sit at the window waiting for him," said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I'll run back quick," said Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this time another problem had been bewildering Gavinia, and now she
+      broke in, eagerly: "But what was it he did? I thought he was agin Mr.
+      McLean."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And so did I," said Corp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I cheated you grandly," replied Tommy with the audacity he found so
+      useful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And a' the time you was pretending to be agin him," screamed Gavinia,
+      "was you&mdash;was you bringing this about on the sly?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy looked up into Mr. McLean's face, but could get no guidance from it,
+      so he said nothing; he only held his head higher than ever. "Oh, the
+      clever little curse!" cried Corp, and Elspeth's delight was as ecstatic,
+      though differently worded. Yet Gavinia stuck to her problem, "How did you
+      do it, what was it you did?" and the cruel McLean said: "You may tell her,
+      Tommy; you have my permission."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would have been an awkward position for most boys, and even Tommy&mdash;but
+      next moment he said, quite coolly: "I think you and me and Miss Ailie
+      should keep it to oursels, Gavinia's sic a gossip."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, how thoughtful of him!" cried Miss Ailie, the deceived, and McLean
+      said: "How very thoughtful!" but now he saw in a flash why Mr. Cathro
+      still had hopes that Tommy might carry a bursary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus was the repentant McLean pardoned, and nothing remained for him to do
+      save to show the crew his Lair, which they had sworn to destroy. He had
+      behaved so splendidly that they had forgotten almost that they were the
+      emissaries of justice, but not to destroy the Lair seemed a pity, it would
+      be such a striking way of bringing their adventures in the Den to a close.
+      The degenerate Stuart read this feeling in their faces, and he was ready,
+      he said, to show them his Lair if they would first point it out to him;
+      but here was a difficulty, for how could they do that? For a moment it
+      seemed as if the negotiations must fall through; but Sandys, that captain
+      of resource, invited McLean to step aside for a private conference, and
+      when they rejoined the others McLean said, gravely, that he now remembered
+      where the Lair was and would guide them to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had only to cross a plank, invisible in the mist until they were
+      close to it, and climb a slippery bank strewn with fallen trees. McLean,
+      with a mock serious air, led the way, Miss Ailie on his arm. Corp and
+      Gavinia followed, weighted and hampered by their new half-crowns, and
+      Tommy and Elspeth, in the rear, whispered joyously of the coming life. And
+      so, very unprepared for it, they moved toward the tragedy of the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXI &mdash; A LETTER TO GOD
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      "Do you keep a light burning in the Lair?" McLean turned to ask,
+      forgetting for the moment that it was not their domicile, but his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, there's no light," replied Corp, equally forgetful, but even as he
+      spoke he stopped so suddenly that Elspeth struck against him. For he had
+      seen a light. "This is queer!" he cried, and both he and Gavinia fell back
+      in consternation. McLean pushed forward alone, and was back in a trice,
+      with a new expression on his face. "Are you playing some trick on me?" he
+      demanded suspiciously of Tommy. "There is some one there; I almost ran
+      against a pair of blazing eyes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But there's nobody; there can be nobody there," answered Tommy, in a
+      bewilderment that was obviously unfeigned, "unless&mdash;unless&mdash;" He
+      looked at Corp, and the eyes of both finished the sentence. The desolate
+      scene at Double Dykes, which the meeting with McLean and Miss Ailie had
+      driven from their minds, again confronted them, and they seemed once more
+      to hear the whimpering of the Painted Lady's door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Unless what?" asked the man, impatiently, but still the two boys only
+      stared at each other. "The Den's no mous the night," said Corp at last, in
+      a low voice, and his unspoken fears spread to the womankind, so that Miss
+      Ailie shuddered and Elspeth gripped Tommy with both hands and Gavinia
+      whispered, "Let's away hame, we can come back in the daylight."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But McLean chafed and pressed upward, and next moment a girl's voice was
+      heard, crying: "It is no business of yours; I won't let you touch her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Grizel!" exclaimed Tommy and his crew, simultaneously, and they had no
+      more fear until they were inside the Lair. What they saw had best be
+      described very briefly. A fire was burning in a corner of the Lair, and in
+      front of it, partly covered with a sheet, lay the Painted Lady, dead.
+      Grizel stood beside the body guarding it, her hands clenched, her eyes
+      very strange. "You sha'n't touch her!" she cried, passionately, and
+      repeated it many times, as if she had lost the power to leave off, but
+      Corp crept past her and raised the coverlet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She's straikit!" he shouted. "Did you do it yoursel', Grizel? God
+      behears, she did it hersel'!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A very long silence it seemed to be after that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ailie would have taken the motherless girl to her arms, but first, at
+      Corp's discovery, she had drawn back in uncontrollable repulsion, and
+      Grizel, about to go to her, saw it, and turned from her to Tommy. Her eyes
+      rested on him beseechingly, with a look he saw only once again in them
+      until she was a woman, but his first thought was not for Grizel. Elspeth
+      was clinging to him, terrified and sobbing, and he cried to her, "Shut
+      your een," and then led her tenderly away. He was always good to Elspeth.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      There was no lack of sympathy with Grizel when the news spread through the
+      town, and unshod men with their gallowses hanging down, and women
+      buttoning as they ran, hurried to the Den. But to all the questions put to
+      her and to all the kindly offers made, as the body was carried to Double
+      Dykes, she only rocked her arms, crying, "I don't want anything to eat. I
+      shall stay all night beside her. I am not frightened at my mamma. I won't
+      tell you why she was in the Den. I am not sure how long she has been dead.
+      Oh, what do these little things matter?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great thing was that her mamma should be buried in the cemetery, and
+      not in unconsecrated ground with a stake through her as the boys had
+      predicted, and it was only after she was promised this that Grizel told
+      her little tale. She had feared for a long time that her mamma was dying
+      of consumption, but she told no one, because everybody was against her and
+      her mamma. Her mamma never knew that she was dying, and sometimes she used
+      to get so much better that Grizel hoped she would live a long time, but
+      that hope never lasted long. The reason she sat so much with Ballingall
+      was just to find out what doctors did to dying people to make them live a
+      little longer, and she watched his straiking to be able to do it to her
+      mamma when the time came. She was sure none of the women would consent to
+      straik her mamma. On the previous night, she could not say at what hour,
+      she had been awakened by a cold wind, and so she knew that the door was
+      open. She put out her hand in the darkness and found that her mamma was
+      not beside her. It had happened before, and she was not frightened. She
+      had hidden the key of the door that night and nailed down the window, but
+      her mamma had found the key. Grizel rose, lit the lamp, and, having
+      dressed hurriedly, set off with wraps to the Den. Her mamma was generally
+      as sensible as anybody in Thrums, but sometimes she had shaking fits, and
+      after them she thought it was the time of long ago. Then she went to the
+      Den to meet a man who had promised, she said, to be there, but he never
+      came, and before daybreak Grizel could usually induce her to return home.
+      Latterly she had persuaded her mamma to wait for him in the old Lair,
+      because it was less cold there, and she had got her to do this last night.
+      Her mamma did not seem very unwell, but she fell asleep, and she died
+      sleeping, and then Grizel went back to Double Dykes for linen and straiked
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some say in Thrums that a spade was found in the Lair, but that is only
+      the growth of later years. Grizel had done all she could do, and through
+      the long Saturday she sat by the side of the body, helpless and unable to
+      cry. She knew that it could not remain there much longer, but every time
+      she rose to go and confess, fear of the indignities to which the body of
+      her darling mamma might be subjected pulled her back. The boys had spoken
+      idly, but hunted Grizel, who knew so much less and so much more than any
+      of them, believed it all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was she who had stood so near Gavinia in the ruined house. She had only
+      gone there to listen to human voices. When she discovered from the talk of
+      her friends that she had left a light burning at Double Dykes and the door
+      open, fear of the suspicions this might give rise to had sent her to the
+      house on the heels of the two boys, and it was she who had stolen past
+      them in the mist to put out the light and lock the door. Then she had
+      returned to her mamma's side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor was among the listeners, almost the only dry-eyed one, but he
+      was not dry-eyed because he felt the artless story least. Again and again
+      he rose from his chair restlessly, and Grizel thought he scowled at her
+      when he was really scowling at himself; as soon as she had finished he
+      cleared the room brusquely of all intruders, and then he turned on her
+      passionately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Think shame of yoursel'," he thundered, "for keeping me in the dark," and
+      of course she took his words literally, though their full meaning was, "I
+      shall scorn myself from this hour for not having won the poor child's
+      confidence."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, he was a hard man, Grizel thought, the hardest of them all. But she
+      was used to standing up to hard men, and she answered, defiantly: "I did
+      mean to tell you, that day you sent me with the bottle to Ballingall, I
+      was waiting at the surgery door to tell you, but you were cruel, you said
+      I was a thief, and then how could I tell you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, too, struck home, and the doctor winced, but what he said was, "You
+      fooled me for a whole week, and the town knows it; do you think I can
+      forgive you for that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't care whether you forgive me," replied Grizel at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nor do I care whether you care," he rapped out, all the time wishing he
+      could strike himself; "but I'm the doctor of this place, and when your
+      mother was ill you should have come straight to me. What had I done that
+      you should be afraid of me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not afraid of you," she replied, "I am not afraid of anyone, but
+      mamma was afraid of you because she knew you had said cruel things about
+      her, and I thought&mdash;I won't tell you what I thought." But with a
+      little pressing she changed her mind and told him. "I was not sure whether
+      you would come to see her, though I asked you, and if you came I knew you
+      would tell her she was dying, and that would have made her scream. And
+      that is not all, I thought you might tell her that she would be buried
+      with a stake through her&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, these blackguard laddies!" cried McQueen, clenching his fists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And so I dared not tell you," Grizel concluded calmly; "I am not
+      frightened at you, but I was frightened you would hurt my dear darling
+      mamma," and she went and stood defiantly between him and her mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor moved up and down the room, crying, "How did I not know of
+      this, why was I not told?" and he knew that the fault had been his own,
+      and so was furious when Grizel told him so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, it is," she insisted, "you knew mamma was an unhappy lady, and that
+      the people shouted things against her and terrified her; and you must have
+      known, for everybody knew, that she was sometimes silly and wandered about
+      all night, and you are a big strong man, and so you should have been sorry
+      for her; and if you had been sorry you would have come to see her and been
+      kind to her, and then you would have found it all out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have done, lassie!" he said, half angrily, half beseechingly, but she did
+      not understand that he was suffering, and she went on, relentlessly: "And
+      you knew that bad men used to come to see her at night&mdash;they have not
+      come for a long time&mdash;but you never tried to stop their coming, and I
+      could have stopped it if I had known they were bad; but I did not know at
+      first, and I was only a little girl, and you should have told me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have done!" It was all that he could say, for like many he had heard of
+      men visiting the Painted Lady by stealth, and he had only wondered, with
+      other gossips, who they were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He crossed again to the side of the dead woman, "And Ballingall's was the
+      only corpse you ever saw straiked?" he said in wonder, she had done her
+      work so well. But he was not doubting her; he knew already that this girl
+      was clothed in truthfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Was it you that kept this house so clean?" he asked, almost irritably,
+      for he himself was the one undusted, neglected-looking thing in it, and he
+      was suddenly conscious of his frayed wristband and of buttons hanging by a
+      thread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What age are you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think I am thirteen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked long at her, vindictively she thought, but he was only picturing
+      the probable future of a painted lady's child, and he said mournfully to
+      himself, "Ay, it does not even end here; and that's the crowning pity of
+      it." But Grizel only heard him say, "Poor thing!" and she bridled
+      immediately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I won't let you pity me," she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You dour brat!" he retorted. "But you need not think you are to have
+      everything your own way still. I must get some Monypenny woman to take you
+      till the funeral is over, and after that&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I won't go," said Grizel, determinedly, "I shall stay with mamma till she
+      is buried."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not accustomed to contradiction, and he stamped his foot. "You
+      shall do as you are told," he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I won't!" replied Grizel, and she also stamped her foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very well, then, you thrawn tid, but at any rate I'll send in a woman to
+      sleep with you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I want no one. Do you think I am afraid?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think you will be afraid when you wake up in the darkness, and find
+      yourself alone with&mdash;with it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I sha'n't, I shall remember at once that she is to be buried nicely in
+      the cemetery, and that will make me happy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You unnatural&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Besides, I sha'n't sleep, I have something to do."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His curiosity again got the better of the doctor. "What can you have to do
+      at such a time?" he demanded, and her reply surprised him:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am to make a dress."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have made them before now," she said indignantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But at such a time!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is a black dress," she cried, "I don't have one, I am to make it out
+      of mamma's."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said nothing for some time, then "When did you think of this?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought of it weeks ago, I bought crape at the corner shop to be ready,
+      and&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She thought he was looking at her in horror, and stopped abruptly. "I
+      don't care what you think," she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What I do think," he retorted, taking up his hat, "is, that you are a
+      most exasperating lassie. If I bide here another minute I believe you'll
+      get round me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't want to get round you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then what makes you say such things? I question if I'll get an hour's
+      sleep to-night for thinking of you!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't want you to think of me!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He groaned. "What could an untidy, hardened old single man like me do with
+      you in his house?" he said. "Oh, you little limmer, to put such a thought
+      into my head."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I never did!" she exclaimed, indignantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It began, I do believe it began," he sighed, "the first time I saw you
+      easying Ballingall's pillows."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What began?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You brat, you wilful brat, don't pretend ignorance. You set a trap to
+      catch me, and&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh!" cried Grizel, and she opened the door quickly. "Go away, you horrid
+      man," she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He liked her the more for this regal action, and therefore it enraged him.
+      Sheer anxiety lest he should succumb to her on the spot was what made him
+      bluster as he strode off, and "That brat of a Grizel," or "The Painted
+      Lady's most unbearable lassie," or "The dour little besom" was his way of
+      referring to her in company for days, but if any one agreed with him he
+      roared "Don't be a fool, man, she's a wonder, she's a delight," or "You
+      have a dozen yourself, Janet, but I wouldna neifer Grizel for the lot of
+      them." And it was he, still denouncing her so long as he was contradicted,
+      who persuaded the Auld Licht Minister to officiate at the funeral. Then he
+      said to himself, "And now I wash my hands of her, I have done all that can
+      be expected of me." He told himself this a great many times as if it were
+      a medicine that must be taken frequently, and Grizel heard from Tommy,
+      with whom she had some strange conversations, that he was going about
+      denouncing her "up hill and down dale." But she did not care, she was so&mdash;so
+      happy. For a hole was dug for the Painted Lady in the cemetery, just as if
+      she had been a good woman, and Mr. Dishart conducted the service in Double
+      Dykes before the removal of the body, nor did he say one word that could
+      hurt Grizel, perhaps because his wife had drawn a promise from him. A
+      large gathering of men followed the coffin, three of them because, as yon
+      may remember, Grizel had dared them to stay away, but all the others out
+      of sympathy with a motherless child who, as the procession started, rocked
+      her arms in delight because her mamma was being buried respectably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Being a woman, she could not attend the funeral, and so the chief mourner
+      was Tommy, as you could see by the position he took at the grave, and by
+      the white bands Grizel had sewn on his sleeves. He was looking very
+      important, as if he had something remarkable in prospect, but little
+      attention was given him until the cords were dropped into the grave, and a
+      prayer offered up, when he pulled Mr. Dishart's coat and muttered
+      something about a paper. Those who had been making ready to depart swung
+      round again, and the minister told him if he had anything to say to speak
+      out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's a paper," Tommy said, nervous yet elated, and addressing all, "that
+      Grizel put in the coffin. She told me to tell you about it when the cords
+      fell on the lid."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What sort of a paper?" asked Mr. Dishart, frowning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's&mdash;it's a letter to God," Tommy gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing was to be heard except the shovelling of earth into the grave.
+      "Hold your spade, John," the minister said to the gravedigger, and then
+      even that sound stopped. "Go on," Mr. Dishart signed to the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Grizel doesna believe her mother has much chance of getting to heaven,"
+      Tommy said, "and she wrote the letter to God, so that when he opens the
+      coffins on the last day he will find it and read about them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "About whom?" asked the stern minister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "About Grizel's father, for one. She doesna know his name, but the Painted
+      Lady wore a locket wi' a picture of him on her breast, and it's buried wi'
+      her, and Grizel told God to look at it so as to know him. She thinks her
+      mother will be damned for having her, and that it winna be fair unless God
+      damns her father too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Go on," said Mr. Dishart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There was three Thrums men&mdash;I think they were gentlemen&mdash;"
+      Tommy continued, almost blithely, "that used to visit the Painted Lady in
+      the night time afore she took ill. They wanted Grizel to promise no to
+      tell about their going to Double Dykes, and she promised because she was
+      ower innocent to know what they went for&mdash;but their names are in the
+      letter."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A movement in the crowd was checked by the minister's uplifted arm. "Go
+      on," he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She wouldna tell me who they were, because it would have been breaking
+      her promise," said Tommy, "but"&mdash;he looked around him inquisitively&mdash;"but
+      they're here at the funeral."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mourners were looking sideways at each other, some breathing hard, but
+      none dared to speak before the minister. He stood for a long time in
+      doubt, but at last he signed to John to proceed with the filling in of the
+      grave. Contrary to custom all remained. Not until the grave was again
+      level with the sward did Mr. Dishart speak, and then it was with a gesture
+      that appalled his hearers. "This grave," he said, raising his arm, "is
+      locked till the day of judgment."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leaving him standing there, a threatening figure, they broke into groups
+      and dispersed, walking slowly at first, and then fast, to tell their
+      wives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXII &mdash; AN ELOPEMENT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The solitary child remained at Double Dykes, awaiting the arrival of her
+      father, for the Painted Lady's manner of leaving the world had made such a
+      stir that the neighbors said he must have heard of it, even though he were
+      in London, and if he had the heart of a stone he could not desert his
+      bairn. They argued thus among themselves, less as people who were sure of
+      it than to escape the perplexing question, what to do with Grizel if the
+      man never claimed her? and before her they spoke of his coming as a
+      certainty, because it would be so obviously the best thing for her. In the
+      meantime they overwhelmed her with offers of everything she could need,
+      which was kindly but not essential, for after the funeral expenses had
+      been paid (Grizel insisted on paying them herself) she had still several
+      gold pieces, found in her mamma's beautiful tortoise-shell purse, and
+      there were nearly twenty pounds in the bank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But day after day passed, and the man had not come. Perhaps he resented
+      the Painted Lady's ostentatious death; which, if he was nicely strung,
+      must have jarred upon his nerves. He could hardly have acknowledged Grizel
+      now without publicity being given to his private concerns. Or he may never
+      have heard of the Painted Lady's death, or if he read of it, he may not
+      have known which painted lady in particular she was. Or he may have
+      married, and told his wife all and she had forgiven him, which somehow,
+      according to the plays and the novels, cuts the past adrift from a man and
+      enables him to begin again at yesterday. Whatever the reason, Grizel's
+      father was in no hurry to reveal himself, and though not to her, among
+      themselves the people talked of the probability of his not coming at all.
+      She could not remain alone at Double Dykes, they all admitted, but where,
+      then, should she go? No fine lady in need of a handmaid seemed to think a
+      painted lady's child would suit; indeed, Grizel at first sight had not the
+      manner that attracts philanthropists. Once only did the problem approach
+      solution; a woman in the Den-head was willing to take the child because
+      (she expressed it) as she had seven she might as well have eight, but her
+      man said no, he would not have his bairns fil't. Others would have taken
+      her cordially for a few weeks or months, had they not known that at the
+      end of this time they would be blamed, even by themselves, if they let her
+      go. All, in short, were eager to show her kindness if one would give her a
+      home, but where was that one to be found?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Much of this talk came to Grizel through Tommy, and she told him in the
+      house of Double Dykes that people need not trouble themselves about her,
+      for she had no wish to stay with them. It was only charity they brought
+      her; no one wanted her for herself. "It is because I am a child of shame,"
+      she told him, dry-eyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He fidgeted on his chair, and asked, "What's that?" not very honestly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," she said, "no one will tell me, but it is something you
+      can't love."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have a terrible wish to be loved," he said in wonder, and she nodded
+      her head wistfully. "That is not what I wish for most of all, though," she
+      told him, and when he asked what she wished for most of all, she said, "To
+      love somebody; oh, it would be sweet!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Tommy, most sympathetic of mortals, she seemed a very pathetic little
+      figure, and tears came to his eyes as he surveyed her; he could always cry
+      very easily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If it wasna for Elspeth," he began, stammering, "I could love you, but
+      you winna let a body do onything on the sly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a vague offer, but she understood, and became the old Grizel at
+      once. "I don't want you to love me," she said indignantly; "I don't think
+      you know how to love."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Neither can you know, then," retorted Tommy, huffily, "for there's nobody
+      for you to love."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, there is," she said, "and I do love her and she loves me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But wha is she?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That girl." To his amazement she pointed to her own reflection in the
+      famous mirror the size of which had scandalized Thrums. Tommy thought this
+      affection for herself barely respectable, but he dared not say so lest he
+      should be put to the door. "I love her ever so much," Grizel went on, "and
+      she is so fond of me, she hates to see me unhappy. Don't look so sad,
+      dearest, darlingest," she cried vehemently; "I love you, you know, oh, you
+      sweet!" and with each epithet she kissed her reflection and looked
+      defiantly at the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you canna put your arms round her and hug her," he pointed out
+      triumphantly, and so he had the last word after all. Unfortunately Grizel
+      kept this side of her, new even to Tommy, hidden from all others, and her
+      unresponsiveness lost her many possible friends. Even Miss Ailie, who now
+      had a dressmaker in the blue-and-white room, sitting on a bedroom chair
+      and sewing for her life (oh, the agony&mdash;or is it the rapture?&mdash;of
+      having to decide whether to marry in gray with beads or brown plain to the
+      throat), even sympathetic Miss Ailie, having met with several rebuffs,
+      said that Grizel had a most unaffectionate nature, and, "Ay, she's hardy,"
+      agreed the town, "but it's better, maybe, for hersel'." There are none so
+      unpopular as the silent ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If only Miss Ailie, or others like her, could have slipped noiselessly
+      into Double Dykes at night, they would have found Grizel's pillow wet. But
+      she would have heard them long before they reached the door, and jumped to
+      the floor in terror, thinking it was her father's step at last. For,
+      unknown to anyone, his coming, which the town so anxiously desired, was
+      her one dread. She had told Tommy what she should say to him if he came,
+      and Tommy had been awed and delighted, they were such scathing things;
+      probably, had the necessity arisen, she would have found courage to say
+      them, but they were made up in the daytime, and at night they brought less
+      comfort. Then she listened fearfully and longed for the morning, wild
+      ideas coursing through her head of flying before he could seize her; but
+      when morning came it brought other thoughts, as of the strange remarks she
+      had heard about her mamma and herself during the past few days. To brood
+      over these was the most unhealthy occupation she could find, but it was
+      her only birthright. Many of the remarks came unguardedly from lips that
+      had no desire to pain her, others fell in a rage because she would not
+      tell what were the names in her letter to God. The words that troubled her
+      most, perhaps, were the doctor's, "She is a brave lass, but it must be in
+      her blood." They were not intended for her ears, but she heard. "What did
+      he mean?" she asked Miss Ailie, Mrs. Dishart, and others who came to see
+      her, and they replied awkwardly, that it had only been a doctor's remark,
+      of no importance to people who were well. "Then why are you crying?" she
+      demanded, looking them full in the face with eyes there was no deceiving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, why is everyone afraid to tell me the truth!" she would cry, beating
+      her palms in anguish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She walked into McQueen's surgery and said, "Could you not cut it out?" so
+      abruptly that he wondered what she was speaking about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The bad thing that is in my blood," she explained. "Do cut it out, I
+      sha'n't scream. I promise not to scream."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sighed and answered, "If it could be cut out, lassie, I would try to do
+      it, though it was the most dangerous of operations."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked in anguish at him. "There are cleverer doctors than you, aren't
+      there?" she asked, and he was not offended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, a hantle cleverer," he told her, "but none so clever as that. God
+      help you, bairn, if you have to do it yourself some day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Can I do it myself?" she cried, brightening. "I shall do it now. Is it
+      done with a knife?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With a sharper knife than a surgeon's," he answered, and then, regretting
+      he had said so much, he tried to cheer her. But that he could not do. "You
+      are afraid to tell me the truth too," she said, and when she went away he
+      was very sorry for her, but not so sorry as she was for herself. "When I
+      am grown up," she announced dolefully, to Tommy, "I shall be a bad woman,
+      just like mamma."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not if you try to be good," he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, I shall. There is something in my blood that will make me bad, and I
+      so wanted to be good. Oh! oh! oh!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She told him of the things she had heard people say, but though they
+      perplexed him almost as much as her, he was not so hopeless of learning
+      their meaning, for here was just the kind of difficulty he liked to
+      overcome. "I'll get it out o' Blinder," he said, with confidence in his
+      ingenuity, "and then I'll tell you what he says." But however much he
+      might strive to do so, Tommy could never repeat anything without giving it
+      frills and other adornment of his own making, and Grizel knew this. "I
+      must hear what he says myself," she insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But he winna speak plain afore you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, he will, if he does not know I am there."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The plot succeeded, though only partially, for so quick was the blind
+      man's sense of hearing that in the middle of the conversation he said,
+      sharply, "Somebody's ahint the dyke!" and he caught Grizel by the
+      shoulder. "It's the Painted Lady's lassie," he said when she screamed, and
+      he stormed against Tommy for taking such advantage of his blindness. But
+      to her he said, gently, "I daresay you egged him on to this, meaning well,
+      but you maun forget most of what I've said, especially about being in the
+      blood. I spoke in haste, it doesna apply to the like of you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, it does," replied Grizel, and all that had been revealed to her she
+      carried hot to the surgery, Tommy stopping at the door in as great
+      perturbation as herself. "I know what being in the blood is now," she
+      said, tragically, to McQueen, "there is something about it in the Bible. I
+      am the child of evil passions, and that means that I was born with
+      wickedness in my blood. It is lying sleeping in me just now because I am
+      only thirteen, and if I can prevent its waking when I am grown up I shall
+      always be good, but a very little thing will waken it; it wants so much to
+      be wakened, and if it is once wakened it will run all through me, and soon
+      I shall be like mamma."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was all horribly clear to her, and she would not wait for words of
+      comfort that could only obscure the truth. Accompanied by Tommy, who said
+      nothing, but often glanced at her fascinated yet alarmed, as if expecting
+      to see the ghastly change come over her at any moment&mdash;for he was as
+      convinced as she, and had the livelier imagination&mdash;she returned to
+      Monypenny to beg of Blinder to tell her one thing more. And he told her,
+      not speaking lightly, but because his words contained a solemn warning to
+      a girl who, he thought, might need it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What sort of thing would be likeliest to waken the wickedness?" she
+      asked, holding her breath for the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Keeping company wi' ill men," said Blinder, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Like the man who made mamma wicked, like my father?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay," Blinder replied, "fly from the like of him, my lass, though it
+      should be to the other end of the world."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood quite still, with a most sorrowful face, and then ran away, ran
+      so swiftly that when Tommy, who had lingered for a moment, came to the
+      door she was already out of sight. Scarcely less excited than she, he set
+      off for Double Dykes, his imagination in such a blaze that he looked
+      fearfully in the pools of the burn for a black frock. But Grizel had not
+      drowned herself; she was standing erect in her home, like one at bay, her
+      arms rigid, her hands clenched, and when he pushed open the door she
+      screamed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Grizel," said the distressed boy, "did you think I was him come for you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Maybe he'll no come. The folk think he winna come."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But if he does, if he does!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Maybe you needna go wi' him unless you're willing?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I must, he can compel me, because he is my father. Oh! oh! oh!" She lay
+      down on the bed, and on her eyes there slowly formed the little wells of
+      water Tommy was to know so well in time. He stood by her side in anguish;
+      for though his own tears came at the first call, he could never face them
+      in others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Grizel," he said impulsively, "there's just one thing for you to do. You
+      have money, and you maun run away afore he comes!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She jumped up at that. "I have thought of it," she answered "I am always
+      thinking about it, but how can I, oh, now can I? It would not be
+      respectable."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To run away?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To go by myself," said the poor girl, "and I do want to be respectable,
+      it would be sweet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In some ways Tommy was as innocent as she, and her reasoning seemed to him
+      to be sound. She was looking at him woefully, and entreaty was on her
+      face; all at once he felt what a lonely little crittur she was, and, in a
+      burst of manhood,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But, dinna prig wi' me to go with you," he said, struggling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have not!" she answered, panting, and she had not in words, but the
+      mute appeal was still on her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Grizel," he cried, "I'll come!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she seized his hand and pressed it to her breast, saying, "Oh, Tommy,
+      I am so fond of you!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the first time she had admitted it, and his head wagged well
+      content, as if saying for him, "I knew you would understand me some day."
+      But next moment the haunting shadow that so often overtook him in the act
+      of soaring fell cold upon his mind, and "I maun take Elspeth!" he
+      announced, as if Elspeth had him by the leg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You sha'n't!" said Grizel's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She winna let go," said Tommy's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grizel quivered from top to toe. "I hate Elspeth!" she cried, with curious
+      passion, and the more moral Tommy was ashamed of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You dinna ken how fond o' her I am," he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, I do."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then you shouldna want me to leave her and go wi' you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is why I want it," Grizel blurted out, and now we are all ashamed of
+      her. But fortunately Tommy did not see how much she had admitted in that
+      hasty cry, and as neither would give way to the other they parted stiffly,
+      his last words being "Mind, it wouldna be respectable to go by yoursel',"
+      and hers "I don't care, I'm going." Nevertheless it was she who slept
+      easily that night, and he who tossed about almost until cockcrow. She had
+      only one ugly dream, of herself wandering from door to door in a strange
+      town, asking for lodgings, but the woman who answered her weary knocks&mdash;there
+      were many doors but it was invariably the same woman&mdash;always asked,
+      suspiciously, "Is Tommy with you?" and Grizel shook her head, and then the
+      woman drove her away, perceiving that she was not respectable. This woke
+      her, and she feared the dream would come true, but she clenched her fists
+      in the darkness, saying, "I can't help it, I am going, and I won't have
+      Elspeth," and after that she slept in peace. In the meantime Tommy the
+      imaginative&mdash;but that night he was not Tommy, rather was he Grizel,
+      for he saw her as we can only see ourselves. Now she&mdash;or he, if you
+      will&mdash;had been caught by her father and brought back, and she turned
+      into a painted thing like her mother. She brandished a brandy bottle and a
+      stream of foul words ran lightly from her mouth and suddenly stopped,
+      because she was wailing "I wanted so to be good, it is sweet to be good!"
+      Now a man with a beard was whipping her, and Tommy felt each lash on his
+      own body, so that he had to strike out, and he started up in bed, and the
+      horrible thing was that he had never been asleep. Thus it went on until
+      early morning, when his eyes were red and his body was damp with sweat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now again he was Tommy, and at first even to think of leaving Elspeth
+      was absurd. Yet it would be pleasant to leave Aaron, who disliked him so
+      much. To disappear without a word would be a fine revenge, for the people
+      would say that Aaron must have ill-treated him, and while they searched
+      the pools of the burn for his body, Aaron would be looking on trembling,
+      perhaps with a policeman's hand on his shoulder. Tommy saw the commotion
+      as vividly as if the searchers were already out and he in a tree looking
+      down at them; but in a second he also heard Elspeth skirling, and down he
+      flung himself from the tree, crying, "I'm here, Elspeth, dinna greet; oh,
+      what a brute I've been!" No, he could not leave Elspeth, how wicked of
+      Grizel to expect it of him; she was a bad one, Grizel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But having now decided not to go, his sympathy with the girl who was to
+      lose him returned in a rush, and before he went to school he besought her
+      to&mdash;it amounted to this, to be more like himself; that is, he begged
+      her to postpone her departure indefinitely, not to make up her mind until
+      to-morrow&mdash;or the day after&mdash;or the day after that. He produced
+      reasons, as that she had only four pounds and some shillings now, while by
+      and by she might get the Painted Lady's money, at present in the bank;
+      also she ought to wait for the money that would come to her from the roup
+      of the furniture. But Grizel waived all argument aside; secure in her four
+      pounds and shillings she was determined to go to-night, for her father
+      might be here to-morrow; she was going to London because it was so big
+      that no one could ever find her there, and she would never, never write to
+      Tommy to tell him how she fared, lest the letter put her father on her
+      track. He implored her to write once, so that the money owing her might be
+      forwarded, but even this bribe did not move her, and he set off for school
+      most gloomily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cathro was specially aggravating that day, nagged him, said before the
+      whole school that he was a numskull, even fell upon him with the tawse,
+      and for no earthly reason except that Tommy would not bother his head with
+      the <i>oratio obliqua</i>. If there is any kind of dominie more maddening
+      than another, it is the one who will not leave you alone (ask any
+      thoughtful boy). How wretched the lot of him whose life is cast among
+      fools not capable of understanding him; what was that saying about
+      entertaining angels unawares? London! Grizel had more than sufficient
+      money to take two there, and once in London, a wonder such as himself was
+      bound to do wondrous things. Now that he thought of it, to become a
+      minister was abhorrent to him; to preach would be rather nice, oh, what
+      things he should say (he began to make them up, and they were so grand
+      that he almost wept), but to be good after the sermon was over, always to
+      be good (even when Elspeth was out of the way), never to think queer
+      unsayable things, never to say Stroke, never, in short, to "find a way"&mdash;he
+      was appalled. If it had not been for Elspeth&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So even Elspeth did not need him. When he went home from school, thinking
+      only of her, he found that she had gone to the Auld Licht manse to play
+      with little Margaret. Very well, if such was her wish, he would go. Nobody
+      wanted him except Grizel. Perhaps when news came from London of his
+      greatness, they would think more of him. He would send a letter to Thrums,
+      asking Mr. McLean to transfer his kindness to Elspeth. That would show
+      them what a noble fellow he was. Elspeth would really benefit by his
+      disappearance; he was running away for Elspeth's sake. And when he was
+      great, which would be in a few years, he would come back for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But no, he&mdash;. The dash represents Tommy swithering once more, and he
+      was at one or other end of the swither all day. When he acted sharply it
+      was always on impulse, and as soon as the die was cast he was a
+      philosopher with no regrets. But when he had time to reflect, he jumped
+      miserably back and forward. So when Grizel was ready to start, he did not
+      know in the least what he meant to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was to pass by the Cuttle Well, on her way to Tilliedrum, where she
+      would get the London train, he had been told coldly, and he could be there
+      at the time&mdash;if he liked. The time was seven o'clock in the evening
+      on a week-day, when the lovers are not in the Den, and Tommy arrived
+      first. When he stole through the small field that separates Monypenny from
+      the Den, his decision was&mdash;but on reaching the Cuttle Well, its
+      nearness to the uncanny Lair chilled his courage, and now he had only come
+      to bid her good-by. She was very late, and it suddenly struck him that she
+      had already set off. "After getting me to promise to go wi' her!" he said
+      to himself at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Grizel came; she was only late because it had taken her such a long
+      time to say good-by to the girl in the glass. She was wearing her black
+      dress and lustre jacket, and carried in a bundle the few treasures she was
+      taking with her, and though she did not ask Tommy if he was coming, she
+      cast a quick look round to see if he had a bundle anywhere, and he had
+      none. That told her his decision, and she would have liked to sit down for
+      a minute and cry, but of course she had too much pride, and she bade him
+      farewell so promptly that he thought he had a grievance. "I'm coming as
+      far as the toll-house wi' you," he said, sulkily, and so they started
+      together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the toll-house Grizel stopped. "It's a fine night," said Tommy, almost
+      apologetically, "I'll go as far as the quarry o' Benshee."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they came to the quarry he said, "We're no half-roads yet, I'll go
+      wi' you as far as Padanarum." Now she began to wonder and to glance at him
+      sideways, which made him more uncomfortable than ever. To prevent her
+      asking him a question for which he had no answer, he said, "What makes you
+      look so little the day?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not looking little," she replied, greatly annoyed, "I am looking
+      taller than usual. I have let down my frock three inches so as to look
+      taller&mdash;and older."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You look younger than ever," he said cruelly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't! I look fifteen, and when you are fifteen you grow up very
+      quickly. Do say I look older!" she entreated anxiously. "It would make me
+      feel more respectable."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he shook his head with surprising obstinacy, and then she began to
+      remark on his clothes, which had been exercising her curiosity ever since
+      they left the Den.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How is it that you are looking so stout?" she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I feel cold, but you are wiping the sweat off your face every minute."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was true, but he would have preferred not to answer. Grizel's
+      questions, however, were all so straight in the face, that there was no
+      dodging them. "I have on twa suits o' clothes, and a' my sarks," he had to
+      admit, sticky and sullen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped, but he trudged on doggedly. She ran after him and gave his
+      arm an impulsive squeeze with both hands, "Oh, you sweet!" she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, I'm not," he answered in alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes you are! You are coming with me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm not!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then why did you put on so many clothes?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy swithered wretchedly on one foot. "I didna put them on to come wi'
+      you," he explained, "I just put them on in case I should come wi' you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And are you not coming?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How can I ken?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you must decide," Grizel almost screamed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I needna," he stammered, "till we're at Tilliedrum. Let's speak about
+      some other thing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She rocked her arms, crying, "It is so easy to make up one's mind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's easy to you that has just one mind," he retorted with spirit, "but
+      if you had as many minds as I have&mdash;!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On they went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIII &mdash; THERE IS SOME ONE TO LOVE GRIZEL AT LAST
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Corp was sitting on the Monypenny dyke, spitting on a candlestick and then
+      rubbing it briskly against his orange-colored trousers. The doctor passing
+      in his gig, both of them streaked, till they blended, with the mud of
+      Look-about-you road (through which you should drive winking rapidly all
+      the way), saw him and drew up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, how is Grizel?" he asked. He had avoided Double Dykes since the
+      funeral, but vain had been his attempts to turn its little inmate out of
+      his mind; there she was, against his will, and there, he now admitted to
+      himself angrily or with a rueful sigh, she seemed likely to remain until
+      someone gave her a home. It was an almost ludicrous distrust of himself
+      that kept him away from her; he feared that if he went to Double Dykes her
+      lonely face would complete his conquest. For oh, he was reluctant to be
+      got the better of, as he expressed it to himself. Maggy Ann, his maid, was
+      the ideal woman for a bachelor's house. When she saw him coming she fled,
+      guiltily concealing the hated duster; when he roared at her for announcing
+      that dinner was ready, she left him to eat it half cold; when he spilled
+      matches on the floor and then stepped upon them and set the rug on fire,
+      she let him tell her that she should be more careful; she did not carry
+      off his favorite boots to the cobbler because they were down at heel; she
+      did not fling up her arms in horror and cry that she had brushed that coat
+      just five minutes ago; nor did she count the treasured "dottels" on the
+      mantelpiece to discover how many pipes he had smoked since morning; nor
+      point out that he had stepped over the door-mat; nor line her shelves with
+      the new <i>Mentor</i>; nor give him up his foot for sitting half the night
+      with patients who could not pay&mdash;in short, he knew the ways of the
+      limmers, and Maggy Ann was a jewel. But it had taken him a dozen years to
+      bring her to this perfection, and well he knew that the curse of Eve, as
+      he called the rage for the duster, slumbered in her rather than was
+      extinguished. With the volcanic Grizel in the house, Maggy Ann would once
+      more burst into flame, and the horrified doctor looked to right of him, to
+      left of him, before him and behind him, and everywhere he seemed to see
+      two new brooms bearing down. No, the brat, he would not have her; the
+      besom, why did she bother him; the witches take her, for putting the idea
+      into his head, nailing it into his head indeed. But nevertheless he was
+      forever urging other people to adopt her, assuring them that they would
+      find her a treasure, and even shaking his staff at them when they refused;
+      and he was so uneasy if he did not hear of her several times a day that he
+      made Monypenny the way to and from everywhere, so that he might drop into
+      artful talk with those who had seen her last. Corp, accordingly, was not
+      surprised at his "How is Grizel?" now, and he answered, between two spits,
+      "She's fine; she gave me this."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was one of the Painted Lady's silver candlesticks, and the doctor asked
+      sharply why Grizel had given it to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She said because she liked me," Corp replied, wonderingly. "She brought
+      it to my auntie's door soon after I loused, and put it into my hand: ay,
+      and she had a blue shawl, and she telled me to give it to Gavinia, because
+      she liked her too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What else did she say?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Corp tried to think. "I said, 'This cows, Grizel, but thank you kindly,'"
+      he answered, much pleased with his effort of memory, but the doctor
+      interrupted him rudely. "Nobody wants to hear what you said, you dottrel;
+      what more did she say?" And thus encouraged Corp remembered that she had
+      said she hoped he would not forget her. "What for should I forget her when
+      I see her ilka day?" he asked, and was probably about to divulge that this
+      was his reply to her, but without waiting for more, McQueen turned his
+      beast's head and drove to the entrance to the Double Dykes. Here he
+      alighted and hastened up the path on foot, but before he reached the house
+      he met Dite Deuchars taking his ease beneath a tree, and Dite could tell
+      him that Grizel was not at home. "But there's somebody in Double Dykes,"
+      he said, "though I kenna wha could be there unless it's the ghost of the
+      Painted Lady hersel'. About an hour syne I saw Grizel come out o' the
+      house, carrying a bundle, but she hadna gone many yards when she turned
+      round and waved her hand to the east window. I couldna see wha was at it,
+      but there maun have been somebody, for first the crittur waved to the
+      window and next she kissed her hand to it, and syne she went on a bit, and
+      syne she ran back close to the window and nodded and flung more kisses,
+      and back and forrit she went a curran times as if she could hardly tear
+      hersel' awa'. 'Wha's that you're so chief wi'?' I speired when she came by
+      me at last, but she just said, 'I won't tell you,' in her dour wy, and she
+      hasna come back yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whom could she have been saying good-by to so demonstratively, and whither
+      had she gone? With a curiosity that for the moment took the place of his
+      uneasiness, McQueen proceeded to the house, the door of which was shut but
+      not locked. Two glances convinced him that there was no one here, the
+      kitchen was as he had seen it last, except that the long mirror had been
+      placed on a chair close to the east window. The doctor went to the outside
+      of the window, and looked in, he could see nothing but his own reflection
+      in the mirror, and was completely puzzled. But it was no time, he felt,
+      for standing there scratching his head, when there was reason to fear that
+      the girl had gone. Gone where? He saw his selfishness now, in a glaring
+      light, and it fled out of him pursued by curses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped at Aaron's door and called for Tommy, but Tommy had left the
+      house an hour ago. "Gone with her, the sacket; he very likely put her up
+      to this," the doctor muttered, and the surmise seemed justified when he
+      heard that Grizel and Tommy had been seen passing the Fens. That they were
+      running away had never struck those who saw them, and McQueen said nothing
+      of his suspicions, but off he went in his gig on their track and ran them
+      down within a mile of Tilliedrum. Grizel scurried on, thinking it was
+      undoubtedly her father, but in a few minutes the three were conversing
+      almost amicably, the doctor's first words had been so "sweet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy explained that they were out for a walk, but Grizel could not lie,
+      and in a few passionate sentences she told McQueen the truth. He had
+      guessed the greater part of it, and while she spoke he looked so sorry for
+      her, such a sweet change had come over his manner, that she held his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you must go no farther," he told her, "I am to take you back with
+      me," and that alarmed her. "I won't go back," she said, determinedly, "he
+      might come."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's little fear of his coming," McQueen assured her, gently, "but if
+      he does come I give you my solemn word that I won't let him take you away
+      unless you want to go."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even then she only wavered, but he got her altogether with this: "And
+      should he come, just think what a piece of your mind you could give him,
+      with me standing by holding your hand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, would you do that?" she asked, brightening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I would do a good deal to get the chance," he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should just love it!" she cried. "I shall come now," and she stepped
+      light-heartedly into the gig, where the doctor joined her. Tommy, who had
+      been in the background all this time, was about to jump up beside them,
+      but McQueen waved him back, saying maliciously, "There's just room for
+      two, my man, so I won't interfere with your walk."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy, in danger of being left, very hot and stout and sulky, whimpered,
+      "What have I done to anger you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You were going with her, you blackguard," replied McQueen, not yet in
+      full possession of the facts, for whether Tommy was or was not going with
+      her no one can ever know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If I was," cried the injured boy, "it wasna because I wanted to go, it
+      was because it wouldna have been respectable for her to go by hersel'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor had already started his shalt, but at these astonishing words
+      he drew up sharply. "Say that again," ha said, as if thinking that his
+      ears must have deceived him, and Tommy repeated his remark, wondering at
+      its effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you tell me that you were going with her," the doctor repeated, "to
+      make her enterprise more respectable?" and he looked from one to the
+      other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of course I was," replied Tommy, resenting his surprise at a thing so
+      obvious; and "That's why I wanted him to come," chimed in Grizel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still McQueen's glance wandered from the boy to the girl and from the girl
+      to the boy. "You are a pair!" he said at last, and he signed in silence to
+      Tommy to mount the gig. But his manner had alarmed Grizel, ever watching
+      herself lest she should stray into the ways of bad ones, and she asked
+      anxiously, "There was nothing wrong in it, was there?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," the doctor answered gravely, laying his hand on hers, "no, it was
+      just sweet."
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      What McQueen had to say to her was not for Tommy's ears, and the
+      conversation was but a makeshift until they reached Thrums, where he sent
+      the boy home, recommending him to hold his tongue about the escapade (and
+      Tommy of course saw the advisability of keeping it from Elspeth); but he
+      took Grizel into his parlor and set her down on the buffet stool by the
+      fire, where he surveyed her in silence at his leisure. Then he tried her
+      in his old armchair, then on his sofa; then he put the <i>Mentor</i> into
+      her hand and told her to hold it as if it were a duster, then he sent her
+      into the passage, with instructions to open the door presently and
+      announce "Dinner is ready;" then he told her to put some coals on the
+      fire; then he told her to sit at the window, first with an open book in
+      her hand, secondly as if she was busy knitting; and all these things she
+      did wondering exceedingly, for he gave no explanation except the
+      incomprehensible one, "I want to see what it would be like."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had told him in the gig why she had changed the position of the mirror
+      at Double Dykes, it was to let "that darling" wave good-by to her from the
+      window; and now having experimented with her in his parlor he drew her
+      toward his chair, so that she stood between his knees. And he asked her if
+      she understood why he had gone to Double Dykes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Was it to get me to tell you what were the names in the letter?" she
+      said, wistfully. "That is what everyone asks me, but I won't tell, no, I
+      won't;" and she closed her mouth hard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He, too, would have liked to hear the names, and he sighed, it must be
+      admitted, at sight of that determined mouth, but he could say truthfully,
+      "Your refusal to break your promise is one of the things that I admire in
+      you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Admire! Grizel could scarce believe that this gift was for her. "You don't
+      mean that you really like me?" she faltered, but she felt sure all the
+      time that he did, and she cried, "Oh, but why, oh, how can you!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For one reason," he said, "because you are so good."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good! Oh! oh! oh!" She clapped her hands joyously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And for another&mdash;because you are so brave."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I am not really brave," she said anxiously, yet resolved to hide
+      nothing, "I only pretend to be brave, I am often frightened, but I just
+      don't let on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That, he told her, is the highest form of bravery, but Grizel was very,
+      very tired of being brave, and she insisted impetuously, "I don't want to
+      be brave, I want to be afraid, like other girls."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, it's your right, you little woman," he answered, tenderly, and then
+      again he became mysterious. He kicked off his shoes to show her that he
+      was wearing socks that did not match. "I just pull on the first that come
+      to hand," he said recklessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh!" cried Grizel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On his dusty book-shelves he wrote, with his finger, "Not dusted since the
+      year One."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh! oh!" she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He put his fingers through his gray, untidy hair. "That's the only comb I
+      have that is at hand when I want it," he went on, regardless of her agony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All the stud-holes in my shirts," he said, "are now so frayed and large
+      that the studs fall out, and I find them in my socks at night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh! oh! he was killing her, he was, but what cared he? "Look at my
+      clothes," said the cruel man, "I read when I'm eating, and I spill so much
+      gravy that&mdash;that we boil my waistcoat once a month, and make soup of
+      it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Grizel this was the most tragic picture ever drawn by man, and he saw
+      that it was time to desist. "And it's all," he said, looking at her sadly,
+      "it's all because I am a lonely old bachelor with no womankind to look
+      after him, no little girl to brighten him when he comes home dog-tired, no
+      one to care whether his socks are in holes and his comb behind the
+      wash-stand, no soft hand to soothe his brow when it aches, no one to work
+      for, no one to love, many a one to close the old bachelor's eyes when he
+      dies, but none to drop a tear for him, no one to&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh! oh! oh! That is just like me. Oh! oh!" cried Grizel, and he pulled
+      her closer to him, saying, "The more reason we should join thegither;
+      Grizel, if you don't take pity on me, and come and bide with me and be my
+      little housekeeper, the Lord Almighty only knows what is to become of the
+      old doctor."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this she broke away from him, and stood far back pressing her arms to
+      her sides, and she cried, "It is not out of charity you ask me, is it?"
+      and then she went a little nearer. "You would not say it if it wasn't
+      true, would you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, my dawtie, it's true," he told her, and if he had been pitying
+      himself a little, there was an end of that now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She remembered something and cried joyously, "And you knew what was in my
+      blood before you asked me, so I don't need to tell you, do I? And you are
+      not afraid that I shall corrupt you, are you? And you don't think it a
+      pity I didn't die when I was a tiny baby, do you? Some people think so, I
+      heard them say it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What would have become of me?" was all he dared answer in words, but he
+      drew her to him again, and when she asked if it was true, as she had heard
+      some woman say, that in some matters men were all alike, and did what that
+      one man had done to her mamma, he could reply solemnly, "No, it is not
+      true; it's a lie that has done more harm than any war in any century."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat on his knee, telling him many things that had come recently to her
+      knowledge but were not so new to him. The fall of woman was the subject, a
+      strange topic for a girl of thirteen and a man of sixty. They don't become
+      wicked in a moment, he learned; if they are good to begin with, it takes
+      quite a long time to make them bad. Her mamma was good to begin with. "I
+      know she was good, because when she thought she was the girl she used to
+      be, she looked sweet and said lovely things." The way the men do is this,
+      they put evil thoughts into the woman's head, and say them often to her,
+      till she gets accustomed to them, and thinks they cannot be bad when the
+      man she loves likes them, and it is called corrupting the mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And then a baby comes to them," Grizel said softly, "and it is called a
+      child of shame. I am a child of shame."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made no reply, so she looked up, and his face was very old and sad. "I
+      am sorry too," she whispered, but still he said nothing, and then she put
+      her fingers on his eyes to discover if they were wet, and they were wet.
+      And so Grizel knew that there was someone who loved her at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mirror was the only article of value that Grizel took with her to her
+      new home; everything else was rouped at the door of Double Dykes; Tommy,
+      who should have been at his books, acting as auctioneer's clerk for
+      sixpence. There are houses in Thrums where you may still be told who got
+      the bed and who the rocking-chair, and how Nether Drumgley's wife dared
+      him to come home without the spinet; but it is not by the sales that the
+      roup is best remembered. Curiosity took many persons into Double Dykes
+      that day, and in the room that had never been furnished they saw a
+      mournful stack of empty brandy bottles, piled there by the auctioneer who
+      had found them in every corner, beneath the bed, in presses, in boxes,
+      whither they had been thrust by Grizel's mamma, as if to conceal their
+      number from herself. The counting of these bottles was a labor, but it is
+      not even by them that the roup is remembered. Among them some sacrilegious
+      hands found a bundle of papers with a sad blue ribbon round them. They
+      were the Painted Lady's love-letters, the letters she had written to the
+      man. Why or how they had come back to her no one knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Most of them were given to Grizel, but a dozen or more passed without her
+      leave into the kists of various people, where often since then they have
+      been consulted by swains in need of a pretty phrase; and Tommy's
+      school-fellows, the very boys and girls who hooted the Painted Lady, were
+      in time&mdash;so oddly do things turn out&mdash;to be among those whom her
+      letters taught how to woo. Where the kists did not let in the damp or
+      careless fingers, the paper long remained clean, the ink but little faded.
+      Some of the letters were creased, as if they had once been much folded,
+      perhaps for slipping into secret hiding-places, but none of them bore any
+      address or a date. "To my beloved," was sometimes written on the cover,
+      and inside he was darling or beloved again. So no one could have arranged
+      them in the order in which they were written, though there was a
+      three-cornered one which said it was the first. There was a violet in it,
+      clinging to the paper as if they were fond of each other, and Grizel's
+      mamma had written, "The violet is me, hiding in a corner because I am so
+      happy." The letters were in many moods, playful, reflective, sad,
+      despairing, arch, but all were written in an ecstasy of the purest love,
+      and most of them were cheerful, so that you seemed to see the sun dancing
+      on the paper while she wrote, the same sun that afterwards showed up her
+      painted cheeks. Why they came back to her no one ever discovered, any more
+      than how she who slipped the violet into that three-cornered one and took
+      it out to kiss again and wrote, "It is my first love-letter, and I love it
+      so much I am reluctant to let it go," became in a few years the derision
+      of the Double Dykes. Some of these letters may be in old kists still, but
+      whether that is so or not, they alone have passed the Painted Lady's
+      memory from one generation to another, and they have purified it, so that
+      what she was died with her vile body, and what she might have been lived
+      on, as if it were her true self.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0034" id="link2HCH0034"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIV &mdash; WHO TOLD TOMMY TO SPEAK
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      "Miss Alison Cray presents her compliments to&mdash;and requests the favor
+      of their company at her marriage with Mr. Ivie McLean, on January 8th, at
+      six o'clock."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy in his Sabbath clothes, with a rose from the Dovecot hot-house for
+      buttonhole (which he slipped into his pocket when he saw other boys
+      approaching), delivered them at the doors of the aristocracy, where, by
+      the way, he had been a few weeks earlier, with another circular.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Miss Alison Cray being about to give up school, has pleasure in stating
+      that she has disposed of the good-will of her establishment to Miss Jessy
+      Langlands and Miss S. Oram, who will enter upon their scholastic duties on
+      January 9th, at Hoods Cottage, where she most cordially," and so on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here if the writer dared (but you would be so angry) he would introduce at
+      the length of a chapter two brand-new characters, the Misses Langlands and
+      Oram, who suddenly present themselves to him in the most sympathetic
+      light. Miss Ailie has been safely stowed to port, but their little boat is
+      only setting sail, and they are such young ones, neither out of her teens,
+      that he would fain turn for a time from her to them. Twelve pounds they
+      paid for the good-will, and, oh, the exciting discussions, oh, the
+      scraping to get the money together! If little Miss Langlands had not been
+      so bold, big Miss Oram must have drawn back, but if Miss Oram had not had
+      that idea about a paper partition, of what avail the boldness of Miss
+      Langlands? How these two trumps of girls succeeded in hiring the Painted
+      Lady's spinet from Nether Drumgley&mdash;in the absence of his wife, who
+      on her way home from buying a cochin-china met the spinet in a cart&mdash;how
+      the mother of one of them, realizing in a klink that she was common no
+      more, henceforth wore black caps instead of mutches (but the father
+      dandered on in the old plebeian way), what the enterprise meant to a young
+      man in distant Newcastle, whose favorite name was Jessy, how the news
+      travelled to still more distant Canada, where a family of emigrants which
+      had left its Sarah behind in Thrums, could talk of nothing else for weeks&mdash;it
+      is hard to have to pass on without dwelling on these things, and indeed&mdash;but
+      pass on we must.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief figure at the wedding of Miss Ailie was undoubtedly Mr. T.
+      Sandys. When one remembers his prominence, it is difficult to think that
+      the wedding could have taken place without him. It was he (in his Sabbath
+      clothes again, and now flaunting his buttonhole brazenly) who in insulting
+      language ordered the rabble to stand back there. It was he who dashed out
+      to the 'Sosh to get a hundred ha'pennies for the fifty pennies Mr. McLean
+      had brought to toss into the air. It was he who went round in the carriage
+      to pick up the guests and whisked them in and out, and slammed the door,
+      and saw to it that the minister was not kept waiting, and warned Miss
+      Ailie that if she did not come now they should begin without her. It was
+      he who stood near her with a handkerchief ready in his hand lest she took
+      to crying on her new brown silk (Miss Ailie was married in brown silk
+      after all). As a crown to his audacity, it was he who told Mr. Dishart, in
+      the middle of a noble passage, to mind the lamp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These duties were Dr. McQueen's, the best man, but either demoralized by
+      the bridegroom, who went all to pieces at the critical moment and was much
+      more nervous than the bride, or in terror lest Grizel, who had sent him to
+      the wedding speckless and most beautifully starched, should suddenly
+      appear at the door and cry, "Oh, oh, take your fingers off your shirt!" he
+      was through other till the knot was tied, and then it was too late, for
+      Tommy had made his mark. It was Tommy who led the way to the school-room,
+      where the feast was ready, it was Tommy who put the guests in their places
+      (even the banker cringed to him), it was. Tommy who winked to Mr. Dishart
+      as a sign to say grace. As you will readily believe, Miss Ailie could not
+      endure the thought of excluding her pupils from the festivities, and they
+      began to arrive as soon as the tables had been cleared of all save oranges
+      and tarts and raisins. Tommy, waving Gavinia aside, showed them in, and
+      one of them, curious to tell, was Corp, in borrowed blacks, and Tommy
+      shook hands with him and called him Mr. Shiach, both new experiences to
+      Corp, who knocked over a table in his anxiety to behave himself, and
+      roared at intervals "Do you see the little deevil!" and bit his warts and
+      then politely swallowed the blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As if oranges and tarts and raisins were not enough, came the Punch and
+      Judy show, Tommy's culminating triumph. All the way to Redlintie had Mr.
+      McLean sent for the Punch and Judy show, and nevertheless there was a
+      probability of no performance, for Miss Ailie considered the show immoral.
+      Most anxious was she to give pleasure to her pupils, and this she knew was
+      the best way, but how could she countenance an entertainment which was an
+      encouragement to every form of vice and crime? To send these children to
+      the Misses Langlands and Oram, fresh from an introduction to the comic
+      view of murder! It could not be done, now could it? Mr. McLean could make
+      no suggestion. Mr. Dishart thought it would be advisable to substitute
+      another entertainment; was there not a game called "The Minister's Cat"?
+      Mrs. Dishart thought they should have the show and risk the consequences.
+      So also thought Dr. McQueen. The banker was consulted, but saw no way out
+      of the difficulty, nor did the lawyer, nor did the Misses Finlayson. Then
+      Tommy appeared on the scene, and presently retired to find a way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found it. The performance took place, and none of the fun was omitted,
+      yet neither Miss Ailie&mdash;tuts, tuts Mrs. McLean&mdash;nor Mr. Dishart
+      could disapprove. Punch did chuck his baby out at the window (roars of
+      laughter) in his jovial time-honored way, <i>but</i> immediately
+      thereafter up popped the showman to say, "Ah, my dear boys and girls, let
+      this be a lesson to you never to destroy your offsprings. Oh, shame on
+      Punch, for to do the wicked deed; he will be catched in the end and serve
+      him right." Then when Mr. Punch had wolloped his wife with the stick, amid
+      thunders of applause, up again bobbed the showman, "Ah, my dear boys and
+      girls, what a lesson is this we sees, what goings on is this? He have
+      bashed the head of her as should ha' been the apple of his eye, and he
+      does not care a&mdash;he does not care; but mark my words, his home it
+      will now be desolate, no more shall she meet him at his door with kindly
+      smile, he have done for her quite, and now he is a hunted man. Oh, be
+      warned by his sad igsample, and do not bash the head of your loving wife."
+      And there was a great deal more of the same, and simple Mrs. McLean almost
+      wept tears of joy because her favorite's good heart had suggested these
+      improvements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grizel was not at the wedding; she was invited, but could not go because
+      she was in mourning. But only her parramatty frock was in mourning, for
+      already she had been the doctor's housekeeper for two full months, and her
+      father had not appeared to plague her (he never did appear, it may be told
+      at once), and so how could her face be woeful when her heart leapt with
+      gladness? Never had prisoner pined for the fields more than this reticent
+      girl to be frank, and she poured out her inmost self to the doctor, so
+      that daily he discovered something beautiful (and exasperating) about
+      womanhood. And it was his love for her that had changed her. "You do love
+      me, don't you?" she would say, and his answer might be "I have told you
+      that fifty times already;" to which she would reply, gleefully, "That is
+      not often, I say it all day to myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Exasperating? Yes, that was the word. Long before summer came, the doctor
+      knew that he had given himself into the hands of a tyrant. It was idle his
+      saying that this irregularity and that carelessness were habits that had
+      become part of him; she only rocked her arms impatiently, and if he would
+      not stand still to be put to rights, then she would follow him along the
+      street, brushing him as he walked, a sight that was witnessed several
+      times while he was in the mutinous stage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Talk about masterfulness," he would say, when she whipped off his coat or
+      made a dart at the mud on his trousers; "you are the most masterful little
+      besom I ever clapped eyes on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as he said it he perhaps crossed his legs, and she immediately cried,
+      "You have missed two holes in lacing your boots!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of a morning he would ask her sarcastically to examine him from top to toe
+      and see if he would do, and examine him she did, turning him round,
+      pointing out that he had been sitting "again" on his tails, that oh, oh,
+      he must have cut that buttonhole with his knife. He became most artful in
+      hiding deficiencies from her, but her suspicions once roused would not
+      sleep, and all subterfuge was vain. "Why have you buttoned your coat up
+      tight to the throat to-day?" she would demand sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is such a cold morning," he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is not the reason," she replied at once (she could see through
+      broadcloth at a glance), "I believe you have on the old necktie again, and
+      you promised to buy a new one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I always forget about it when I'm out," he said humbly, and next evening
+      he found on his table a new tie, made by Grizel herself out of her mamma's
+      rokelay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was related by one who had dropped in at the doctor's house
+      unexpectedly, that he found Grizel making a new shirt, and forcing the
+      doctor to try on the sleeves while they were still in the pin stage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She soon knew his every want, and just as he was beginning to want it,
+      there it was at his elbow. He realized what a study she had made of him
+      when he heard her talking of his favorite dishes and his favorite seat,
+      and his way of biting his underlip when in thought, and how hard he was on
+      his left cuff. It had been one of his boasts that he had no favorite
+      dishes, etc., but he saw now that he had been a slave to them for years
+      without knowing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She discussed him with other mothers as if he were her little boy, and he
+      denounced her for it. But all the time she was spoiling him. Formerly he
+      had got on very well when nothing was in its place. Now he roared
+      helplessly if he mislaid his razor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was determined to make a lady of her, which necessitated her being sent
+      to school; she preferred hemming, baking and rubbing things till they
+      shone, and not both could have had their way (which sounds fatal for the
+      man), had they not arranged a compromise, Grizel, for instance, to study
+      geography for an hour in the evening with Miss Langlands (go to school in
+      the daytime she would not) so long as the doctor shaved every morning, but
+      if no shave no geography; the doctor to wipe his pen on the blot-sheet
+      instead of on the lining of his coat if she took three lessons a week from
+      Miss Oram on the spinet. How happy and proud she was! Her glee was a
+      constant source of wonder to McQueen. Perhaps she put on airs a little,
+      her walk, said the critical, had become a strut; but how could she help
+      that when the new joyousness of living was dancing and singing within her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had all her fears for the future rolled away like clouds that leave no
+      mark behind? The doctor thought so at times, she so seldom spoke of them
+      to him; he did not see that when they came she hid them from him because
+      she had discovered that they saddened him. And she had so little time to
+      brood, being convinced of the sinfulness of sitting still, that if the
+      clouds came suddenly, they never stayed long save once, and then it was,
+      mayhap, as well. The thunderclap was caused by Tommy, who brought it on
+      unintentionally and was almost as much scared by his handiwork as Grizel
+      herself. She and he had been very friendly of late, partly because they
+      shared with McQueen the secret of the frustrated elopement, partly because
+      they both thought that in that curious incident Tommy had behaved in a
+      most disinterested and splendid way. Grizel had not been sure of it at
+      first, but it had grown on Tommy, he had so thoroughly convinced himself
+      of his intention to get into the train with her at Tilliedrum that her
+      doubts were dispelled&mdash;easily dispelled, you say, but the truth must
+      be told, Grizel was very anxious to be rid of them. And Tommy's were
+      honest convictions, born full grown of a desire for happiness to all. Had
+      Elspeth discovered how nearly he had deserted her, the same sentiment
+      would have made him swear to her with tears that never should he have gone
+      farther than Tilliedrum, and while he was persuading her he would have
+      persuaded himself. Then again, when he met Grizel&mdash;well, to get him
+      in doubt it would have been necessary to catch him on the way between
+      these two girls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Tommy and Grizel were friends, and finding that it hurt the doctor to
+      speak on a certain subject to him, Grizel gave her confidences to Tommy.
+      She had a fear, which he shared on its being explained to him, that she
+      might meet a man of the stamp of her father, and grow fond of him before
+      she knew the kind he was, and as even Tommy could not suggest an
+      infallible test which would lay them bare at the first glance, he
+      consented to consult Blinder once more. He found the blind man by his
+      fire-side, very difficult to coax into words on the important topic, but
+      Tommy's "You've said ower much no to tell a bit more," seemed to impress
+      him, and he answered the question,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You said a woman should fly frae the like o' Grizel's father though it
+      should be to the other end of the world, but how is she to ken that he's
+      that kind?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She'll ken," Blinder answered after thinking it over, "if she likes him
+      and fears him at one breath, and has a sort of secret dread that he's
+      getting a power ower her that she canna resist."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These words were a flash of light on a neglected corner to Tommy. "Now I
+      see, now I ken," he exclaimed, amazed; "now I ken what my mother meant!
+      Blinder, is that no the kind of man that's called masterful?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's what poor women find them and call them to their cost," said
+      Blinder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy's excitement was prodigious. "Now I ken, now I see!" he cried,
+      slapping his leg and stamping up and down the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sit down!" roared his host.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I canna," retorted the boy. "Oh, to think o't, to think I came to speir
+      that question at you, to think her and me has wondered what kind he was,
+      and I kent a' the time!" Without staying to tell Blinder what he was
+      blethering about, he hurried off to Grizel, who was waiting for him in the
+      Den, and to her he poured out his astonishing news.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ken all about them, I've kent since afore I came to Thrums, but though
+      I generally say the prayer, I've forgot to think o' what it means." In a
+      stampede of words he told her all he could remember of his mother's story
+      as related to him on a grim night in London so long ago, and she listened
+      eagerly. And when that was over, he repeated first his prayer and then
+      Elspeth's, "O God, whatever is to be my fate, may I never be one of them
+      that bow the knee to masterful man, and if I was born like that and canna
+      help it, O take me up to heaven afore I'm fil't." Grizel repeated it after
+      him until she had it by heart, and even as she said it a strange thing
+      happened, for she began to draw back from Tommy, with a look of terror on
+      her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What makes you look at me like that?" he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe&mdash;I think&mdash;you are masterful," she gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Me!" he retorted indignantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now," she went on, waving him back, "now I know why I would not give in
+      to you when you wanted me to be Stroke's wife. I was afraid you were
+      masterful!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Was that it?" cried Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now," she proceeded, too excited to heed his interruptions, "now I know
+      why I would not kiss your hand, now I know why I would not say I liked
+      you. I was afraid of you, I&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Were you?" His eyes began to sparkle, and something very like rapture was
+      pushing the indignation from his face. "Oh, Grizel, have I a power ower
+      you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, you have not," she cried passionately. "I was just frightened that
+      you might have. Oh, oh, I know you now!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To think o't, to think o't!" he crowed, wagging his head, and then she
+      clenched her fist, crying, "Oh, you wicked, you should cry with shame!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he had his answer ready, "It canna be my wite, for I never kent o't
+      till you telled me. Grizel, it has just come about without either of us
+      kenning!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shuddered at this, and then seized him by the shoulders. "It has not
+      come about at all," she said, "I was only frightened that it might come,
+      and now it can't come, for I won't let it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But can you help yoursel'?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, I can. I shall never be friends with you again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had such a capacity for keeping her word that this alarmed him, and he
+      did his best to extinguish his lights. "I'm no masterful, Grizel," he
+      said, "and I dinna want to be, it was just for a minute that I liked the
+      thought." She shook her head, but his next words had more effect. "If I
+      had been that kind, would I have teached you Elspeth's prayer?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "N-no, I don't think so," she said slowly, and perhaps he would have
+      succeeded in soothing her, had not a sudden thought brought back the
+      terror to her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is 't now?" he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, oh, oh!" she cried, "and I nearly went away with you!" and without
+      another word she fled from the Den. She never told the doctor of this
+      incident, and in time it became a mere shadow in the background, so that
+      she was again his happy housekeeper, but that was because she had found
+      strength to break with Tommy. She was only an eager little girl,
+      pathetically ignorant about what she wanted most to understand, but she
+      saw how an instinct had been fighting for her, and now it should not have
+      to fight alone. How careful she became! All Tommy's wiles were vain, she
+      would scarcely answer if he spoke to her; if he had ever possessed a power
+      over her it was gone, Elspeth's prayer had saved her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jean Myles had told Tommy to teach that prayer to Elspeth; but who had
+      told him to repeat it to Grizel?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0035" id="link2HCH0035"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXV &mdash; THE BRANDING OF TOMMY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Grizel's secession had at least one good effect: it gave Tommy more time
+      in which to make a scholar of himself. Would you like a picture of Tommy
+      trying to make a scholar of himself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They all helped him in their different ways: Grizel, by declining his
+      company; Corp, by being far away at Look-about-you, adding to the inches
+      of a farm-house; Aaron Latta, by saying nothing but looking "college or
+      the herding;" Mr. McLean, who had settled down with Ailie at the Dovecot,
+      by inquiries about his progress; Elspeth by&mdash;but did Elspeth's talks
+      with him about how they should live in Aberdeen and afterwards (when they
+      were in the big house) do more than send his mind a-galloping (she holding
+      on behind) along roads that lead not to Aberdeen? What drove Tommy
+      oftenest to the weary drudgery was, perhaps, the alarm that came over him
+      when he seemed of a sudden to hear the names of the bursars proclaimed and
+      no Thomas Sandys among them. Then did he shudder, for well he knew that
+      Aaron would keep his threat, and he hastily covered the round table with
+      books and sat for hours sorrowfully pecking at them, every little while to
+      discover that his mind had soared to other things, when he hauled it back,
+      as one draws in a reluctant kite. On these occasions Aaron seldom troubled
+      him, except by glances that, nevertheless, brought the kite back more
+      quickly than if they had been words of warning. If Elspeth was present,
+      the warper might sit moodily by the fire, but when the man and the boy
+      were left together, one or other of them soon retired, as if this was the
+      only way of preserving the peace. Though determined to keep his word to
+      Jean Myles liberally, Aaron had never liked Tommy, and Tommy's avoidance
+      of him is easily accounted for; he knew that Aaron did not admire him, and
+      unless you admired Tommy he was always a boor in your presence, shy and
+      self-distrustful. Especially was this so if you were a lady (how amazingly
+      he got on in after years with some of you, what agony others endured till
+      he went away!), and it is the chief reason why there are such
+      contradictory accounts of him to-day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes Mr. Cathro had hopes of him other than those that could only be
+      revealed in a shameful whisper with the door shut. "Not so bad," he might
+      say to Mr. McLean; "if he keeps it up we may squeeze him through yet,
+      without trusting to&mdash;to what I was fool enough to mention to you. The
+      mathematics are his weak point, there's nothing practical about him
+      (except when it's needed to carry out his devil's designs) and he cares
+      not a doit about the line A B, nor what it's doing in the circle K, but
+      there's whiles he surprises me when we're at Homer. He has the spirit o't,
+      man, even when he bogles at the sense."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the next time Ivie called for a report&mdash;!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his great days, so glittering, so brief (the days of the penny Life)
+      Tommy, looking back to this year, was sure that he had never really tried
+      to work. But he had. He did his very best, doggedly, wearily sitting at
+      the round table till Elspeth feared that he was killing himself and gave
+      him a melancholy comfort by saying so. An hour afterwards he might
+      discover that he had been far away from his books, looking on at his
+      affecting death and counting the mourners at the funeral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had he thought that Grizel's discovery was making her unhappy he would
+      have melted at once, but never did she look so proud as when she
+      scornfully passed him by, and he wagged his head complacently over her
+      coming chagrin when she heard that he had carried the highest bursary.
+      Then she would know what she had flung away. This should have helped him
+      to another struggle with his lexicon, but it only provided a breeze for
+      the kite, which flew so strong that he had to let go the string.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aaron and the Dominie met one day in the square, and to Aaron's surprise
+      Mr. Cathro's despondency about Tommy was more pronounced than before. "I
+      wonder at that," the warper said, "for I assure you he has been harder 'at
+      it than ever thae last nights. What's more, he used to look doleful as he
+      sat at his table, but I notice now that he's as sweer to leave off as he's
+      keen to begin, and the face of him is a' eagerness too, and he reads ower
+      to himself what he has wrote and wags his head at it as if he thought it
+      grand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Say you so?" asked Cathro, suspiciously; "does he leave what he writes
+      lying about, Aaron?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, but he takes it to you, does he no'?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not him," said the Dominie, emphatically. "I may be mistaken, Aaron, but
+      I'm doubting the young whelp is at his tricks again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Dominie was right, and before many days passed he discovered what was
+      Tommy's new and delicious occupation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For years Mr. Cathro had been in the habit of writing letters for such of
+      the populace as could not guide a pen, and though he often told them not
+      to come deaving him he liked the job, unexpected presents of a hen or a
+      ham occasionally arriving as his reward, while the personal matters thus
+      confided to him, as if he were a safe for the banking of private
+      histories, gave him and his wife gossip for winter nights. Of late the
+      number of his clients had decreased without his noticing it, so confident
+      was he that they could not get on without him, but he received a shock at
+      last from Andrew Dickie, who came one Saturday night with paper, envelope,
+      a Queen's head, and a request for a letter for Bell Birse, now of
+      Tilliedrum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You want me to speir in your name whether she'll have you, do you?" asked
+      Cathro, with a flourish of his pen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's no just so simple as that," said Andrew, and then he seemed to be
+      rather at a loss to say what it was. "I dinna ken," he continued presently
+      with a grave face, "whether you've noticed that I'm a gey queer deevil?
+      Losh, I think I'm the queerest deevil I ken."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We are all that," the Dominie assured him. "But what do you want me to
+      write?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it's like this," said Andrew, "I'm willing to marry her if she's
+      agreeable, but I want to make sure that she'll take me afore I speir her.
+      I'm a proud man, Dominie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're a sly one!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Am I no!" said Andrew, well pleased. "Well, could you put the letter in
+      that wy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wouldna," replied Mr. Cathro, "though I could, and I couldna though I
+      would. It would defy the face of clay to do it, you canny lover."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, the Dominie had frequently declined to write as he was bidden, and
+      had suggested alterations which were invariably accepted, but to his
+      astonishment Andrew would not give in. "I'll be stepping, then," he said
+      coolly, "for if you hinna the knack o't I ken somebody that has."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who?" demanded the irate Dominie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I promised no to tell you," replied Andrew, and away he went. Mr. Cathro
+      expected him to return presently in humbler mood, but was disappointed,
+      and a week or two afterwards he heard Andrew and Mary Jane Proctor cried
+      in the parish church. "Did Bell Birse refuse him?" he asked the kirk
+      officer, and was informed that Bell had never got a chance. "His letter
+      was so cunning," said John, "that without speiring her, it drew ane frae
+      her in which she let out that she was centred on Davit Allardyce."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But who wrote Andrew's letter?" asked Mr. Cathro, sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought it had been yoursel'," said John, and the Dominie chafed, and
+      lost much of the afternoon service by going over in his mind the names of
+      possible rivals. He never thought of Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a week or two later fell a heavier blow. At least twice a year the
+      Dominie had written for Meggy Duff to her daughter in Ireland a long
+      letter founded on this suggestion, "Dear Kaytherine, if you dinna send ten
+      shillings immediately, your puir auld mother will have neither house nor
+      hame. I'm crying to you for't, Kaytherine; hearken and you'll hear my cry
+      across the cauldriff sea." He met Meggy in the Banker's Close one day, and
+      asked her pleasantly if the time was not drawing nigh for another appeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have wrote," replied the old woman, giving her pocket a boastful smack,
+      which she thus explained, "And it was the whole ten shillings this time,
+      and you never got more for me than five."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who wrote the letter for you?" he asked, lowering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She, too, it seemed, had promised not to tell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you promise to tell nobody, Meggy, or just no to tell me," he pressed
+      her, of a sudden suspecting Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just no to tell you," she answered, and at that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Da-a-a," began the Dominie, and then saved his reputation by adding
+      "gont." The derivation of the word dagont has puzzled many, but here we
+      seem to have it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is interesting to know what Tommy wrote. The general opinion was that
+      his letter must have been a triumph of eloquent appeal, and indeed he had
+      first sketched out several masterpieces, all of some length and in
+      different styles, but on the whole not unlike the concoctions of Meggy's
+      former secretary; that is, he had dwelt on the duties of daughters, on the
+      hardness of the times, on the certainty that if Katherine helped this time
+      assistance would never be needed again. This sort of thing had always
+      satisfied the Dominie, but Tommy, despite his several attempts, had a
+      vague consciousness that there was something second-rate about them, and
+      he tapped on his brain till it responded. The letter he despatched to
+      Ireland, but had the wisdom not to read aloud even to Meggy, contained
+      nothing save her own words, "Dear Kaytherine, if you dinna send ten
+      shillings immediately, your puir auld mother will have neither house nor
+      hame. I'm crying to you for't, Kaytherine; hearken and you'll hear my cry
+      across the cauldriff sea." It was a call from the heart which transported
+      Katherine to Thrums in a second of time, she seemed to see her mother
+      again, grown frail since last they met&mdash;and so all was well for
+      Meggy. Tommy did not put all this to himself but he felt it, and after
+      that he <i>could not</i> have written the letter differently. Happy Tommy!
+      To be an artist is a great thing, but to be an artist and not know it is
+      the most glorious plight in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other fickle clients put their correspondence into the boy's hands, and
+      Cathro found it out but said nothing. Dignity kept him in check; he did
+      not even let the tawse speak for him. So well did he dissemble that Tommy
+      could not decide how much he knew, and dreaded his getting hold of some of
+      the letters, yet pined to watch his face while he read them. This could
+      not last forever. Mr. Cathro was like a haughty kettle which has choked
+      its spout that none may know it has come a-boil, and we all know what in
+      that event must happen sooner or later to the lid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three boys who had college in the tail of their eye had certain
+      privileges not for the herd. It was taken for granted that when knowledge
+      came their way they needed no overseer to make them stand their ground,
+      and accordingly for great part of the day they had a back bench to
+      themselves, with half a dozen hedges of boys and girls between them and
+      the Dominie. From his chair Mr. Cathro could not see them, but a
+      foot-board was nailed to it, and when he stood on this, as he had an
+      aggravating trick of doing, softly and swiftly, they were suddenly in
+      view. A large fire had been burning all day and the atmosphere was
+      soporific. Mr. Cathro was so sleepy himself that the sight of a nodding
+      head enraged him like a caricature, and he was on the foot-board
+      frequently for the reason that makes bearded men suck peppermints in
+      church. Against his better judgment he took several peeps at Tommy, whom
+      he had lately suspected of writing his letters in school or at least of
+      gloating over them on that back bench. To-day he was sure of it. However
+      absorbing Euclid may be, even the forty-seventh of the first book does not
+      make you chuckle and wag your head; you can bring a substantive in Virgil
+      back to the verb that has lost it without looking as if you would like to
+      exhibit them together in the square. But Tommy was thus elated until he
+      gave way to grief of the most affecting kind. Now he looked gloomily
+      before him as if all was over, now he buried his face in his hands, next
+      his eyes were closed as if in prayer. All this the Dominie stood from him,
+      but when at last he began to blubber&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the blackboard was an arithmetic class, slates in hand, each member
+      adding up aloud in turn a row of figures. By and by it was known that
+      Cathro had ceased to listen. "Go on," his voice rather than himself said,
+      and he accepted Mary Dundas's trembling assertion that four and seven make
+      ten. Such was the faith in Cathro that even boys who could add promptly
+      turned their eleven into ten, and he did not catch them at it. So
+      obviously was his mind as well as his gaze on, something beyond, that
+      Sandy Riach, a wit who had been waiting his chance for years, snapped at
+      it now, and roared "Ten and eleven, nineteen" ("Go on," said Cathro), "and
+      four, twenty," gasped Sandy, "and eight, sixteen," he added, gaining
+      courage. "Very good," nmrmured the Dominie, whereupon Sandy clenched his
+      reputation forever by saying, in one glorious mouthful, "and six, eleven,
+      and two, five, and one, nocht."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no laughing at it then (though Sandy held a levee in the
+      evening), they were all so stricken with amazement. By one movement they
+      swung round to see what had fascinated Cathro, and the other classes doing
+      likewise, Tommy became suddenly the centre of observation. Big tears were
+      slinking down his face, and falling on some sheets of paper, which emotion
+      prevented his concealing. Anon the unusual stillness in the school made
+      him look up, but he was dazed, like one uncertain of his whereabouts, and
+      he blinked rapidly to clear his eyes, as a bird shakes water from its
+      wings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cathro first uttered what was afterward described as a kind of
+      throttled skirl, and then he roared "Come here!" whereupon Tommy stepped
+      forward heavily, and tried, as commanded, to come to his senses, but it
+      was not easy to make so long a journey in a moment, and several times, as
+      he seemed about to conquer his fears, a wave of feeling set them flowing
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Take your time," said Mr. Cathro, grimly, "I can wait," and this had such
+      a helpful effect that Tommy was able presently to speak up for his
+      misdeeds. They consisted of some letters written at home but brought to
+      the school for private reading, and the Dominie got a nasty jar when he
+      saw that they were all signed "Betsy Grieve." Miss Betsy Grieve, servant
+      to Mr. Duthie, was about to marry, and these letters were acknowledgments
+      of wedding presents. Now, Mr. Cathro had written similar letters for Betsy
+      only a few days before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did she ask you to write these for her?" he demanded, fuming, and Tommy
+      replied demurely that she had. He could not help adding, though he felt
+      the unwisdom of it, "She got some other body to do them first, but his
+      letters didna satisfy her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh!" said Mr. Cathro, and it was such a vicious oh that Tommy squeaked
+      tremblingly, "I dinna know who he was."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Keeping his mouth shut by gripping his underlip with his teeth, the
+      Dominie read the letters, and Tommy gazed eagerly at him, all fear
+      forgotten, soul conquering body. The others stood or sat waiting,
+      perplexed as to the cause, confident of the issue. The letters were much
+      finer productions than Cathro's, he had to admit it to himself as he read.
+      Yet the rivals had started fair, for Betsy was a recent immigrant from
+      Dunkeld way, and the letters were to people known neither to Tommy nor to
+      the Dominie. Also, she had given the same details for the guidance of
+      each. A lady had sent a teapot, which affected to be new, but was not;
+      Betsy recognized it by a scratch on the lid, and wanted to scratch back,
+      but politely. So Tommy wrote, "When you come to see me we shall have a cup
+      of tea out of your beautiful present, and it will be like a meeting of
+      three old friends." That was perhaps too polite, Betsy feared, but Tommy
+      said authoritatively, "No, the politer the nippier."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a set of six cups and saucers from Peter something, who had
+      loved Betsy in vain. She had shown the Dominie and Tommy the ear-rings
+      given her long ago by Peter (they were bought with 'Sosh checks) and the
+      poem he had written about them, and she was most anxious to gratify him in
+      her reply. All Cathro could do, however, was to wish Peter well in some
+      ornate sentences, while Tommy's was a letter that only a tender woman's
+      heart could have indited, with such beautiful touches about the days which
+      are no more alas forever, that Betsy listened to it with heaving breast
+      and felt so sorry for her old swain that, forgetting she had never loved
+      him, she all but gave Andrew the go-by and returned to Peter. As for
+      Peter, who had been getting over his trouble, he saw now for the first
+      time what he had lost, and he carried Betsy's dear letter in his oxter
+      pocket and was inconsolable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the masterpiece went to Mrs. Dinnie, baker, in return for a flagon
+      bun. Long ago her daughter, Janet, and Betsy had agreed to marry on the
+      same day, and many a quip had Mrs. Dinnie cast at their romantic compact.
+      But Janet died, and so it was a sad letter that Tommy had to write to her
+      mother. "I'm doubting you're no auld enough for this ane," soft-hearted
+      Betsy said, but she did not know her man. "Tell me some one thing the
+      mother used often to say when she was taking her fun off the pair of you,"
+      he said, and "Where is she buried?" was a suggestive question, with the
+      happy tag, "Is there a tree hanging over the grave?" Thus assisted, he
+      composed a letter that had a tear in every sentence. Betsy rubbed her eyes
+      red over it, and not all its sentiments were allowed to die, for Mrs.
+      Dinnie, touched to the heart, printed the best of them in black licorice
+      on short bread for funeral feasts, at which they gave rise to solemn
+      reflections as they went down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, this letter affected none so much as the writer of it. His
+      first rough sketch became so damp as he wrote that he had to abandon his
+      pen and take to pencil; while he was revising he had often to desist to
+      dry his eyes on the coverlet of Aaron's bed, which made Elspeth weep also,
+      though she had no notion what he was at. But when the work was finished he
+      took her into the secret and read his letter to her, and he almost choked
+      as he did so. Yet he smiled rapturously through his woe, and she knew no
+      better than to be proud of him, and he woke next morning with a cold,
+      brought on you can see how, but his triumph was worth its price.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having read the letter in an uncanny silence, Mr. Cathro unbottled Tommy
+      for the details, and out they came with a rush, blowing away the cork
+      discretion. Yet was the Dominie slow to strike; he seemed to find more
+      satisfaction in surveying his young friend with a wondering gaze that had
+      a dash of admiration in it, which Tommy was the first to note.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't mind admitting before the whole school," said Mr. Cathro, slowly,
+      "that if these letters had been addressed to me they would have taken me
+      in."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy tried to look modest, but his chest would have its way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You little sacket," cried the Dominie, "how did you manage it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think I thought I was Betsy at the time," Tommy answered, with proper
+      awe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She told me nothing about the weeping-willow at the grave," said the
+      Dominie, perhaps in self-defence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You hadna speired if there was one," retorted Tommy, jealously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What made you think of it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I saw it might come in neat." (He had said in the letter that the
+      weeping-willow reminded him of the days when Janet's bonny hair hung down
+      kissing her waist just as the willow kissed the grave.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Willows don't hang so low as you seem to think," said the Dominie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, they do," replied Tommy, "I walked three miles to see one to make
+      sure. I was near putting in another beautiful bit about weeping-willows."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, why didn't you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy looked up with an impudent snigger. "You could never guess," he
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Answer me at once," thundered his preceptor. "Was it because&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," interrupted Tommy, so conscious of Mr. Cathro's inferiority that to
+      let him go on seemed waste of time. "It was because, though it is a
+      beautiful thing in itself, I felt a servant lassie wouldna have thought
+      o't. I was sweer," he admitted, with a sigh; then firmly, "but I cut it
+      out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Cathro admired, reluctantly. The hack does feel the difference
+      between himself and the artist. Cathro might possibly have had the idea,
+      he could not have cut it out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>But</i> the hack is sometimes, or usually, or nearly always the
+      artist's master, and can make him suffer for his dem'd superiority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What made you snivel when you read the pathetic bits?" asked Cathro, with
+      itching fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was so sorry for Peter and Mrs. Dinnie," Tommy answered, a little
+      puzzled himself now. "I saw them so clear."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And yet until Betsy came to you, you had never heard tell of them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And on reflection you don't care a doit about them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "N-no."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you care as little for Betsy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No now, but at the time I a kind of thought I was to be married to
+      Andrew."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And even while you blubbered you were saying to yourself, 'What a clever
+      billie I am!'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cathro had certainly intended to end the scene with the strap, but as
+      he stretched out his hand for it he had another idea. "Do you know why
+      Nether Drumgley's sheep are branded with the letters N.D.?" he asked his
+      pupils, and a dozen replied, "So as all may ken wha they belong to."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Precisely," said Mr. Cathro, "and similarly they used to brand a letter
+      on a felon, so that all might know whom <i>he</i> belonged to." He crossed
+      to the fireplace, and, picking up a charred stick, wrote with it on the
+      forehead of startled Tommy the letters "S.T."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now," said the Dominie complacently, "we know to whom Tommy belongs."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All were so taken aback that for some seconds nothing could be heard save
+      Tommy indignantly wiping his brow; then "Wha is he?" cried one, the
+      mouthpiece of half a hundred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is one of the two proprietors we have just been speaking of," replied
+      Cathro, dryly, and turning again to Tommy, he said, "Wipe away,
+      Sentimental Tommy, try hot water, try cold water, try a knife, but you
+      will never get those letters off you; you are branded for ever and ever."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0036" id="link2HCH0036"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVI &mdash; OF FOUR MINISTERS WHO AFTERWARDS BOASTED THAT THEY
+      HAD KNOWN TOMMY
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      SANDYS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Bursary examination time had come, and to the siege of Aberdeen marched a
+      hungry half-dozen&mdash;three of them from Thrums, two from the
+      Glenuharity school. The sixth was Tod Lindertis, a ploughman from the Dubb
+      of Prosen, his place of study the bothy after lousing time (Do you hear
+      the klink of quoits?) or a one-roomed house near it, his tutor a dogged
+      little woman, who knew not the accusative from the dative, but never tired
+      of holding the book while Tod recited. Him someone greets with the
+      good-natured jeer, "It's your fourth try, is it no, Tod?" and he answers
+      cheerily, "It is, my lathie, and I'll keep kick, kick, kicking away to the
+      <i>n</i>th time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Which means till the door flies open," says the dogged little woman, who
+      is the gallant Tod's no less gallant wife, and already the mother of two.
+      I hope Tod will succeed this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The competitors, who were to travel part of the way on their shanks, met
+      soon after daybreak in Cathro's yard, where a little crowd awaited them,
+      parents trying to look humble, Mr. Duthie and Ramsay Cameron thinking of
+      the morning when they set off on the same errand&mdash;but the results
+      were different, and Mr. Duthie is now a minister, and Ramsay is in the
+      middle of another wob. Both dominies were present, hating each other, for
+      that day only, up to the mouth, where their icy politeness was a thing to
+      shudder at, and each was drilling his detachment to the last moment, but
+      by different methods; for while Mr. Cathro entreated Joe Meldrum for God's
+      sake to mind that about the genitive, and Willie Simpson to keep his mouth
+      shut and drink even water sparingly, Mr. Ogilvy cracked jokes with Gav
+      Dishart and explained them to Lauchlan McLauchlan. "Think of anything now
+      but what is before you," was Mr. Ogilvy's advice. "Think of nothing else,"
+      roared Mr. Cathro. But though Mr. Ogilvy seemed outwardly calm it was base
+      pretence; his dickie gradually wriggled through the opening of his
+      waistcoat, as if bearing a protest from his inward parts, and he let it
+      hang crumpled and conspicuous, while Grizel, on the outskirts of the
+      crowd, yearned to put it right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grizel was not there, she told several people, including herself, to say
+      good-by to Tommy, and oh, how she scorned Elspeth, for looking as if life
+      would not be endurable without him. Knowing what Elspeth was, Tommy had
+      decided that she should not accompany him to the yard (of course she was
+      to follow him to Aberdeen if he distinguished himself&mdash;Mr. McLean had
+      promised to bring her), but she told him of her dream that he headed the
+      bursary list, and as this dream coincided with some dreams of his own,
+      though not with all, it seemed to give her such fortitude that he let her
+      come. An expressionless face was Tommy's, so that not even the experienced
+      dominie of Glenquharity, covertly scanning his rival's lot, could tell
+      whether he was gloomy or uplifted; he did not seem to be in need of a long
+      sleep like Willie Simpson, nor were his eyes glazed like Gav Dishart's,
+      who carried all the problems of Euclid before him on an invisible
+      blackboard and dared not even wink lest he displaced them, nor did he,
+      like Tod Lindertis, answer questions about his money pocket or where he
+      had stowed his bread and cheese with
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "After envy, spare, obey, The dative put, remember, pray."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Ogilvy noticed that Cathro tapped his forehead doubtfully every time
+      his eyes fell on Tommy, but otherwise shunned him, and he asked "What are
+      his chances?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's the laddie," replied Mr. Cathro, "who, when you took her ladyship
+      to see Corp Shiach years ago impersona&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know," Mr. Ogilvy interrupted him hastily, "but how will he stand,
+      think you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cathro coughed. "We'll see," he said guardedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless Tommy was not to get round the corner without betraying a
+      little of himself, for Elspeth having borne up magnificently when he shook
+      hands, screamed at the tragedy of his back and fell into the arms of Tod's
+      wife, whereupon Tommy first tried to brazen it out and then kissed her in
+      the presence of a score of witnesses, including Grizel, who stamped her
+      foot, though what right had she to be so angry? "I'm sure," Elspeth
+      sobbed, "that the professor would let me sit beside you; I would just
+      hunker on the floor and hold your foot and no say a word." Tommy gave
+      Tod's wife an imploring look, and she managed to comfort Elspeth with
+      predictions of his coming triumph and the reunion to follow. Grateful
+      Elspeth in return asked Tommy to help Tod when the professors were not
+      looking, and he promised, after which she had no more fear for Tod.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, ye drums that we all carry in our breasts, beat your best over
+      the bravest sight ever seen in a small Scotch town of an autumn morning,
+      the departure of its fighting lads for the lists at Aberdeen. Let the tune
+      be the sweet familiar one you found somewhere in the Bible long ago, "The
+      mothers we leave behind us"&mdash;leave behind us on their knees. May it
+      dirl through your bones, brave boys, to the end, as you hope not to be
+      damned. And now, quick march.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A week has elapsed, and now&mdash;there is no call for music now, for
+      these are but the vanquished crawling back, Joe Meldrum and&mdash;and
+      another. No, it is not Tod, he stays on in Aberdeen, for he is a
+      twelve-pound tenner. The two were within a mile of Thrums at three
+      o'clock, but after that they lagged, waiting for the gloaming, when they
+      stole to their homes, ducking as they passed windows without the blinds
+      down. Elspeth ran to Tommy when he appeared in the doorway, and then she
+      got quickly between him and Aaron. The warper was sitting by the fire at
+      his evening meal, and he gave the wanderer a long steady look, then
+      without a word returned to his porridge and porter. It was a less hearty
+      welcome home even than Joe's; his mother was among those who had wept to
+      lose her son, but when he came back to her she gave him a whack on the
+      head with the thieval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aaron asked not a question about those days in Aberdeen, but he heard a
+      little about them from Elspeth. Tommy had not excused himself to Elspeth,
+      he had let her do as she liked with his head (this was a great treat to
+      her), and while it lay pressed against hers, she made remarks about
+      Aberdeen professors which it would have done them good to hear. These she
+      repeated to Aaron, who was about to answer roughly, and then suddenly put
+      her on his knee instead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They didna ask the right questions," she told him, and when the warper
+      asked if Tommy had said so, she declared that he had refused to say a word
+      against them, which seemed to her to cover him with glory. "But he doubted
+      they would make that mistake afore he started, she said brightly, so you
+      see he saw through them afore ever he set eyes on them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Corp would have replied admiringly to this "Oh, the little deevil!" (when
+      he heard of Tommy's failure he wanted to fight Gav Dishart and Willie
+      Simpson), but Aaron was another kind of confidant, and even when she
+      explained on Tommy's authority that there are two kinds of cleverness, the
+      kind you learn from books and a kind that is inside yourself, which latter
+      was Tommy's kind, he only replied,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He can take it wi' him to the herding, then, and see if it'll keep the
+      cattle frae stravaiging."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's no that kind of cleverness either," said Elspeth, quaking, and
+      quaked also Tommy, who had gone to the garret, to listen through the
+      floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No? I would like to ken what use his cleverness can be put to, then,"
+      said Aaron, and Elspeth answered nothing, and Tommy only sighed, for that
+      indeed was the problem. But though to these three and to Cathro, and to
+      Mr. and Mrs. McLean and to others more mildly interested, it seemed a
+      problem beyond solution, there was one in Thrums who rocked her arms at
+      their denseness, a girl growing so long in the legs that twice within the
+      last year she had found it necessary to let down her parramatty frock. As
+      soon as she heard that Tommy had come home vanquished, she put on the
+      quaint blue bonnet with the white strings, in which she fondly believed
+      she looked ever so old (her period of mourning was at an end, but she
+      still wore her black dress) and forgetting all except that he was unhappy,
+      she ran to a certain little house to comfort him. But she did not go in,
+      for through the window she saw Elspeth petting him, and that somehow
+      annoyed her. In the evening, however, she called on Mr. Cathro.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps you want to know why she, who at last saw Sentimental Tommy in his
+      true light and spurned him accordingly, now exerted herself in his behalf
+      instead of going on with the papering of the surgery. Well, that was the
+      reason. She had put the question to herself before&mdash;not, indeed,
+      before going to Monypenny but before calling on the Dominie&mdash;and
+      decided that she wanted to send Tommy to college, because she disliked him
+      so much that she could not endure the prospect of his remaining in Thrums.
+      Now, are you satisfied?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She could scarcely take time to say good-evening to Mr. Cathro before
+      telling him the object of her visit. "The letters Tommy has been writing
+      for people are very clever, are they not?" she began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You've heard of them, have you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Everybody has heard of them," she said injudiciously, and he groaned and
+      asked if she had come to tell him this. But he admitted their cleverness,
+      whereupon she asked, "Well, if he is clever at writing letters, would he
+      not be clever at writing an essay?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wager my head against a snuff mull that he would be, but what are you
+      driving at?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was wondering whether he could not win the prize I heard Dr. McQueen
+      speaking about, the&mdash;is it not called the Hugh Blackadder?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My head against a buckie that he could! Sit down, Grizel, I see what you
+      mean now. Ay, but the pity is he's not eligible for the Hugh Blackadder.
+      Oh, that he was, oh, that he was! It would make Ogilvy of Glenquharity
+      sing small at last! His loons have carried the Blackadder for the last
+      seven years without a break. The Hugh Blackadder Mortification, the
+      bequest is called, and, 'deed, it has been a sore mortification to me!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Calming down, he told her the story of the bequest. Hugh Blackadder was a
+      Thrums man who made a fortune in America, and bequeathed the interest of
+      three hundred pounds of it to be competed for yearly by the youth of his
+      native place. He had grown fond of Thrums and all its ways over there, and
+      left directions that the prize should be given for the best essay in the
+      Scots tongue, the ministers of the town and glens to be the judges, the
+      competitors to be boys who were going to college, but had not without it
+      the wherewithal to support themselves. The ministers took this to mean
+      that those who carried small bursaries were eligible, and indeed it had
+      usually gone to a bursar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sentimental Tommy would not have been able to compete if he had got a
+      bursary," Mr. Cathro explained, "because however small it was Mr. McLean
+      meant to double it; and he can't compete without it, for McLean refuses to
+      help him now (he was here an hour since, saying the laddie was obviously
+      hopeless), so I never thought of entering Tommy for the Blackadder. No, it
+      will go to Ogilvy's Lauchlan McLauchlan, who is a twelve-pounder, and, as
+      there can be no competitors, he'll get it without the trouble of coming
+      back to write the essay."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But suppose Mr. McLean were willing to do what he promised if Tommy won
+      the Blackadder?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's useless to appeal to McLean. He's hard set against the laddie now
+      and washes his hands of him, saying that Aaron Latta is right after all.
+      He may soften, and get Tommy into a trade to save him from the herding,
+      but send him to college he won't, and indeed he's right, the laddie's a
+      fool."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not at writing let&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what is the effect of his letter-writing, but to make me ridiculous?
+      Me! I wonder you can expect me to move a finger for him, he has been my
+      torment ever since his inscrutable face appeared at my door."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never mind him," said Grizel, cunningly. "But think what a triumph it
+      would be to you if your boy beat Mr. Ogilvy's."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Dominie rose in his excitement and slammed the table, "My certie,
+      lassie, but it would!" he cried, "Ogilvy looks on the Blackadder as his
+      perquisite, and he's surer of it than ever this year. And there's no doubt
+      but Tommy would carry it. My head to a buckie preen he would carry it, and
+      then, oh, for a sight of Ogilvy's face, oh, for&mdash;" He broke off
+      abruptly. "But what's the good of thinking of it?" he said, dolefully,
+      "Mr. McLean's a firm man when he makes up his mind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, though McLean, who had a Scotchman's faith in the verdict of
+      professors, and had been bitterly disappointed by Tommy's failure, refused
+      to be converted by the Dominie's entreaties, he yielded to them when they
+      were voiced by Ailie (brought into the plot <i>vice</i> Grizel retired),
+      and Elspeth got round Aaron, and so it came about that with his usual
+      luck, Tommy was given another chance, present at the competition, which
+      took place in the Thrums school, the Rev. Mr. Duthie, the Rev. Mr.
+      Dishart, the Rev. Mr. Gloag of Noran Side, the Rev. Mr. Lorrimer of
+      Glenquharity (these on hair-bottomed chairs), and Mr. Cathro and Mr.
+      Ogilvy (cane); present also to a less extent (that is to say, their faces
+      at the windows), Corp and others, who applauded the local champion when he
+      entered and derided McLauchlan. The subject of the essay was changed
+      yearly, this time "A Day in Church" was announced, and immediately
+      Lauchlan McLauchlan, who had not missed a service since his scarlet fever
+      year (and too few then), smote his red head in agony, while Tommy, who had
+      missed as many as possible, looked calmly confident. For two hours the
+      competitors were put into a small room communicating with the larger one,
+      and Tommy began at once with a confident smirk that presently gave way to
+      a most holy expression; while Lauchlan gaped at him and at last got
+      started also, but had to pause occasionally to rub his face on his sleeve,
+      for like Corp he was one of the kind who cannot think without perspiring.
+      In the large room the ministers gossiped about eternal punishment, and of
+      the two dominies one sat at his ease, like a passenger who knows that the
+      coach will reach the goal without any exertion on his part, while the
+      other paced the floor, with many a despondent glance through the open door
+      whence the scraping proceeded; and the one was pleasantly cool; and the
+      other in a plot of heat; and the one made genial remarks about every-day
+      matters, and the answers of the other stood on their heads. It was a
+      familiar comedy to Mr. Ogilvy, hardly a variation on what had happened
+      five times in six for many years: the same scene, the same scraping in the
+      little room, the same background of ministers (black-aviced Mr. Lorrimer
+      had begun to bark again), the same dominies; everything was as it had so
+      often been, except that he and Cathro had changed places; it was Cathro
+      who sat smiling now and Mr. Ogilvy who dolefully paced the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To be able to write! Throughout Mr. Ogilvy's life, save when he was about
+      one and twenty, this had seemed the great thing, and he ever approached
+      the thought reverently, as if it were a maid of more than mortal purity.
+      And it is, and because he knew this she let him see her face, which shall
+      ever be hidden from those who look not for the soul, and to help him
+      nearer to her came assistance in strange guise, the loss of loved ones,
+      dolour unutterable; but still she was beyond his reach. Night by night,
+      when the only light in the glen was the school-house lamp, of use at least
+      as a landmark to solitary travellers&mdash;who miss it nowadays, for it
+      burns no more&mdash;she hovered over him, nor did she deride his hopeless
+      efforts, but rather, as she saw him go from black to gray and from gray to
+      white in her service, were her luminous eyes sorrowful because she was not
+      for him, and she bent impulsively toward him, so that once or twice in a
+      long life he touched her fingers, and a heavenly spark was lit, for he had
+      risen higher than himself, and that is literature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew that oblivion was at hand, ready to sweep away his pages almost as
+      soon as they were filled (Do we not all hear her besom when we pause to
+      dip?), but he had done his best and he had a sense of humor, and perhaps
+      some day would come a pupil of whom he could make what he had failed to
+      make of himself. That prodigy never did come, though it was not for want
+      of nursing, and there came at least, in succession most maddening to Mr.
+      Cathro, a row of youths who could be trained to carry the Hugh Blackadder.
+      Mr. Ogilvy's many triumphs in this competition had not dulled his appetite
+      for more, and depressed he was at the prospect of a reverse. That it was
+      coming now he could not doubt. McLauchlan, who was to be Rev., had a flow
+      of words (which would prevent his perspiring much in the pulpit), but he
+      could no more describe a familiar scene with the pen than a milkmaid can
+      draw a cow. The Thrums representatives were sometimes as little gifted, it
+      is true, and never were they so well exercised, but this Tommy had the
+      knack of it, as Mr. Ogilvy could not doubt, for the story of his
+      letter-writing had been through the glens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Keep up your spirits," Mr. Lorrimer had said to Mm as they walked
+      together to the fray, "Cathro's loon may compose the better of the two,
+      but, as I understand, the first years of his life were spent in London,
+      and so he may bogle at the Scotch."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Dominie replied, "Don't buoy me up on a soap bubble. If there's as
+      much in him as I fear, that should be a help to him instead of a
+      hindrance, for it will have set him a-thinking about the words he uses."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the satisfaction on Tommy's face when the subject of the essay was
+      given out, with the business-like way in which he set to work, had added
+      to the Dominie's misgivings; if anything was required to dishearten him
+      utterly it was provided by Cathro's confident smile. The two Thrums
+      ministers were naturally desirous that Tommy should win, but the younger
+      of them was very fond of Mr. Ogilvy, and noticing his unhappy peeps
+      through the door dividing the rooms, proposed that it should be closed. He
+      shut it himself, and as he did so he observed that Tommy was biting his
+      pen and frowning, while McLauchlan, having ceased to think, was getting on
+      nicely. But it did not strike Mr. Dishart that this was worth commenting
+      on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you not satisfied with the honors you have already got, you greedy
+      man?" he said, laying his hand affectionately on Mr. Ogilvy, who only
+      sighed for reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is well that the prize should go to different localities, for in that
+      way its sphere of usefulness is extended," remarked pompous Mr. Gloag, who
+      could be impartial, as there was no candidate from Noran Side. He was a
+      minister much in request for church soirees, where he amused the
+      congregations so greatly with personal anecdote about himself that they
+      never thought much of him afterwards. There is one such minister in every
+      presbytery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And to have carried the Hugh Blackadder seven times running is surely
+      enough for any one locality, even though it be Glenquharity," said Mr.
+      Lorrimer, preparing for defeat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's consolation for you, sir," said Mr. Cathro, sarcastically, to his
+      rival, who tried to take snuff in sheer bravado, but let it slip through
+      his fingers, and after that, until the two hours were up, the talk was
+      chiefly of how Tommy would get on at Aberdeen. But it was confined to the
+      four ministers and one dominie. Mr. Ogilvy still hovered about the door of
+      communication, and his face fell more and more, making Mr. Dishart quite
+      unhappy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm an old fool," the Dominie admitted, "but I can't help being cast
+      down. The fact is that&mdash;I have only heard the scrape of one pen for
+      nearly an hour."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Poor Lauchlan!" exclaimed Mr. Cathro, rubbing his hands gleefully, and
+      indeed it was such a shameless exhibition that the Auld Licht minister
+      said reproachfully, "You forget yourself, Mr. Cathro, let us not be
+      unseemly exalted in the hour of our triumph."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Mr. Cathro sat upon his hands as the best way of keeping them apart,
+      but the moment Mr. Dishart's back presented itself, he winked at Mr.
+      Ogilvy. He winked a good deal more presently. For after all&mdash;how to
+      tell it! Tommy was ignominiously beaten, making such a beggarly show that
+      the judges thought it unnecessary to take the essays home with them for
+      leisurely consideration before pronouncing Mr. Lauchlan McLauchlan winner.
+      There was quite a commotion in the school-room. At the end of the allotted
+      time the two competitors had been told to hand in their essays, and how
+      Mr. McLauchlan was sniggering is not worth recording, so dumfounded,
+      confused, and raging was Tommy. He clung to his papers, crying fiercely
+      that the two hours could not be up yet, and Lauchlan having tried to keep
+      the laugh in too long it exploded in his mouth, whereupon, said he, with a
+      guffaw, "He hasna written a word for near an hour!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What! It was you I heard!" cried Mr. Ogilvy gleaming, while the unhappy
+      Cathro tore the essay from Tommy's hands. Essay! It was no more an essay
+      than a twig is a tree, for the gowk had stuck in the middle of his second
+      page. Yes, stuck is the right expression, as his chagrined teacher had to
+      admit when the boy was cross-examined. He had not been "up to some of his
+      tricks," he had stuck, and his explanations, as you will admit, merely
+      emphasized his incapacity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had brought himself to public scorn for lack of a word. What word? they
+      asked testily, but even now he could not tell. He had wanted a Scotch word
+      that would signify how many people were in church, and it was on the tip
+      of his tongue but would come no farther. Puckle was nearly the word, but
+      it did not mean so many people as he meant. The hour had gone by just like
+      winking; he had forgotten all about time while searching his mind for the
+      word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Mr. Ogilvy heard this he seemed to be much impressed, repeatedly he
+      nodded his head as some beat time to music, and he muttered to himself,
+      "The right word&mdash;yes, that's everything," and "'the time went by like
+      winking'&mdash;exactly, precisely," and he would have liked to examine
+      Tommy's bumps, but did not, nor said a word aloud, for was he not there in
+      McLauchlan's interest?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other five were furious; even Mr. Lorrimer, though his man had won,
+      could not smile in face of such imbecility. "You little tattie doolie,"
+      Cathro roared, "were there not a dozen words to wile from if you had an
+      ill-will to puckle? What ailed you at manzy, or&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought of manzy," replied Tommy, woefully, for he was ashamed of
+      himself, "but&mdash;but a manse's a swarm. It would mean that the folk in
+      the kirk were buzzing thegither like bees, instead of sitting still."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Even if it does mean that," said Mr. Duthie, with impatience, "what was
+      the need of being so particular? Surely the art of essay-writing consists
+      in using the first word that comes and hurrying on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's how I did," said the proud McLauchlan, who is now leader of a
+      party in the church, and a figure in Edinburgh during the month of May.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I see," interposed Mr. Gloag, "that McLauchlan speaks of there being a
+      mask of people in the church. Mask is a fine Scotch word."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Admirable," assented Mr. Dishart. "I thought of mask," whimpered Tommy,
+      "but that would mean the kirk was crammed, and I just meant it to be
+      middling full."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Flow would have done," suggested Mr. Lorrimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Flow's but a handful," said Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Curran, then, you jackanapes!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Curran's no enough."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Lorrimer flung up his hands in despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wanted something between curran and mask," said Tommy, dogged, yet
+      almost at the crying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Ogilvy, who had been hiding his admiration with difficulty, spread a
+      net for him. "You said you wanted a word that meant middling full. Well,
+      why did you not say middling full&mdash;or fell mask?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, why not?" demanded the ministers, unconsciously caught in the net.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wanted one word," replied Tommy, unconsciously avoiding it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You jewel!" muttered Mr. Ogilvy under his breath, but Mr. Cathro would
+      have banged the boy's head had not the ministers interfered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is so easy, too, to find the right word," said Mr. Gloag.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's no; it's as difficult as to hit a squirrel," cried Tommy, and again
+      Mr. Ogilvy nodded approval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the ministers were only pained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The lad is merely a numskull," said Mr. Dishart, kindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And no teacher could have turned him into anything else," said Mr.
+      Duthie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And so, Cathro, you need not feel sore over your defeat," added Mr.
+      Gloag; but nevertheless Cathro took Tommy by the neck and ran him out of
+      the parish school of Thrums. When he returned to the others he found the
+      ministers congratulating McLauchlan, whose nose was in the air, and
+      complimenting Mr. Ogilvy, who listened to their formal phrases solemnly
+      and accepted their hand-shakes with a dry chuckle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, grin away, sir," the mortified dominie of Thrums said to him sourly,
+      "the joke is on your side."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are right, sir," replied Mr. Ogilvy, mysteriously, "the joke is on my
+      side, and the best of it is that not one of you knows what the joke is!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then an odd thing happened. As they were preparing to leave the
+      school, the door opened a little and there appeared in the aperture the
+      face of Tommy, tear-stained but excited. "I ken the word now," he cried,
+      "it came to me a' at once; it is hantle!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door closed with a victorious bang, just in time to prevent Cathro&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, the sumph!" exclaimed Mr. Lauchlan McLauchlan, "as if it mattered
+      what the word is now!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And said Mr. Dishart, "Cathro, you had better tell Aaron Latta that the
+      sooner he sends this nincompoop to the herding the better."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mr. Ogilvy giving his Lauchlan a push that nearly sent him sprawling,
+      said in an ecstasy to himself, "He <i>had</i> to think of it till he got
+      it&mdash;and he got it. The laddie is a genius!" They were about to tear
+      up Tommy's essay, but he snatched it from them and put it in his oxter
+      pocket. "I am a collector of curiosities," he explained, "and this paper
+      may be worth money yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said Cathro, savagely, "I have one satisfaction, I ran him out of
+      my school."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who knows," replied Mr. Ogilvy, "but what you may be proud to dust a
+      chair for him when he comes back?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0037" id="link2HCH0037"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVII &mdash; THE END OF A BOYHOOD
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Convinced of his own worthlessness, Tommy was sufficiently humble now, but
+      Aaron Latta, nevertheless, marched to the square on the following market
+      day and came back with the boy's sentence, Elspeth being happily absent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I say nothing about the disgrace you have brought on this house," the
+      warper began without emotion, "for it has been a shamed house since afore
+      you were born, and it's a small offence to skail on a clarty floor. But
+      now I've done more for you than I promised Jean Myles to do, and you had
+      your pick atween college and the herding, and the herding you've chosen
+      twice. I call you no names, you ken best what you're fitted for, but I've
+      seen the farmer of the Dubb of Prosen the day, and he was short-handed
+      through the loss of Tod Lindertis, so you're fee'd to him. Dinna think you
+      get Tod's place, it'll be years afore you rise to that, but it's right and
+      proper that as he steps up, you should step down."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Dubb of Prosen!" cried Tommy in dismay. "It's fifteen miles frae
+      here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's a' that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But&mdash;but&mdash;but Elspeth and me never thought of my being so far
+      away that she couldna see me. We thought of a farmer near Thrums."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The farther you're frae her the better," said Aaron, uneasily, yet
+      honestly believing what he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It'll kill her," Tommy cried fiercely. With only his own suffering to
+      consider he would probably have nursed it into a play through which he
+      stalked as the noble child of misfortune, but in his anxiety for Elspeth
+      he could still forget himself. "Fine you ken she canna do without me," he
+      screamed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She maun be weaned," replied the warper, with a show of temper; he was
+      convinced that the sooner Elspeth learned to do without Tommy the better
+      it would be for herself in the end, but in his way of regarding the boy
+      there was also a touch of jealousy, pathetic rather than forbidding. To
+      him he left the task of breaking the news to Elspeth; and Tommy, terrified
+      lest she should swoon under it, was almost offended when she remained
+      calm. But, alas, the reason was that she thought she was going with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will we have to walk all the way to the Dubb of Prosen?" she asked, quite
+      brightly, and at that Tommy twisted about in misery. "You are no&mdash;you
+      canna&mdash;" he began, and then dodged the telling. "We&mdash;we may get
+      a lift in a cart," he said weakly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I'll sit aside you in the fields, and make chains o' the gowans, will
+      I no? Speak, Tommy!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay&mdash;ay, will you," he groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And we'll have a wee, wee room to oursels, and&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He broke down, "Oh, Elspeth," he cried, "it was ill-done of me no to stick
+      to my books, and get a bursary, and it was waur o' me to bother about that
+      word. I'm a scoundrel, I am, I'm a black, I'm a&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she put her hand on his mouth, saying, "I'm fonder o' you than ever,
+      Tommy, and I'll like the Dubb o' Prosen fine, and what does it matter
+      where we are when we're thegither?" which was poor comfort for him, but
+      still he could not tell her the truth, and so in the end Aaron had to tell
+      her. It struck her down, and the doctor had to be called in during the
+      night to stop her hysterics. When at last she fell asleep Tommy's arm was
+      beneath her, and by and by it was in agony, but he set his teeth and kept
+      it there rather than risk waking her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Tommy was out of the way, Aaron did his clumsy best to soothe her,
+      sometimes half shamefacedly pressing her cheek to his, and she did not
+      repel him, but there was no response. "Dinna take on in that way, dawtie,"
+      he would say, "I'll be good to you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you're no Tommy," Elspeth answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm not, I'm but a stunted tree, blasted in my youth, but for a' that I
+      would like to have somebody to care for me, and there's none to do't,
+      Elspeth, if you winna. I'll gang walks wi' you, I'll take you to the
+      fishing, I'll come to the garret at night to hap you up, I'll&mdash;I'll
+      teach you the games I used to play mysel'. I'm no sure but what you might
+      make something o' me yet, bairn, if you tried hard."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you're no Tommy," Elspeth wailed again, and when he advised her to
+      put Tommy out of her mind for a little and speak of other things, she only
+      answered innocently, "What else is there to speak about?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean had sent Tommy a pound, and so was done with him, but Ailie
+      still thought him a dear, though no longer a wonder, and Elspeth took a
+      strange confession to her, how one night she was so angry with God that
+      she had gone to bed without saying her prayers. She had just meant to keep
+      Him in suspense for a little, and then say them, but she fell asleep. And
+      that was not the worst, for when she woke in the morning, and saw that she
+      was still living, she was glad she had not said them. But next night she
+      said them twice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this, too, is another flash into her dark character. Tommy, who never
+      missed saying his prayers and could say them with surprising quickness,
+      told her, "God is fonder of lonely lassies than of any other kind, and
+      every time you greet it makes Him greet, and when you're cheerful it makes
+      Him cheerful too." This was meant to dry her eyes, but it had not that
+      effect, for, said Elspeth, vindictively, "Well, then, I'll just make Him
+      as miserable as I can."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Tommy was merely concerned with his own affairs he did not think much
+      about God, but he knew that no other could console Elspeth, and his love
+      for her usually told him the right things to say, and while he said them,
+      he was quite carried away by his sentiments and even wept over them, but
+      within the hour he might be leering. They were beautiful, and were
+      repeated of course to Mrs. McLean, who told her husband of them, declaring
+      that this boy's love for his sister made her a better woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But nevertheless," said Ivie, "Mr. Cathro assures me&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is prejudiced," retorted Mrs. McLean warmly, prejudice being a failing
+      which all women marvel at. "Just listen to what the boy said to Elspeth
+      to-day. He said to her, 'When I am away, try for a whole day to be better
+      than you ever were before, and think of nothing else, and then when
+      prayer-time comes you will see that you have been happy without knowing
+      it.' Fancy his finding out that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wonder if he ever tried it himself?" said Mr. McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ivie, think shame of yourself!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, even Cathro admits that he has a kind of cleverness, but&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cleverness!" exclaimed Ailie, indignantly, "that is not cleverness, it is
+      holiness;" and leaving the cynic she sought Elspeth, and did her good by
+      pointing out that a girl who had such a brother should try to save him
+      pain. "He is very miserable, dear," she said, "because you are so unhappy.
+      If you looked brighter, think how that would help him, and it would show
+      that you are worthy of him." So Elspeth went home trying hard to look
+      brighter, but made a sad mess of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Think of getting letters frae me every time the post comes in!" said
+      Tommy, and then indeed her face shone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then Elspeth could write to him&mdash;yes, as often as ever she liked!
+      This pleased her even more. It was such an exquisite thought that she
+      could not wait, but wrote the first one before he started, and he answered
+      it across the table. And Mrs. McLean made a letter bag, with two strings
+      to it, and showed her how to carry it about with her in a safer place than
+      a pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a cheering thing occurred. Came Corp, with the astounding news that,
+      in the Glenquharity dominie's opinion, Tommy should have got the Hugh
+      Blackadder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He says he is glad he wasna judge, because he would have had to give you
+      the prize, and he laughs like to split at the ministers for giving it to
+      Lauchlan McLauchlan."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, great was the repute of Mr. Ogilvy, and Tommy gaped incredulous. "He
+      had no word of that at the time," he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No likely! He says if the ministers was so doited as to think his loon
+      did best, it wasna for him to conter them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Man, Corp, you ca'me me aff my feet! How do you ken this?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Corp had promised not to tell, and he thought he did not tell, but Tommy
+      was too clever for him. Grizel, it appeared, had heard Mr. Ogilvy saying
+      this strange thing to the doctor, and she burned to pass it on to Tommy,
+      but she could not carry it to him herself, because&mdash;Why was it? Oh,
+      yes, because she hated him. So she made a messenger of Corp, and warned
+      him against telling who had sent him with the news.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half enlightened, Tommy began to strut again. "You see there's something
+      in me for all they say," he told Elspeth. "Listen to this. At the bursary
+      examinations there was some English we had to turn into Latin, and it
+      said, 'No man ever attained supreme eminence who worked for mere lucre;
+      such efforts must ever be bounded by base mediocrity. None shall climb
+      high but he who climbs for love, for in truth where the heart is, there
+      alone shall the treasure be found.' Elspeth, it came ower me in a clink
+      how true that was, and I sat saying it to myself, though I saw Gav Dishart
+      and Willie Simpson and the rest beginning to put it into Latin at once, as
+      little ta'en up wi' the words as if they had been about auld Hannibal. I
+      aye kent, Elspeth, that I could never do much at the learning, but I didna
+      see the reason till I read that. Syne I kent that playing so real-like in
+      the Den, and telling about my fits when it wasna me that had them but
+      Corp, and mourning for Lewis Doig's father, and writing letters for folk
+      so grandly, and a' my other queer ploys that ended in Cathro's calling me
+      Sentimental Tommy, was what my heart was in, and I saw in a jiffy that if
+      thae things were work, I should soon rise to supreme eminence."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But they're no," said Elspeth, sadly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," he admitted, his face falling, "but, Elspeth, if I was to hear some
+      day of work I could put my heart into as if it were a game! I wouldna be
+      laug in finding the treasure syne. Oh, the blatter I would make!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I doubt there's no sic work," she answered, but he told her not to be so
+      sure. "I thought there wasna mysel'," he said, "till now, but sure as
+      death my heart was as ta'en up wi' hunting for the right word as if it had
+      been a game, and that was how the time slipped by so quick. Yet it was
+      paying work, for the way I did it made Mr. Ogilvy see I should have got
+      the prize, and a' body kens there's more cleverness in him than in a
+      cart-load o' ministers."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But, but there are no more Hugh Blackadders to try for, Tommy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's nothing, there maun be other work o' the same kind. Elspeth, cheer
+      up, I tell you, I'll find a wy!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you didna ken yoursel' that you should have got the Hugh Blackadder?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He would not let this depress him. "I ken now," he said. Nevertheless, why
+      he should have got it was a mystery which he longed to fathom. Mr. Ogilvy
+      had returned to Glenquharity, so that an explanation could not be drawn
+      from him even if he were willing to supply it, which was improbable; but
+      Tommy caught Grizel in the Banker's Close and compelled her to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I won't tell you a word of what Mr. Ogilvy said," she insisted, in her
+      obstinate way, and, oh, how she despised Corp for breaking his promise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Corp didna ken he telled me," said Tommy, less to clear Corp than to
+      exalt himself, "I wriggled it out o' him;" but even this did not bring
+      Grizel to a proper frame of mind, so he said, to annoy her,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "At any rate you're fond o' me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not," she replied, stamping; "I think you are horrid."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What else made you send Corp to me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I did that because I heard you were calling yourself a blockhead."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oho," said he, "so you have been speiring about me though you winna speak
+      to me!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grizel looked alarmed, and thinking to weaken his case, said, hastily, "I
+      very nearly kept it from you, I said often to myself 'I won't tell him.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So you have been thinking a lot about me!" was his prompt comment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If I have," she retorted, "I did not think nice things. And what is more,
+      I was angry with myself for telling Corp to tell you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Surely this was crushing, but apparently Tommy did not think so, for he
+      said, "You did it against your will! That means I hare a power over you
+      that you canna resist. Oho, oho!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had she become more friendly so should he, had she shed one tear he would
+      have melted immediately; but she only looked him up and down disdainfully,
+      and it hardened him. He said with a leer, "I ken what makes you hold your
+      hands so tight, it's to keep your arms frae wagging;" and then her cry,
+      "How do you know?" convicted her. He had not succeeded in his mission, but
+      on his way home he muttered, triumphantly, "I did her, I did her!" and
+      once he stopped to ask himself the question, "Was it because my heart was
+      in it?" It was their last meeting till they were man and woman.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      A blazing sun had come out on top of heavy showers, and the land reeked
+      and smelled as of the wash-tub. The smaller girls of Monypenny were
+      sitting in passages playing at fivey, just as Sappho for instance used to
+      play it; but they heard the Dubb of Prosen cart draw up at Aaron Latta's
+      door, and they followed it to see the last of Tommy Sandys. Corp was
+      already there, calling in at the door every time he heard a sob; "Dinna,
+      Elspeth, dinna, he'll find a wy," but Grizel had refused to come, though
+      Tommy knew that she had been asking when he started and which road the
+      cart would take. Well, he was not giving her a thought at any rate; his
+      box was in the cart now, and his face was streaked with tears that were
+      all for Elspeth. She should not have come to the door, but she came, and&mdash;it
+      was such a pitiable sight that Aaron Latta could not look on. He went
+      hurriedly to his workshop, but not to warp, and even the carter was
+      touched and he said to Tommy, "I tell you what, man, I have to go round by
+      Causeway End smiddy, and you and the crittur have time, if you like, to
+      take the short cut and meet me at the far corner o' Caddam wood."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Tommy and Elspeth, holding each other's hands, took the short cut and
+      they came to the far end of Caddam, and Elspeth thought they had better
+      say it here before the cart came; but Tommy said he would walk back with
+      her through the wood as far as the Toom Well, and they could say it there.
+      They tried to say it at the Well, but&mdash;Elspeth was still with him
+      when he returned to the far corner of Caddam, where the cart was now
+      awaiting him. The carter was sitting on the shaft, and he told them he was
+      in no hurry, and what is more, he had the delicacy to turn his back on
+      them and struck his horse with the reins for looking round at the
+      sorrowful pair. They should have said it now, but first Tommy walked back
+      a little bit of the way with Elspeth, and then she came back with him, and
+      that was to be the last time, but he could not leave her, and so, there
+      they were in the wood, looking woefully at each other, and it was not said
+      yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had said it now, and all was over; they were several paces apart.
+      Elspeth smiled, she had promised to smile because Tommy said it would kill
+      him if she was greeting at the very end. But what a smile it was! Tommy
+      whistled, he had promised to whistle to show that he was happy as long as
+      Elspeth could smile. She stood still, but he went on, turning round every
+      few yards to&mdash;to whistle. "Never forget, day nor night, what I said
+      to you," he called to her. "You're the only one I love, and I care not a
+      hair for Grizel."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when he disappeared, shouting to her, "I'll find a wy, I'll find a
+      wy," she screamed and ran after him. He was already in the cart, and it
+      had started. He stood up in it and waved his hand to her, and she stood on
+      the dyke and waved to him, and thus they stood waving till a hollow in the
+      road swallowed cart and man and boy. Then Elspeth put her hands to her
+      eyes and went sobbing homeward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she was gone, a girl who had heard all that passed between them rose
+      from among the broom of Caddam and took Elspeth's place on the dyke, where
+      she stood motionless waiting for the cart to reappear as it climbed the
+      other side of the hollow. She wore a black frock and a blue bonnet with
+      white strings, but the cart was far away, and Tommy thought she was
+      Elspeth, and springing to his feet again in the cart he waved and waved.
+      At first she did not respond, for had she not heard him say, "You're the
+      only one I love, and I care not a hair for Grizel?" And she knew he was
+      mistaking her for Elspeth. But by and by it struck her that he would be
+      more unhappy if he thought Elspeth was too overcome by grief to wave to
+      him. Her arms rocked passionately; no, no, she would not lift them to wave
+      to him, he could be as unhappy as he chose. Then in a spirit of
+      self-abnegation that surely raised her high among the daughters of men,
+      though she was but a painted lady's child, she waved to him to save him
+      pain, and he, still erect in the cart, waved back until nothing could be
+      seen by either of them save wood and fields and a long, deserted road.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sentimental Tommy, by J. M. Barrie
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Sentimental Tommy
+       The Story of His Boyhood
+
+Author: J. M. Barrie
+
+Release Date: February 7, 2005 [EBook #14961]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SENTIMENTAL TOMMY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           SENTIMENTAL TOMMY
+
+                        THE STORY OF HIS BOYHOOD
+
+                            BY J. M. BARRIE
+
+        AUTHOR OF "THE LITTLE MINISTER," "A WINDOW IN THRUMS," ETC.
+
+                                  1896
+
+
+
+
+SENTIMENTAL TOMMY
+
+THE STORY OF HIS BOYHOOD
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+TOMMY CONTRIVES TO KEEP ONE OUT
+
+
+The celebrated Tommy first comes into view on a dirty London stair, and
+he was in sexless garments, which were all he had, and he was five, and
+so though we are looking at him, we must do it sideways, lest he sit
+down hurriedly to hide them. That inscrutable face, which made the
+clubmen of his later days uneasy and even puzzled the ladies while he
+was making love to them, was already his, except when he smiled at one
+of his pretty thoughts or stopped at an open door to sniff a potful. On
+his way up and down the stair he often paused to sniff, but he never
+asked for anything; his mother had warned him against it, and he carried
+out her injunction with almost unnecessary spirit, declining offers
+before they were made, as when passing a room, whence came the smell of
+fried fish, he might call in, "I don't not want none of your fish," or
+"My mother says I don't not want the littlest bit," or wistfully, "I
+ain't hungry," or more wistfully still, "My mother says I ain't
+hungry." His mother heard of this and was angry, crying that he had let
+the neighbors know something she was anxious to conceal, but what he had
+revealed to them Tommy could not make out, and when he questioned her
+artlessly, she took him with sudden passion to her flat breast, and
+often after that she looked at him long and woefully and wrung her
+hands.
+
+The only other pleasant smell known to Tommy was when the water-carts
+passed the mouth of his little street. His street, which ended in a dead
+wall, was near the river, but on the doleful south side of it, opening
+off a longer street where the cabs of Waterloo station sometimes found
+themselves when they took the wrong turning; his home was at the top of
+a house of four floors, each with accommodation for at least two
+families, and here he had lived with his mother since his father's
+death six months ago. There was oil-cloth on the stair as far as the
+second floor; there had been oil-cloth between the second floor and the
+third--Tommy could point out pieces of it still adhering to the wood like
+remnants of a plaster.
+
+This stair was nursery to all the children whose homes opened on it, not
+so safe as nurseries in the part of London that is chiefly inhabited by
+boys in sailor suits, but preferable as a centre of adventure, and here
+on an afternoon sat two. They were very busy boasting, but only the
+smaller had imagination, and as he used it recklessly, their positions
+soon changed; sexless garments was now prone on a step, breeches sitting
+on him.
+
+Shovel, a man of seven, had said, "None on your lip. You weren't never
+at Thrums yourself."
+
+Tommy's reply was, "Ain't my mother a Thrums woman?"
+
+Shovel, who had but one eye, and that bloodshot, fixed it on him
+threateningly.
+
+"The Thames is in London," he said.
+
+"'Cos they wouldn't not have it in Thrums," replied Tommy.
+
+"'Amstead 'Eath's in London, I tell yer," Shovel said.
+
+"The cemetery is in Thrums," said Tommy.
+
+"There ain't no queens in Thrums, anyhow."
+
+"There's the auld licht minister."
+
+"Well, then, if you jest seed Trafalgar Square!"
+
+"If you jest seed the Thrums town-house!"
+
+"St. Paul's ain't in Thrums."
+
+"It would like to be."
+
+After reflecting, Shovel said in desperation, "Well, then, my father
+were once at a hanging."
+
+Tommy replied instantly, "It were my father what was hanged."
+
+There was no possible answer to this save a knock-down blow, but though
+Tommy was vanquished in body, his spirit remained stanch; he raised his
+head and gasped, "You should see how they knock down in Thrums!" It was
+then that Shovel sat on him.
+
+Such was their position when an odd figure in that house, a gentleman,
+passed them without a word, so desirous was he to make a breath taken at
+the foot of the close stair last him to the top. Tommy merely gaped
+after this fine sight, but Shovel had experience, and "It's a kid or a
+coffin." he said sharply, knowing that only birth or death brought a
+doctor here.
+
+Watching the doctor's ascent, the two boys strained their necks over the
+rickety banisters, which had been polished black by trousers of the
+past, and sometimes they lost him, and then they saw his legs again.
+
+"Hello, it's your old woman!" cried Shovel. "Is she a deader?" he asked,
+brightening, for funerals made a pleasant stir on the stair.
+
+The question had no meaning for bewildered Tommy, but he saw that if his
+mother was a deader, whatever that might be, he had grown great in his
+companion's eye. So he hoped she was a deader.
+
+"If it's only a kid," Shovel began, with such scorn that Tommy at once
+screamed, "It ain't!" and, cross-examined, he swore eagerly that his
+mother was in bed when he left her in the morning, that she was still in
+bed at dinner-time, also that the sheet was over her face, also that she
+was cold.
+
+Then she was a deader and had attained distinction in the only way
+possible in that street. Shovel did not shake Tommy's hand warmly, the
+forms of congratulation varying in different parts of London, but he
+looked his admiration so plainly that Tommy's head waggled proudly.
+Evidently, whatever his mother had done redounded to his glory as well
+as to hers, and somehow he had become a boy of mark. He said from his
+elevation that he hoped Shovel would believe his tales about Thrums now,
+and Shovel, who had often cuffed Tommy for sticking to him so closely,
+cringed in the most snobbish manner, craving permission to be seen in
+his company for the next three days. Tommy, the upstart, did not see his
+way to grant this favor for nothing, and Shovel offered a knife, but did
+not have it with him; it was his sister Ameliar's knife, and he would
+take it from her, help his davy. Tommy would wait there till Shovel
+fetched it. Shovel, baffled, wanted to know what Tommy was putting on
+hairs for. Tommy smiled, and asked whose mother was a deader. Then
+Shovel collapsed, and his wind passed into Tommy.
+
+The reign of Thomas Sandys, nevertheless, was among the shortest, for
+with this question was he overthrown: "How did yer know she were cold?"
+
+"Because," replied Tommy, triumphantly, "she tell me herself."
+
+Shovel only looked at him, but one eye can be so much more terrible than
+two, that plop, plop, plop came the balloon softly down the steps of the
+throne and at the foot shrank pitifully, as if with Ameliar's knife in
+it.
+
+"It's only a kid arter all!" screamed Shovel, furiously. Disappointment
+gave him eloquence, and Tommy cowered under his sneers, not
+understanding them, but they seemed to amount to this, that in
+having a baby he had disgraced the house.
+
+"But I think," he said, with diffidence, "I think I were once one."
+
+Then all Shovel could say was that he had better keep it dark on that
+stair.
+
+Tommy squeezed his fist into one eye, and the tears came out at the
+other. A good-natured impulse was about to make Shovel say that though
+kids are undoubtedly humiliations, mothers and boys get used to them in
+time, and go on as brazenly as before, but it was checked by Tommy's
+unfortunate question, "Shovel, when will it come?"
+
+Shovel, speaking from local experience, replied truthfully that they
+usually came very soon after the doctor, and at times before him.
+
+"It ain't come before him," Tommy said, confidently.
+
+"How do yer know?"
+
+"'Cos it weren't there at dinner-time, and I been here since
+dinner-time."
+
+The words meant that Tommy thought it could only enter by way of the
+stair, and Shovel quivered with delight. "H'st!" he cried, dramatically,
+and to his joy Tommy looked anxiously down the stair, instead of up it.
+
+"Did you hear it?" Tommy whispered.
+
+Before he could control himself Shovel blurted out: "Do you think as
+they come on their feet?"
+
+"How then?" demanded Tommy; but Shovel had exhausted his knowledge of
+the subject. Tommy, who had begun to descend to hold the door, turned
+and climbed upwards, and his tears were now but the drop left in a cup
+too hurriedly dried. Where was he off to? Shovel called after him; and
+he answered, in a determined whisper: "To shove of it out if it tries to
+come in at the winder."
+
+This was enough for the more knowing urchin, now so full of good things
+that with another added he must spill, and away he ran for an audience,
+which could also help him to bait Tommy, that being a game most sportive
+when there are several to fling at once. At the door he knocked over,
+and was done with, a laughing little girl who had strayed from a more
+fashionable street. She rose solemnly, and kissing her muff, to reassure
+it if it had got a fright, toddled in at the first open door to be out
+of the way of unmannerly boys.
+
+Tommy, climbing courageously, heard the door slam, and looking down he
+saw--a strange child. He climbed no higher. It had come.
+
+After a long time he was one flight of stairs nearer it. It was making
+itself at home on the bottom step; resting, doubtless, before it came
+hopping up. Another dozen steps, and--It was beautifully dressed in one
+piece of yellow and brown that reached almost to its feet, with a bit
+left at the top to form a hood, out of which its pert face peeped
+impudently; oho, so they came in their Sunday clothes. He drew so near
+that he could hear it cooing: thought itself as good as upstairs, did
+it!
+
+He bounced upon her sharply, thinking to carry all with a high hand.
+"Out you go!" he cried, with the action of one heaving coals.
+
+She whisked round, and, "Oo boy or oo girl?" she inquired, puzzled by
+his dress.
+
+"None of your cheek!" roared insulted manhood.
+
+"Oo boy," she said, decisively.
+
+With the effrontery of them when they are young, she made room for him
+on her step, but he declined the invitation, knowing that her design was
+to skip up the stair the moment he was off his guard.
+
+"You don't needn't think as we'll have you," he announced, firmly. "You
+had best go away to--go to--" His imagination failed him. "You had best
+go back," he said.
+
+She did not budge, however, and his next attempt was craftier. "My
+mother," he assured her, "ain't living here now;" but mother was a new
+word to the girl, and she asked gleefully, "Oo have mother?" expecting
+him to produce it from his pocket. To coax him to give her a sight of it
+she said, plaintively, "Me no have mother."
+
+"You won't not get mine," replied Tommy doggedly.
+
+She pretended not to understand what was troubling him, and it passed
+through his head that she had to wait there till the doctor came down
+for her. He might come at any moment.
+
+A boy does not put his hand into his pocket until every other means of
+gaining his end has failed, but to that extremity had Tommy now come.
+For months his only splendid possession had been a penny despised by
+trade because of a large round hole in it, as if (to quote Shovel) some
+previous owner had cut a farthing out of it. To tell the escapades of
+this penny (there are no adventurers like coin of the realm) would be
+one way of exhibiting Tommy to the curious, but it would be a
+hard-hearted way. At present the penny was doubly dear to him, having
+been long lost and lately found. In a noble moment he had dropped it
+into a charity box hanging forlorn against the wall of a shop, where it
+lay very lonely by itself, so that when Tommy was that way he could hear
+it respond if he shook the box, as acquaintances give each other the
+time of day in passing. Thus at comparatively small outlay did he spread
+his benevolence over weeks and feel a glow therefrom, until the glow
+went, when he and Shovel recaptured the penny with a thread and a bent
+pin.
+
+This treasure he sadly presented to the girl, and she accepted it with
+glee, putting it on her finger, as if it were a ring, but instead of
+saying that she would go now she asked him, coolly,
+
+"Oo know tories?"
+
+"Stories!" he exclaimed, "I'll--I'll tell you about Thrums," and was
+about to do it for love, but stopped in time. "This ain't a good stair
+for stories," he said, cunningly. "I can't not tell stories on this
+stair, but I--I know a good stair for stories."
+
+The ninny of a girl was completely hoodwinked; and see, there they go,
+each with a hand in the muff, the one leering, oh, so triumphantly; the
+other trusting and gleeful. There was an exuberance of vitality about
+her as if she lived too quickly in her gladness, which you may remember
+in some child who visited the earth for but a little while.
+
+How superbly Tommy had done it! It had been another keen brain pitted
+against his, and at first he was not winning. Then up came Thrums,
+and--But the thing has happened before; in a word, Bluecher. Nevertheless,
+Tommy just managed it, for he got the girl out of the street and on to
+another stair no more than in time to escape a ragged rabble, headed by
+Shovel, who, finding their quarry gone, turned on their leader
+viciously, and had gloomy views of life till his cap was kicked down a
+sewer, which made the world bright again.
+
+Of the tales told by Tommy that day in words Scotch and cockney, of
+Thrums, home of heroes and the arts, where the lamps are lit by a
+magician called Leerie-leerie-licht-the-lamps (but he is also friendly,
+and you can fling stones at him), and the merest children are allowed
+to set the spinning-wheels a-whirling, and dagont is the swear, and the
+stairs are so fine that the houses wear them outside for show, and you
+drop a pail at the end of a rope down a hole, and sometimes it comes up
+full of water, and sometimes full of fairies--of these and other
+wonders, if you would know, ask not a dull historian, nor even go to
+Thrums, but to those rather who have been boys and girls there and now
+are exiles. Such a one Tommy knows, an unhappy woman, foolish, not very
+lovable, flung like a stone out of the red quarry upon a land where it
+cannot grip, and tearing her heart for a sight of the home she shall see
+no more. From her Tommy had his pictures, and he colored them rarely.
+
+Never before had he such a listener. "Oh, dagont, dagont!" he would cry
+in ecstasy over these fair scenes, and she, awed or gurgling with mirth
+according to the nature of the last, demanded "'Nother, 'nother!"
+whereat he remembered who and what she was, and showing her a morsel of
+the new one, drew her to more distant parts, until they were so far from
+his street that he thought she would never be able to find the way back.
+
+His intention had been, on reaching such a spot, to desert her promptly,
+but she gave him her hand in the muff so confidingly that against his
+judgment he fell a-pitying the trustful mite who was wandering the
+world in search of a mother, and so easily diddled on the whole that
+the chances were against her finding one before morning. Almost
+unconsciously he began to look about him for a suitable one.
+
+They were now in a street much nearer to his own home than the spurts
+from spot to spot had led him to suppose. It was new to him, but he
+recognized it as the acme of fashion by those two sure signs; railings
+with most of their spikes in place, and cards scored with, the word
+"Apartments." He had discovered such streets as this before when in
+Shovel's company, and they had watched the toffs go out and in, and it
+was a lordly sight, for first the toff waggled a rail that was loose at
+the top and then a girl, called the servant, peeped at him from below,
+and then he pulled the rail again, and then the door opened from the
+inside, and you had a glimpse of wonder-land with a place for hanging
+hats on. He had not contemplated doing anything so handsome for the girl
+as this, but why should he not establish her here? There were many
+possible mothers in view, and thrilling with a sense of his generosity
+he had almost fixed on one but mistrusted the glint in her eye and on
+another when she saved herself by tripping and showing an undarned heel.
+
+He was still of an open mind when the girl of a sudden cried, gleefully,
+"Ma-ma, ma-ma!" and pointed, with her muff, across the street. The word
+was as meaningless to Tommy as mother had been to her, but he saw that
+she was drawing his attention to a woman some thirty yards away.
+
+"Man--man!" he echoed, chiding her ignorance; "no, no, you blether, that
+ain't a man, that's a woman; that's woman--woman."
+
+"Ooman--ooman," the girl repeated, docilely, but when she looked again,
+"Ma-ma, ma-ma," she insisted, and this was Tommy's first lesson that
+however young you catch them they will never listen to reason.
+
+She seemed of a mind to trip off to this woman, and as long as his own
+mother was safe, it did not greatly matter to Tommy whom she chose, but
+if it was this one, she was going the wrong way about it. You cannot
+snap them up in the street.
+
+The proper course was to track her to her house, which he proceeded to
+do, and his quarry, who was looking about her anxiously, as if she had
+lost something, gave him but a short chase. In the next street to the
+one in which they had first seen her, a street so like it that Tommy
+might have admired her for knowing the difference, she opened the door
+with a key and entered, shutting the door behind her. Odd to tell, the
+child had pointed to this door as the one she would stop at, which
+surprised Tommy very much.
+
+On the steps he gave her his final instructions, and she dimpled and
+gurgled, obviously full of admiration for him, which was a thing he
+approved of, but he would have liked to see her a little more serious.
+
+"That is the door. Well, then, I'll waggle the rail as makes the bell
+ring, and then I'll run."
+
+That was all, and he wished she had not giggled most of the time. She
+was sniggering, as if she thought him a very funny boy, even when he
+rang the bell and bolted.
+
+From a safe place he watched the opening of the door, and saw the
+frivolous thing lose a valuable second in waving the muff to him. "In
+you go!" he screamed beneath his breath. Then she entered and the door
+closed. He waited an hour, or two minutes, or thereabout, and she had
+not been ejected. Triumph!
+
+With a drum beating inside him Tommy strutted home, where, alas, a boy
+was waiting to put his foot through it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+BUT THE OTHER GETS IN
+
+
+To Tommy, a swaggerer, came Shovel sour-visaged; having now no cap of
+his own, he exchanged with Tommy, would also have bled the blooming
+mouth of him, but knew of a revenge that saves the knuckles: announced,
+with jeers and offensive finger exercise, that "it" had come.
+
+Shovel was a liar. If he only knowed what Tommy knowed!
+
+If Tommy only heard what Shovel had heard!
+
+Tommy was of opinion that Shovel hadn't not heard anything.
+
+Shovel believed as Tommy didn't know nuthin.
+
+Tommy wouldn't listen to what Shovel had heard.
+
+Neither would Shovel listen to what Tommy knew.
+
+If Shovel would tell what he had heard, Tommy would tell what he knew.
+
+Well, then, Shovel had listened at the door, and heard it mewling.
+
+Tommy knowed it well, and it never mewled.
+
+How could Tommy know it?
+
+'Cos he had been with it a long time.
+
+Gosh! Why, it had only comed a minute ago.
+
+This made Tommy uneasy, and he asked a leading question cunningly. A
+boy, wasn't it?
+
+No, Shovel's old woman had been up helping to hold it, and she said it
+were a girl.
+
+Shutting his mouth tightly; which was never natural to him, the startled
+Tommy mounted the stair, listened and was convinced. He did not enter
+his dishonored home. He had no intention of ever entering it again. With
+one salt tear he renounced--a child, a mother.
+
+On his way downstairs he was received by Shovel and party, who planted
+their arrows neatly. Kids cried steadily, he was told, for the first
+year. A boy one was bad enough, but a girl one was oh lawks. He must
+never again expect to get playing with blokes like what they was.
+Already she had got round his old gal who would care for him no more.
+What would they say about this in Thrums?
+
+Shovel even insisted on returning him his cap, and for some queer
+reason, this cut deepest. Tommy about to charge, with his head down, now
+walked away so quietly that Shovel, who could not help liking the funny
+little cuss, felt a twinge of remorse, and nearly followed him with a
+magnanimous offer: to treat him as if he were still respectable.
+
+Tommy lay down on a distant stair, one of the very stairs where _she_
+had sat with him. Ladies, don't you dare to pity him now, for he won't
+stand it. Rage was what he felt, and a man in a rage (as you may know if
+you are married) is only to be soothed by the sight of all womankind in
+terror of him. But you may look upon your handiwork, and gloat, an you
+will, on the wreck you have made. A young gentleman trusted one of you;
+behold the result. O! O! O! O! now do you understand why we men cannot
+abide you?
+
+If she had told him flat that his mother, and his alone, she would have,
+and so there was an end of it. Ah, catch them taking a straight road.
+But to put on those airs of helplessness, to wave him that gay good-by,
+and then the moment his back was turned, to be off through the air
+on--perhaps on her muff, to the home he had thought to lure her from. In
+a word, to be diddled by a girl when one flatters himself he is
+diddling! S'death, a dashing fellow finds it hard to bear. Nevertheless,
+he has to bear it, for oh, Tommy, Tommy, 'tis the common lot of man.
+
+His hand sought his pocket for the penny that had brought him comfort in
+dark hours before now; but, alack, she had deprived him even of it.
+Never again should his pinkie finger go through that warm hole, and at
+the thought a sense of his forlornness choked him and he cried. You may
+pity him a little now.
+
+Darkness came and hid him even from himself. He is not found again until
+a time of the night that is not marked on ornamental clocks, but has an
+hour to itself on the watch which a hundred thousand or so of London
+women carry in their breasts; the hour when men steal homewards
+trickling at the mouth and drawing back from their own shadows to the
+wives they once went a-maying with, or the mothers who had such travail
+at the bearing of them, as if for great ends. Out of this, the
+drunkard's hour, rose the wan face of Tommy, who had waked up somewhere
+clammy cold and quaking, and he was a very little boy, so he ran to his
+mother.
+
+Such a shabby dark room it was, but it was home, such a weary worn woman
+in the bed, but he was her son, and she had been wringing her hands
+because he was so long in coming, and do you think he hurt her when he
+pressed his head on her poor breast, and do you think she grudged the
+heat his cold hands drew from her warm face? He squeezed her with a
+violence that put more heat into her blood than he took out of it.
+
+And he was very considerate, too: not a word of reproach in him, though
+he knew very well what that bundle in the back of the bed was.
+
+She guessed that he had heard the news and stayed away through jealousy
+of his sister, and by and by she said, with a faint smile, "I have a
+present for you, laddie." In the great world without, she used few
+Thrums words now; you would have known she was Scotch by her accent
+only, but when she and Tommy were together in that room, with the door
+shut, she always spoke as if her window still looked out on the bonny
+Marywellbrae. It is not really bonny, it is gey an' mean an' bleak, and
+you must not come to see it. It is just a steep wind-swept street, old
+and wrinkled, like your mother's face.
+
+She had a present for him, she said, and Tommy replied, "I knows," with
+averted face.
+
+"Such a bonny thing."
+
+"Bonny enough," he said bitterly.
+
+"Look at her, laddie."
+
+But he shrank from the ordeal, crying, "No, no, keep her covered up!"
+
+The little traitor seemed to be asleep, and so he ventured to say,
+eagerly, "It wouldn't not take long to carry all our things to another
+house, would it? Me and Shovel could near do it ourselves."
+
+"And that's God's truth," the woman said, with a look round the room.
+"But what for should we do that?"
+
+"Do you no see, mother?" he whispered excitedly. "Then you and me could
+slip away, and--and leave her--in the press."
+
+The feeble smile with which his mother received this he interpreted
+thus, "Wherever we go'd to she would be there before us."
+
+"The little besom!" he cried helplessly.
+
+His mother saw that mischievous boys had been mounting him on his
+horse, which needed only one slap to make it go a mile; but she was a
+spiritless woman, and replied indifferently, "You're a funny litlin."
+
+Presently a dry sob broke from her, and thinking the child was the
+cause, soft-hearted Tommy said, "It can't not be helped, mother; don't
+cry, mother, I'm fond on yer yet, mother; I--I took her away. I found
+another woman--but she would come."
+
+"She's God's gift, man," his mother said, but she added, in a different
+tone, "Ay, but he hasna sent her keep."
+
+"God's gift!" Tommy shuddered, but he said sourly, "I wish he would take
+her back. Do you wish that, too, mother?"
+
+The weary woman almost said she did, but her arms--they gripped the baby
+as if frightened that he had sent for it. Jealous Tommy, suddenly
+deprived of his mother's hand, cried, "It's true what Shovel says, you
+don't not love me never again; you jest loves that little limmer!"
+
+"Na, na," the mother answered, passionate at last, "she can never be to
+me what you hae been, my laddie, for you came to me when my hame was in
+hell, and we tholed it thegither, you and me."'
+
+This bewildered though it comforted him. He thought his mother might be
+speaking about the room in which they had lived until six months ago,
+when his father was put into the black box, but when he asked her if
+this were so, she told him to sleep, for she was dog-tired. She always
+evaded him in this way when he questioned her about his past, but at
+times his mind would wander backwards unbidden to those distant days,
+and then he saw flitting dimly through them the elusive form of a child.
+He knew it was himself, and for moments he could see it clearly, but
+when he moved a step nearer it was not there. So does the child we once
+were play hide and seek with us among the mists of infancy, until one
+day he trips and falls into the daylight. Then we seize him, and with
+that touch we two are one. It is the birth of self-consciousness.
+
+Hitherto he had slept at the back of his mother's bed, but to-night she
+could not have him there, the place being occupied, and rather sulkily
+he consented to lie crosswise at her feet, undressing by the feeble fire
+and taking care, as he got into bed, not to look at the usurper. His
+mother watched him furtively, and was relieved to read in his face that
+he had no recollection of ever having slept at the foot of a bed before.
+But soon after he fell asleep he awoke, and was afraid to move lest his
+father should kick him. He opened his eyes stealthily, and this was
+neither the room nor the bed he had expected to see.
+
+The floor was bare save for a sheepskin beside the bed. Tommy always
+stood on the sheepskin while he was dressing because it was warm to the
+feet, though risky, as your toes sometimes caught in knots in it. There
+was a deal table in the middle of the floor with some dirty crockery
+on it and a kettle that would leave a mark, but they had been left there
+by Shovel's old girl, for Mrs. Sandys usually kept her house clean. The
+chairs were of the commonest, and the press door would not remain shut
+unless you stuck a knife between its halves; but there, was a gay blue
+wardrobe, spotted white where Tommy's mother had scraped off the mud
+that had once bespattered it during a lengthy sojourn at the door of a
+shop; and on the mantelpiece was a clock in a little brown and yellow
+house, and on the clock a Bible that had been in Thrums. But what Tommy
+was proudest of was his mother's kist, to which the chests of Londoners
+are not to be compared, though like it in appearance. On the inside of
+the lid of this kist was pasted, after a Thrums custom, something that
+his mother called her marriage lines, which she forced Shovel's mother
+to come up and look at one day, when that lady had made an innuendo
+Tommy did not understand, and Shovel's mother had looked, and though she
+could not read, was convinced, knowing them by the shape.
+
+Tommy lay at the foot of the bed looking at this room, which was his
+home now, and trying to think of the other one, and by and by the fire
+helped him by falling to ashes, when darkness came in, and packing the
+furniture in grotesque cloths, removed it piece by piece, all but the
+clock. Then the room took a new shape. The fireplace was over there
+instead of here, the torn yellow blind gave way to one made of spars of
+green wood, that were bunched up at one side, like a lady out for a
+walk. On a round table there was a beautiful blue cloth, with very few
+gravy marks, and here a man ate beef when a woman and a boy ate bread,
+and near the fire was the man's big soft chair, out of which you could
+pull hairs, just as if it were Shovel's sister.
+
+Of this man who was his father he could get no hold. He could feel his
+presence, but never see him. Yet he had a face. It sometimes pressed
+Tommy's face against it in order to hurt him, which it could do, being
+all short needles at the chin.
+
+Once in those days Tommy and his mother ran away and hid from some one.
+He did not know from whom nor for how long, though it was but for a
+week, and it left only two impressions on his mind, the one that he
+often asked, "Is this starving now, mother?" the other that before
+turning a corner she always peered round it fearfully. Then they went
+back again to the man and he laughed when he saw them, but did not take
+his feet off the mantelpiece. There came a time when the man was always
+in bed, but still Tommy could not see his face. What he did see was the
+man's clothes lying on the large chair just as he had placed them there
+when he undressed for the last time. The black coat and worsted
+waistcoat which he could take off together were on the seat, and the
+light trousers hung over the side, the legs on the hearthrug, with the
+red socks still sticking in them: a man without a body.
+
+But the boy had one vivid recollection of how his mother received the
+news of his father's death. An old man with a white beard and gentle
+ways, who often came to give the invalid physic, was standing at the
+bedside, and Tommy and his mother were sitting on the fender. The old
+man came to her and said, "It is all over," and put her softly into the
+big chair. She covered her face with her hands, and he must have thought
+she was crying, for he tried to comfort her. But as soon as he was gone
+she rose, with such a queer face, and went on tiptoe to the bed, and
+looked intently at her husband, and then she clapped her hands joyously
+three times.
+
+At last Tommy fell asleep with his mouth open, which is the most
+important thing that has been told of him as yet, and while he slept day
+came and restored the furniture that night had stolen. But when the boy
+woke he did not even notice the change; his brain traversed the hours it
+had lost since he lay down as quickly as you may put on a stopped clock,
+and with his first tick he was thinking of nothing but the deceiver in
+the back of the bed. He raised his head, but could only see that she had
+crawled under the coverlet to escape his wrath. His mother was asleep.
+Tommy sat up and peeped over the edge of the bed, then he let his eyes
+wander round the room; he was looking for the girl's clothes, but they
+were nowhere to be seen. It is distressing to have to tell that what was
+in his mind was merely the recovery of his penny. Perhaps as they were
+Sunday clothes she had hung them up in the wardrobe? He slipped on to
+the floor and crossed to the wardrobe, but not even the muff could he
+find. Had she been tired, and gone to bed in them? Very softly he
+crawled over his mother, and pulling the coverlet off the child's face,
+got the great shock of his childhood.
+
+It was another one!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SHOWING HOW TOMMY WAS SUDDENLY TRANSFORMED INTO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN
+
+
+It would have fared ill with Mrs. Sandys now, had her standoffishness to
+her neighbors been repaid in the same coin, but they were full of
+sympathy, especially Shovel's old girl, from whom she had often drawn
+back offensively on the stair, but who nevertheless waddled up several
+times a day with savory messes, explaining, when Mrs. Sandys sniffed,
+that it was not the tapiocar but merely the cup that smelt of gin. When
+Tommy returned the cups she noticed not only that they were suspiciously
+clean, but that minute particles of the mess were adhering to his nose
+and chin (perched there like shipwrecked mariners on a rock, just out of
+reach of the devouring element), and after this discovery she brought
+two cupfuls at a time. She was an Irish, woman who could have led the
+House of Commons, and in walking she seldom raised her carpet shoes from
+the ground, perhaps because of her weight, for she had an expansive
+figure that bulged in all directions, and there were always bits of her
+here and there that she had forgotten to lace. Round the corner was a
+delightful eating-house, through whose window you were allowed to gaze
+at the great sweating dumplings, and Tommy thought Shovel's mother was
+rather like a dumpling that had not been a complete success. If he ever
+knew her name he forgot it. Shovel, who probably had another name also,
+called her his old girl or his old woman or his old lady, and it was a
+sight to see her chasing him across the street when she was in liquor,
+and boastful was Shovel of the way she could lay on, and he was partial
+to her too, and once when she was giving it to him pretty strong with
+the tongs, his father (who followed many professions, among them that of
+finding lost dogs), had struck her and told her to drop it, and then
+Shovel sauced his father for interfering, saying she should lick him as
+long as she blooming well liked, which made his father go for him with a
+dog-collar; and that was how Shovel lost his eye.
+
+For reasons less unselfish than his old girl's Shovel also was willing
+to make up to Tommy at this humiliating time. It might be said of these
+two boys that Shovel knew everything but Tommy knew other things, and as
+the other things are best worth hearing of Shovel liked to listen to
+them, even when they were about Thrums, as they usually were. The very
+first time Tommy told him of the wondrous spot, Shovel had drawn a great
+breath, and said, thoughtfully:
+
+"I allers knowed as there were sich a beauty place, but I didn't jest
+know its name."
+
+"How could yer know?" Tommy asked jealously.
+
+"I ain't sure," said Shovel, "p'raps I dreamed on it."
+
+"That's it," Tommy cried. "I tell yer, everybody dreams on it!" and
+Tommy was right; everybody dreams of it, though not all call it Thrums.
+
+On the whole, then, the coming of the kid, who turned out to be called
+Elspeth, did not ostracize Tommy, but he wished that he had let the
+other girl in, for he never doubted that her admittance would have kept
+this one out. He told neither his mother nor his friend of the other
+girl, fearing that his mother would be angry with him when she learned
+what she had missed, and that Shovel would crow over his blundering, but
+occasionally he took a side glance at the victorious infant, and a
+poorer affair, he thought, he had never set eyes on. Sometimes it was
+she who looked at him, and then her chuckle of triumph was hard to bear.
+As long as his mother was there, however, he endured in silence, but the
+first day she went out in a vain search for work (it is about as
+difficult to get washing as to get into the Cabinet), he gave the infant
+a piece of his mind, poking up her head with a stick so that she was
+bound to listen.
+
+"You thinks as it was clever on you, does yer? Oh, if I had been on the
+stair!
+
+"You needn't not try to get round me. I likes the other one five times
+better; yes, three times better.
+
+"Thievey, thievey, thief, that's her place you is lying in. What?
+
+"If you puts out your tongue at me again--! What do yer say?
+
+"She was twice bigger than you. You ain't got no hair, nor yet no teeth.
+You're the littlest I ever seed. Eh? Don't not speak then, sulks!"
+
+Prudence had kept him away from the other girl, but he was feeling a
+great want: someone to applaud him. When we grow older we call it
+sympathy. How Reddy (as he called her because she had beautiful
+red-brown hair) had appreciated him! She had a way he liked of opening
+her eyes very wide when she looked at him. Oh, what a difference from
+that thing in the back of the bed!
+
+Not the mere selfish desire to see her again, however, would take him in
+quest of Reddy. He was one of those superior characters, was Tommy, who
+got his pleasure in giving it, and therefore gave it. Now, Reddy was a
+worthy girl. In suspecting her of overreaching him he had maligned her:
+she had taken what he offered, and been thankful. It was fitting that he
+should give her a treat: let her see him again.
+
+His mother was at last re-engaged by her old employers, her supplanter
+having proved unsatisfactory, and as the work lay in a distant street,
+she usually took the kid with her, thus leaving no one to spy on Tammy's
+movements. Reddy's reward for not playing him false, however, did not
+reach her as soon as doubtless she would have liked, because the first
+two or three times he saw her she was walking with the lady of his
+choice, and of course he was not such a fool as to show himself. But he
+walked behind them and noted with satisfaction that the lady seemed to
+be reconciled to her lot and inclined to let bygones be bygones; when
+at length Reddy and her patron met, Tommy thought this a good sign too,
+that Ma-ma (as she would call the lady) had told her not to go farther
+away than the lamp-post, lest she should get lost again. So evidently
+she had got lost once already, and the lady had been sorry. He asked
+Reddy many shrewd questions about how Ma-ma treated her, and if she got
+the top of the Sunday egg and had the licking of the pan and wore
+flannel underneath and slept at the back; and the more he inquired, the
+more clearly he saw that he had got her one of the right kind.
+
+Tommy arranged with her that she should always be on the outlook for him
+at the window, and he would come sometimes, and after that they met
+frequently, and she proved a credit to him, gurgling with mirth at his
+tales of Thrums, and pinching him when he had finished, to make sure
+that he was really made just like common human beings. He was a thin,
+pale boy, while she looked like a baby rose full blown in a night
+because her time was short; and his movements were sluggish, but if she
+was not walking she must be dancing, and sometimes when there were few
+people in the street, the little armful of delight that she was jumped
+up and down like a ball, while Tommy kept the time, singing "Thrummy,
+Thrummy, Thrum Thrum Thrummy." They must have seemed a quaint pair to
+the lady as she sat at her window watching them and beckoning to Tommy
+to come in.
+
+One day he went in, but only because she had come up behind and taken
+his hand before he could run. Then did Tommy quake, for he knew from
+Reddy how the day after the mother-making episode, Ma-ma and she had
+sought in vain for his door, and he saw that the object had been to call
+down curses on his head. So that head was hanging limply now.
+
+You think that Tommy is to be worsted at last, but don't be too sure;
+you just wait and see. Ma-ma and Reddy (who was clucking rather
+heartlessly) first took him into a room prettier even than the one he
+had lived in long ago (but there was no bed in it), and then, because
+someone they were in search of was not there, into another room without
+a bed (where on earth did they sleep?) whose walls were lined with
+books. Never having seen rows of books before except on sale in the
+streets, Tommy at once looked about him for the barrow. The table was
+strewn with sheets of paper of the size that they roll a quarter of
+butter in, and it was an amazing thick table, a solid square of wood,
+save for a narrow lane down the centre for the man to put his legs
+in--if he had legs, which unfortunately there was reason to doubt. He
+was a formidable man, whose beard licked the table while he wrote, and
+he wore something like a brown blanket, with a rope tied round it at the
+middle. Even more uncanny than himself were three busts on a shelf,
+which Tommy took to be deaders, and he feared the blanket might blow
+open and show that the man also ended at the waist. But he did not, for
+presently he turned round to see who had come in (the seat of his chair
+turning with him in the most startling way) and then Tommy was relieved
+to notice two big feet far away at the end of him.
+
+"This is the boy, dear," the lady said. "I had to bring him in by
+force."
+
+Tommy raised his arm instinctively to protect his face, this being the
+kind of man who could hit hard. But presently he was confused, and also,
+alas, leering a little. You may remember that Reddy had told him she
+must not go beyond the lamp-post, lest she should be lost again. She had
+given him no details of the adventure, but he learned now from Ma-ma and
+Papa (the man's name was Papa) that she had strayed when Ma-ma was in a
+shop and that some good kind boy had found her and brought her home; and
+what do you say to this, they thought Tommy was that boy! In his
+amazement he very nearly blurted out that he was the other boy, but just
+then the lady asked Papa if he had a shilling, and this abruptly closed
+Tommy's mouth. Ever afterwards he remembered Papa as the man that was
+not sure whether he had a shilling until he felt his pockets--a new kind
+of mortal to Tommy, who grabbed the shilling when it was offered to
+him, and then looked at Reddy imploringly, he was so afraid she would
+tell. But she behaved splendidly, and never even shook her head at him.
+After this, as hardly need be told, his one desire was to get out of the
+house with his shilling before they discovered their mistake, and it was
+well that they were unsuspicious people, for he was making strange
+hissing sounds in his throat, the result of trying hard to keep his
+sniggers under control.
+
+There were many ways in which Tommy could have disposed of his shilling.
+He might have been a good boy and returned it next day to Papa. He might
+have given Reddy half of it for not telling. It could have carried him
+over the winter. He might have stalked with it into the shop where the
+greasy puddings were and come rolling out hours afterwards. Some of
+these schemes did cross his little mind, but he decided to spend the
+whole shilling on a present to his mother, and it was to be something
+useful. He devoted much thought to what she was most in need of, and at
+last he bought her a colored picture of Lord Byron swimming the
+Hellespont.
+
+He told her that he got his shilling from two toffs for playing with a
+little girl, and the explanation satisfied her; but she could have cried
+at the waste of the money, which would have been such a God-send to her.
+He cried altogether, however, at sight of her face, having expected it
+to look so pleased, and then she told him, with caresses, that the
+picture was the one thing she had been longing for ever since she came
+to London. How had he known this, she asked, and he clapped his hands
+gleefully, and said he just knowed when he saw it in the shop window.
+
+"It was noble of you," she said, "to spend all your siller on me."
+
+"Wasn't it, mother?" he crowed "I'm thinking there ain't many as noble
+as I is!"
+
+He did not say why he had been so good to her, but it was because she
+had written no letters to Thrums since the intrusion of Elspeth; a
+strange reason for a boy whose greatest glory at one time had been to
+sit on the fender and exultingly watch his mother write down words that
+would be read aloud in the wonderful place. She was a long time in
+writing a letter, but that only made the whole evening romantic, and he
+found an arduous employment in keeping his tongue wet in preparation for
+the licking of the stamp.
+
+But she could not write to the Thrums folk now without telling them of
+Elspeth, who was at present sleeping the sleep of the shameless in the
+hollow of the bed, and so for his sake, Tommy thought, she meant to
+write no more. For his sake, mark you, not for her own. She had often
+told him that some day he should go to Thrums, but not with her; she
+would be far away from him then in a dark place she was awid to be lying
+in. Thus it seemed, to Tommy that she denied herself the pleasure of
+writing to Thrums lest the sorry news of Elspeth's advent should spoil
+his reception when he went north.
+
+So grateful Tommy gave her the picture, hoping that it would fill the
+void. But it did not. She put it on the mantelpiece so that she might
+just sit and look at it, she said, and he grinned at it from every part
+of the room, but when he returned to her, he saw that she was neither
+looking at it nor thinking of it. She was looking straight before her,
+and sometimes her lips twitched, and then she drew them into her mouth
+to keep them still. It is a kind of dry weeping that sometimes comes to
+miserable ones when their minds stray into the happy past, and Tommy sat
+and watched her silently for a long time, never doubting that the cause
+of all her woe was that she could not write to Thrums.
+
+He had seldom seen tears on his mother's face, but he saw one now. They
+had been reluctant to come for many a day, and this one formed itself
+beneath her eye and sat there like a blob of blood.
+
+His own began to come more freely. But she needn't not expect him to
+tell her to write nor to say that he didn't care what Thrums thought of
+him so long as she was happy.
+
+The tear rolled down his mother's thin cheek and fell on the grey shawl
+that had come from Thrums.
+
+She did not hear her boy as he dragged a chair to the press and standing
+on it got something down from the top shelf. She had forgotten him, and
+she started when presently the pen was slipped into her hand and Tommy
+said, "You can do it, mother, I wants yer to do it, mother, I won't not
+greet, mother!"
+
+When she saw what he wanted her to do she patted his face approvingly,
+but without realizing the extent of his sacrifice. She knew that he had
+some maggot in his head that made him regard Elspeth as a sore on the
+family honor, but ascribing his views to jealousy she had never tried
+seriously to change them. Her main reason for sending no news to Thrums
+of late had been but the cost of the stamp, though she was also a little
+conscience-stricken at the kind of letters she wrote, and the sight of
+the materials lying ready for her proved sufficient to draw her to the
+table.
+
+"Is it to your grandmother you is writing the letter?" Tommy asked, for
+her grandmother had brought Mrs. Sandys up and was her only surviving
+relative. This was all Tommy knew of his mother's life in Thrums, though
+she had told him much about other Thrums folk, and not till long
+afterwards did he see that there must be something queer about herself,
+which she was hiding from him.
+
+This letter was not for her granny, however, and Tommy asked next, "Is
+it to Aaron Latta?" which so startled her that she dropped the pen.
+
+"Whaur heard you that name?" she said sharply. "I never spoke it to
+you."
+
+"I've heard you saying it when you was sleeping, mother."
+
+"Did I say onything but the name? Quick, tell me."
+
+"You said, 'Oh, Aaron Latta, oh, Aaron, little did we think, Aaron,' and
+things like that. Are you angry with me, mother?"
+
+"No," she said, relieved, but it was some time before the desire to
+write came back to her. Then she told him "The letter is to a woman that
+was gey cruel to me," adding, with a complacent pursing of her lips, the
+curious remark, "That's the kind I like to write to best."
+
+The pen went scrape, scrape, but Tommy did not weary, though he often
+sighed, because his mother would never read aloud to him what she wrote.
+The Thrums people never answered her letters, for the reason, she said,
+that those she wrote to could not write, which seemed to simple Tommy to
+be a sufficient explanation. So he had never heard the inside of a
+letter talking, though a postman lived in the house, and even Shovel's
+old girl got letters; once when her uncle died she got a telegram, which
+Shovel proudly wheeled up and down the street in a barrow, other blokes
+keeping guard at the side. To give a letter to a woman who had been
+cruel to you struck Tommy as the height of nobility.
+
+"She'll be uplifted when she gets it!" he cried.
+
+"She'll be mad when she gets it," answered his mother, without looking
+up.
+
+This was the letter:--
+
+"MY DEAR ESTHER,--I send you these few scrapes to let you see I have not
+forgot you, though my way is now grand by yours. A spleet new black
+silk, Esther, being the second in a twelvemonth, as I'm a living woman.
+The other is no none tashed yet, but my gudeman fair insisted on buying
+a new one, for says he 'Rich folk like as can afford to be mislaird, and
+nothing's ower braw for my bonny Jean.' Tell Aaron Latta that. When I'm
+sailing in my silks, Esther, I sometimes picture you turning your wincey
+again, for I'se uphaud that's all the new frock you've ha'en the year. I
+dinna want to give you a scunner of your man, Esther, more by token they
+said if your mither had not took him in hand you would never have kent
+the color of his nightcap, but when you are wraxing ower your kail-pot
+in a plot of heat, just picture me ringing the bell for my servant, and
+saying, with a wave of my hand, 'Servant, lay the dinner.' And ony bonny
+afternoon when your man is cleaning out stables and you're at the tub in
+a short gown, picture my man taking me and the children out a ride in a
+carriage, and I sair doubt your bairns was never in nothing more genteel
+than a coal cart. For bairns is yours, Esther, and children is mine, and
+that's a burn without a brig till't.
+
+"Deary me, Esther, what with one thing and another, namely buying a
+sofa, thirty shillings as I'm a sinner, I have forgot to tell you about
+my second, and it's a girl this time, my man saying he would like a
+change. We have christened her Elspeth after my grandmamma, and if my
+auld granny's aye living, you can tell her that's her. My man is
+terrible windy of his two beautiful children, but he says he would have
+been the happiest gentleman in London though he had just had me, and
+really his fondness for me, it cows, Esther, sitting aside me on the
+bed, two pounds without the blankets, about the time Elspeth was born,
+and feeding me with the fat of the land, namely, tapiocas and sherry
+wine. Tell Aaron Latta that.
+
+"I pity you from the bottom of my heart, Esther, for having to bide in
+Thrums, but you have never seen no better, your man having neither the
+siller nor the desire to take yon jaunts, and I'm thinking that is just
+as well, for if you saw how the like of me lives it might disgust you
+with your own bit house. I often laugh, Esther, to think that I was once
+like you, and looked upon Thrums as a bonny place. How is the old hole?
+My son makes grand sport of the onfortunate bairns as has to bide in
+Thrums, and I see him doing it the now to his favorite companion, which
+is a young gentleman of ladylike manners, as bides in our terrace. So no
+more at present, for my man is sitting ganting for my society, and I
+daresay yours is crying to you to darn his old socks. Mind and tell
+Aaron Latta."
+
+This letter was posted next day by Tommy, with the assistance of Shovel,
+who seems to have been the young gentleman of ladylike manners referred
+to in the text.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE END OF AN IDYLL
+
+
+Tommy never saw Reddy again owing to a fright he got about this time,
+for which she was really to blame, though a woman who lived in his house
+was the instrument.
+
+It is, perhaps, idle to attempt a summary of those who lived in that
+house, as one at least will be off, and another in his place, while we
+are giving them a line apiece. They were usually this kind who lived
+through the wall from Mrs. Sandys, but beneath her were the two rooms of
+Hankey, the postman, and his lodger, the dreariest of middle-aged clerks
+except when telling wistfully of his ambition, which was to get out of
+the tea department into the coffee department, where there is an easier
+way of counting up the figures. Shovel and family were also on this
+floor, and in the rooms under them was a newly married couple. When the
+husband was away at his work, his wife would make some change in the
+furniture, taking the picture from this wall, for instance, and hanging
+it on that wall, or wheeling the funny chair she had lain in before she
+could walk without a crutch, to the other side of the fireplace, or
+putting a skirt of yellow paper round the flower pot, and when he
+returned he always jumped back in wonder and exclaimed: "What an immense
+improvement!" These two were so fond of one another that Tommy asked
+them the reason, and they gave it by pointing to the chair with the
+wheels, which seemed to him to be no reason at all. What was this young
+husband's trade Tommy never knew, but he was the only prettily dressed
+man in the house, and he could be heard roaring in his sleep, "_And_ the
+next article?" The meanest looking man lived next door to him. Every
+morning this man put on a clean white shirt, which sounds like a
+splendid beginning, but his other clothes were of the seediest, and he
+came and went shivering, raising his shoulders to his ears and spreading
+his hands over his chest as if anxious to hide his shirt rather than to
+display it. He and the happy husband were nicknamed Before and After,
+they were so like the pictorial advertisement of Man before and after he
+has tried Someone's lozenges. But it is rash to judge by outsides; Tommy
+and Shovel one day tracked Before to his place of business, and it
+proved to be a palatial eating-house, long, narrow, padded with red
+cushions; through the door they saw the once despised, now in beautiful
+black clothes, the waistcoat a mere nothing, as if to give his shirt a
+chance at last, a towel over his arm, and to and fro he darted,
+saying "Yessirquitesosir" to the toffs on the seats, shouting
+"Twovegonebeef--onebeeronetartinahurry" to someone invisible, and
+pocketing twopences all day long, just like a lord. On the same floor as
+Before and After lived the large family of little Pikes, who quarrelled
+at night for the middle place in the bed, and then chips of ceiling fell
+into the room below, tenant Jim Ricketts and parents, lodger the young
+woman we have been trying all these doors for. Her the police snapped up
+on a charge; that made Tommy want to hide himself--child-desertion.
+
+Shovel was the person best worth listening to on the subject (observe
+him, the centre of half a dozen boys), and at first he was for the
+defence, being a great stickler for the rights of mothers. But when the
+case against the girl leaked out, she need not look to him for help. The
+police had found the child in a basket down an area, and being knowing
+ones they pinched it to make it cry, and then they pretended to go away.
+Soon the mother, who was watching hard by to see if it fell into kind
+hands, stole to her baby to comfort it, "and just as she were a kissing
+on it and blubbering, the perlice copped her."
+
+"The slut!" said disgusted Shovel, "what did she hang about for?" and in
+answer to a trembling question from Tommy he replied, decisively, "Six
+months hard."
+
+"Next case" was probably called immediately, but Tommy vanished, as if
+he had been sentenced and removed to the cells.
+
+Never again, unless he wanted six months hard, must he go near Reddy's
+home, and so he now frequently accompanied his mother to the place where
+she worked. The little room had a funny fireplace called a stove, on
+which his mother made tea and the girls roasted chestnuts, and it had no
+other ordinary furniture except a long form. But the walls were
+mysterious. Three of them were covered with long white cloths, which
+went to the side when you tugged them, and then you could see on rails
+dozens of garments that looked like nightgowns. Beneath the form were
+scores of little shoes, most of them white or brown. In this house
+Tommy's mother spent eight hours daily, but not all of them in this
+room. When she arrived the first thing she did was to put Elspeth on the
+floor, because you cannot fall off a floor; then she went upstairs with
+a bucket and a broom to a large bare room, where she stayed so long that
+Tommy nearly forgot what she was like.
+
+While his mother was upstairs Tommy would give Elspeth two or three
+shoes to eat to keep her quiet, and then he played with the others,
+pretending to be able to count them, arranging them in designs, shooting
+them, swimming among them, saying "bow-wow" at them and then turning
+sharply to see who had said it. Soon Elspeth dropped her shoes and gazed
+in admiration at him, but more often than not she laughed in the wrong
+place, and then he said ironically: "Oh, in course I can't do nothin';
+jest let's see you doing of it, then, cocky!"
+
+By the time the girls began to arrive, singly or in twos and threes, his
+mother was back in the little room, making tea for herself or sewing
+bits of them that had been torn as they stepped out of a cab, or helping
+them to put on the nightgowns, or pretending to listen pleasantly to
+their chatter and hating them all the time. There was every kind of
+them, gorgeous ones and shabby ones, old tired ones and dashing young
+ones, but whether they were the Honorable Mrs. Something or only Jane
+Anything, they all came to that room for the same purpose: to get a
+little gown and a pair of shoes. Then they went upstairs and danced to a
+stout little lady, called the Sylph, who bobbed about like a ball at the
+end of a piece of elastic. What Tommy never forgot was that while they
+danced the Sylph kept saying, "One, two, three, four; one, two, three,
+four," which they did not seem to mind, but when she said "One, two,
+three, four, _picture_!" they all stopped and stood motionless, though
+it might be with one foot as high as their head and their arms stretched
+out toward the floor, as if they had suddenly seen a halfpenny there.
+
+In the waiting-room, how they joked and pirouetted and gossiped, and
+hugged and scorned each other, and what slang they spoke and how pretty
+they often looked next moment, and how they denounced the one that had
+just gone out as a cat with whom you could not get in a word edgeways,
+and oh, how prompt they were to give a slice of their earnings to any
+"cat" who was hard up! But still, they said, she had talent, but no
+genius. How they pitied people without genius.
+
+Have you ever tasted an encore or a reception? Tommy never had his teeth
+in one, but he heard much about them in that room, and concluded that
+they were some sort of cake. It was not the girls who danced in groups,
+but those who danced alone, that spoke of their encores and receptions,
+and sometimes they had got them last night, sometimes years ago. Two
+girls met in the room, one of whom had stolen the other's reception,
+and--but it was too dreadful to write about. Most of them carried
+newspaper cuttings in their purses and read them aloud to the others,
+who would not listen. Tommy listened, however, and as it was all about
+how one house had risen at the girls and they had brought another down,
+he thought they led the most adventurous lives.
+
+Occasionally they sent him out to buy newspapers or chestnuts, and then
+he had to keep a sharp eye on the police lest they knew about Reddy. It
+was a point of honor with all the boys he knew to pretend that the
+policeman was after them. To gull the policeman into thinking all was
+well they blackened their faces and wore their jackets inside out; their
+occupation was a constant state of readiness to fly from him, and when
+he tramped out of sight, unconscious of their existence, they emerged
+from dark places and spoke in exultant whispers. Tommy had been proud to
+join them, but he now resented their going on in this way; he felt that
+he alone had the right to fly from the law. And once at least while he
+was flying something happened to him that he was to remember better, far
+better, than his mother's face.
+
+What set him running on this occasion (he had been sent out to get one
+of the girls' shoes soled) was the grandest sight to be seen in
+London--an endless row of policemen walking in single file, all with the
+right leg in the air at the same time, then the left leg. Seeing at once
+that they were after him, Tommy ran, ran, ran until in turning a corner
+he found himself wedged between two legs. He was of just sufficient size
+to fill the aperture, but after a momentary look he squeezed through,
+and they proved to be the gate into an enchanted land.
+
+The magic began at once. "Dagont, you sacket!" cried some wizard.
+
+A policeman's hand on his shoulder could not have taken the wind out of
+Tommy more quickly. In the act of starting a-running again he brought
+down his hind foot with a thud and stood stock still. Can any one
+wonder? It was the Thrums tongue, and this the first time he had heard
+it except from his mother.
+
+It was a dull day, and all the walls were dripping wet, this being the
+part of London where the fogs are kept. Many men and women were passing
+to and fro, and Tommy, with a wild exultation in his breast, peered up
+at the face of this one and that; but no, they were only ordinary
+people, and he played rub-a-dub with his feet on the pavement, so
+furious was he with them for moving on as if nothing had happened. Draw
+up, ye carters; pedestrians, stand still; London, silence for a moment,
+and let Tommy Sandys listen!
+
+Being but a frail plant in the way of a flood, Tommy was rooted up and
+borne onward, but he did not feel the buffeting. In a passion of grief
+he dug his fists in his eyes, for the glory had been his for but a
+moment. It can be compared to nothing save the parcel (attached to a
+concealed string) which Shovel and he once placed on the stair for Billy
+Hankey to find, and then whipped away from him just as he had got it
+under his arm. But so near the crying, Tommy did not cry, for even while
+the tears were rushing to his aid he tripped on the step of a shop, and
+immediately, as if that had rung the magic bell again, a voice, a
+woman's voice this time, said shrilly, "Threepence ha'penny, and them
+jimply as big as a bantam's! Na, na, but I'll gi'e you five bawbees."
+
+Tommy sat down flop on the step, feeling queer in the head. Was it--was
+it--was it Thrums? He knew he had been running a long time.
+
+The woman, or fairy, or whatever you choose to call her, came out of
+the shop and had to push Tommy aside to get past. Oh, what a sweet foot
+to be kicked by. At the time, he thought she was dressed not unlike the
+women of his own stair, but this defect in his vision he mended
+afterward, as you may hear. Of course, he rose and trotted by her side
+like a dog, looking up at her as if she were a cathedral; but she
+mistook his awe for impudence and sent him sprawling, with the words,
+"Tak that, you glowering partan!"
+
+Do you think Tommy resented this? On the contrary he screamed from where
+he lay, "Say it again! say it again!"
+
+She was gone, however, but only, as it were, to let a window open, from
+which came the cry, "Davit, have you seen my man?"
+
+A male fairy roared back from some invisible place, "He has gone yont to
+Petey's wi' the dambrod."
+
+"I'll dambrod him!" said the female fairy, and the window shut.
+
+Tommy was now staggering like one intoxicated, but he had still some
+sense left him, and he walked up and down in front of this house, as if
+to take care of it. In the middle of the street some boys were very busy
+at a game, carts and lorries passing over them occasionally. They came
+to the pavement to play marbles, and then Tommy noticed that one of them
+wore what was probably a glengarry bonnet. Could he be a Thrums boy?
+
+At first he played in the stupid London way, but by and by he had to
+make a new ring, and he did it by whirling round on one foot. Tommy knew
+from his mother that it is only done in this way in Thrums. Oho! Oho!
+
+By this time he was prancing round his discovery, saying, "I'm one,
+too--so am I--dagont, does yer hear? dagont!" which so alarmed the boy
+that he picked up his marble and fled, Tommy, of course, after him.
+Alas! he must have been some mischievous sprite, for he lured his
+pursuer back into London and then vanished, and Tommy, searching in vain
+for the enchanted street, found his own door instead.
+
+His mother pooh-poohed his tale, though he described the street exactly
+as it struck him on reflection, and it bore a curious resemblance to the
+palace of Aladdin that Reddy had told him about, leaving his imagination
+to fill in the details, which it promptly did, with a square, a
+town-house, some outside stairs, and an auld licht kirk. There was no
+such street, however, his mother assured him; he had been dreaming. But
+if this were so, why was she so anxious to make him promise never to
+look for the place again?
+
+He did go in search of it again, daily for a time, always keeping a
+look-out for bow-legs, and the moment he saw them, he dived recklessly
+between, hoping to come out into fairyland on the other side. For though
+he had lost the street, he knew that this was the way in.
+
+Shovel had never heard of the street, nor had Bob. But Bob gave him
+something that almost made him forget it for a time. Bob was his
+favorite among the dancing girls, and she--or should it be he? The odd
+thing about these girls was that a number of them were really boys--or
+at least were boys at Christmas-time, which seemed to Tommy to be even
+stranger than if they had been boys all the year round. A friend of
+Bob's remarked to her one day, "You are to be a girl next winter, ain't
+you, Bob?" and Bob shook her head scornfully.
+
+"Do you see any green in my eye, my dear?" she inquired.
+
+Her friend did not look, but Tommy looked, and there was none. He
+assured her of this so earnestly that Bob fell in love with him on the
+spot, and chucked him under the chin, first with her thumb and then with
+her toe, which feat was duly reported to Shovel, who could do it by the
+end of the week.
+
+Did Tommy, Bob wanted to know, still think her a mere woman?
+
+No, he withdrew the charge, but--but--She was wearing her outdoor
+garments, and he pointed to them, "Why does yer wear them, then?" he
+demanded.
+
+"For the matter of that," she replied, pointing at his frock, "why do
+you wear them?" Whereupon Tommy began to cry.
+
+"I ain't not got no right ones," he blubbered. Harum-scarum Bob, who
+was a trump, had him in her motherly arms immediately, and the upshot of
+it was that a blue suit she had worn when she was Sam Something changed
+owners. Mrs. Sandys "made it up," and that is how Tommy got into
+trousers.
+
+Many contingencies were considered in the making, but the suit would fit
+Tommy by and by if he grew, or it shrunk, and they did not pass each
+other in the night. When proud Tommy first put on his suit the most
+unexpected shyness overcame him, and having set off vaingloriously he
+stuck on the stair and wanted to hide. Shovel, who had been having an
+argument with his old girl, came, all boastful bumps, to him, and Tommy
+just stood still with a self-conscious simper on his face. And Shovel,
+who could have damped him considerably, behaved in the most honorable
+manner, initiating him gravely into the higher life, much as you show
+the new member round your club.
+
+It was very risky to go back to Reddy, whom he had not seen for many
+weeks; but in trousers! He could not help it. He only meant to walk up
+and down her street, so that she might see him from the window, and know
+that this splendid thing was he; but though he went several times into
+the street, Reddy never came to the window.
+
+The reason he had to wait in vain at Reddy's door was that she was dead;
+she had been dead for quite a long time when Tommy came back to look for
+her. You mothers who have lost your babies, I should be a sorry knave
+were I to ask you to cry now over the death of another woman's child.
+Reddy had been lent to two people for a very little while, just as your
+babies were, and when the time was up she blew a kiss to them and ran
+gleefully back to God, just as your babies did. The gates of heaven are
+so easily found when we are little, and they are always standing open to
+let children wander in.
+
+But though Reddy was gone away forever, mamma still lived in that house,
+and on a day she opened the door to come out, Tommy was standing
+there--she saw him there waiting for Reddy. Dry-eyed this sorrowful
+woman had heard the sentence pronounced, dry eyed she had followed the
+little coffin to its grave; tears had not come even when waking from
+illusive dreams she put out her hand in bed to a child who was not
+there; but when she saw Tommy waiting at the door for Reddy, who had
+been dead for a month, her bosom moved and she could cry again.
+
+Those tears were sweet to her husband, and it was he who took Tommy on
+his knee in the room where the books were, and told him that there was
+no Reddy now. When Tommy knew that Reddy was a deader he cried bitterly,
+and the man said, very gently, "I am glad you were so fond of her."
+
+"'T ain't that," Tommy answered with a knuckle in his eye, "'t ain't
+that as makes me cry." He looked down at his trousers and in a fresh
+outburst of childish grief he wailed, "It's them!"
+
+Papa did not understand, but the boy explained. "She can't not never
+see them now," he sobbed, "and I wants her to see them, and they has
+pockets!"
+
+It had come to the man unexpectedly. He put Tommy down almost roughly,
+and raised his hand to his head as if he felt a sudden pain there.
+
+But Tommy, you know, was only a little boy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE GIRL WITH TWO MOTHERS
+
+
+Elspeth at last did something to win Tommy's respect; she fell ill of an
+ailment called in Thrums the croop. When Tommy first heard his mother
+call it croop, he thought she was merely humoring Elspeth, and that it
+was nothing more distinguished than London whooping-cough, but on
+learning that it was genuine croop, he began to survey the ambitious
+little creature with a new interest.
+
+This was well for Elspeth, as she had now to spend most of the day at
+home with him, their mother, whose health was failing through frequent
+attacks of bronchitis, being no longer able to carry her through the
+streets. Of course Elspeth took to repaying his attentions by loving
+him, and he soon suspected it, and then gloomily admitted it to himself,
+but never to Shovel. Being but an Englishman, Shovel saw no reason why
+relatives should conceal their affection for each other, but he played
+on this Scottish weakness of Tommy's with cruel enjoyment.
+
+"She's fond on yer!" he would say severely.
+
+"You's a liar."
+
+"Gar long! I believe as you're fond on her!"
+
+"You jest take care, Shovel."
+
+"Ain't yer?"
+
+"Na-o!"
+
+"Will yer swear?"
+
+"So I will swear."
+
+"Let's hear yer."
+
+"Dagont!"
+
+So for a time the truth was kept hidden, and Shovel retired, casting
+aspersions, and offering to eat all the hair on Elspeth's head for a
+penny.
+
+This hair was white at present, which made Tommy uneasy about her
+future, but on the whole he thought he might make something of her if
+she was only longer. Sometimes he stretched her on the floor, pulling
+her legs out straight, for she had a silly way of doubling them up, and
+then he measured her carefully with his mother's old boots. Her growth
+proved to be distressingly irregular, as one day she seemed to have
+grown an inch since last night, and then next day she had shrunk two
+inches.
+
+After her day's work Mrs. Sandys was now so listless that, had not Tommy
+interfered, Elspeth would have been a backward child. Reddy had been
+able to walk from the first day, and so of course had he, but this
+little slow-coach's legs wobbled at the joints, like the blade of a
+knife without a spring. The question of questions was How to keep her on
+end?
+
+Tommy sat on the fender revolving this problem, his head resting on his
+hand: that favorite position of mighty intellects when about to be
+photographed, Elspeth lay on her stomach on the floor, gazing earnestly
+at him, as if she knew she was in his thoughts for some stupendous
+purpose. Thus the apple may have looked at Newton before it fell.
+
+Hankey, the postman, compelled the flowers in his window to stand erect
+by tying them to sticks, so Tommy took two sticks from a bundle of
+firewood, and splicing Elspeth's legs to them, held her upright against
+the door with one hand. All he asked of her to-day was to remain in this
+position after he said "One, two, three, four, _picture_!" and withdrew
+his hand, but down she flopped every time, and he said, with scorn,
+
+"You ain't got no genius: you has just talent."
+
+But he had her in bed with the scratches nicely covered up before his
+mother came home.
+
+He tried another plan with more success. Lost dogs, it may be
+remembered, had a habit of following Shovel's father, and he not only
+took the wanderers in, but taught them how to beg and shake hands and
+walk on two legs. Tommy had sometimes been present at these agreeable
+exercises, and being an inventive boy he--But as Elspeth was a nice
+girl, let it suffice to pause here and add shyly, that in time she could
+walk.
+
+He also taught her to speak, and if you need to be told with what
+luscious word he enticed her into language you are sentenced to re-read
+the first pages of his life.
+
+"Thrums," he would say persuasively, "Thrums, Thrums. You opens your
+mouth like this, and shuts it like this, and that's it." Yet when he had
+coaxed her thus for many days, what does she do but break her long
+silence with the word "Tommy!" The recoil knocked her over.
+
+Soon afterward she brought down a bigger bird. No Londoner can say "Auld
+licht," and Tommy had often crowed over Shovel's "Ol likt." When the
+testing of Elspeth could be deferred no longer, he eyed her with the
+look a hen gives the green egg on which she has been sitting twenty
+days, but Elspeth triumphed, saying the words modestly even, as if
+nothing inside her told her she had that day done something which would
+have baffled Shakespeare, not to speak of most of the gentlemen who sit
+for Scotch constituencies.
+
+"Reddy couldn't say it!" Tommy cried exultantly, and from that great
+hour he had no more fears for Elspeth.
+
+Next the alphabet knocked for admission; and entered first _M_ and _P_,
+which had prominence in the only poster visible from the window. Mrs.
+Sandys had taught Tommy his letters, but he had got into words by
+studying posters.
+
+Elspeth being able now to make the perilous descent of the stairs,
+Tommy guided her through the streets (letting go hurriedly if Shovel
+hove in sight), and here she bagged new letters daily. With Catlings
+something, which is the best, she got into capital _C_s; _y_s are found
+easily when you know where to look for them (they hang on behind); _N_s
+are never found singly, but often three at a time; _Q_ is so
+aristocratic that even Tommy had only heard of it, doubtless it was
+there, but indistinguishable among the masses like a celebrity in a
+crowd; on the other hand, big _A_ and little _e_ were so dirt cheap,
+that these two scholars passed them with something very like a sneer.
+
+The printing-press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse
+of modern times, one sometimes forgets which. Elspeth's faith in it was
+absolute, and as it only spoke to her from placards, here was her
+religion, at the age of four:
+
+"PRAY WITHOUT CEASING.
+HAPPY ARE THEY WHO NEEDING KNOW THE
+PAINLESS POROUS PLASTER."
+
+Of religion, Tommy had said many fine things to her, embellishments on
+the simple doctrine taught him by his mother before the miseries of this
+world made her indifferent to the next. But the meaning of "Pray without
+ceasing," Elspeth, who was God's child always, seemed to find out for
+herself, and it cured all her troubles. She prayed promptly for every
+one she saw doing wrong, including Shovel, who occasionally had words
+with Tommy on the subject, and she not only prayed for her mother, but
+proposed to Tommy that they should buy her a porous plaster. Mrs. Sandys
+had been down with bronchitis again.
+
+Tommy raised the monetary difficulty.
+
+Elspeth knew where there was some money, and it was her very own.
+
+Tommy knew where there was money, and it was his very own.
+
+Elspeth would not tell how much she had, and it was twopence halfpenny.
+
+Neither would Tommy tell, and it was twopence.
+
+Tommy would get a surprise on his birthday.
+
+So would Elspeth get a surprise on her birthday.
+
+Elspeth would not tell what the surprise was to be, and it was to be a
+gun.
+
+Tommy also must remain mute, and it was to be a box of dominoes.
+
+Elspeth did not want dominoes.
+
+Tommy knew that, but he wanted them.
+
+Elspeth discovered that guns cost fourpence, and dominoes threepence
+halfpenny; it seemed to her, therefore, that Tommy was defrauding her of
+a halfpenny.
+
+Tommy liked her cheek. You got the dominoes for threepence halfpenny,
+but the price on the box is fivepence, so that Elspeth would really owe
+him a penny.
+
+This led to an agonizing scene in which Elspeth wept while Tommy told
+her sternly about Reddy. It had become his custom to tell the tale of
+Reddy when Elspeth was obstreperous.
+
+Then followed a scene in which Tommy called himself a scoundrel for
+frightening his dear Elspeth, and swore that he loved none but her.
+Result: reconciliation, and agreed, that instead of a gun and dominoes,
+they should buy a porous plaster. You know the shops where the plasters
+are to be obtained by great colored bottles in their windows, and, as it
+was advisable to find the very best shop, Tommy and Elspeth in their
+wanderings came under the influence of the bottles, red, yellow, green,
+and blue, and color entered into their lives, giving them many delicious
+thrills. These bottles are the first poem known to the London child, and
+you chemists who are beginning to do without them in your windows should
+be told that it is a shame.
+
+In the glamour, then, of the romantic battles walked Tommy and Elspeth
+hand in hand, meeting so many novelties that they might have spared a
+tear for the unfortunate children who sit in nurseries surrounded by all
+they ask for, and if the adventures of these two frequently ended in the
+middle, they had probably begun another while the sailor-suit boy was
+still holding up his leg to let the nurse put on his little sock. While
+they wandered, they drew near unwittingly to the enchanted street, to
+which the bottles are a colored way, and at last they were in it, but
+Tommy recognized it not; he did not even feel that he was near it, for
+there were no outside stairs, no fairies strolling about, it was a short
+street as shabby as his own.
+
+But someone had shouted "Dinna haver, lassie; you're blethering!"
+
+Tommy whispered to Elspeth, "Be still; don't speak," and he gripped her
+hand tighter and stared at the speaker. He was a boy of ten, dressed
+like a Londoner, and his companion had disappeared. Tommy never doubting
+but that he was the sprite of long ago, gripped him by the sleeve. All
+the savings of Elspeth and himself were in his pocket, and yielding to
+impulse, as was his way, he thrust the fivepence halfpenny into James
+Gloag's hand. The new millionaire gaped, but not at his patron, for the
+why and wherefore of this gift were trifles to James beside the
+tremendous fact that he had fivepence halfpenny. "Almichty me!" he cried
+and bolted. Presently he returned, having deposited his money in a safe
+place, and his first remark was perhaps the meanest on record. He held
+out his hand and said greedily, "Have you ony mair?"
+
+This, you feel certain, must have been the most important event of that
+evening, but strange to say, it was not. Before Tommy could answer
+James's question, a woman in a shawl had pounced upon him and hurried
+him and Elspeth out of the street. She had been standing at a corner
+looking wistfully at the window blinds behind which folk from Thrums
+passed to and fro, hiding her face from people in the street, but gazing
+eagerly after them. It was Tommy's mother, whose first free act on
+coming to London had been to find out that street, and many a time since
+them site had skulked through it or watched it from dark places, never
+daring to disclose herself, but sometimes recognizing familiar faces,
+sometimes hearing a few words in the old tongue that is harsh and
+ungracious to you, but was so sweet to her, and bearing them away with
+her beneath her shawl as if they were something warm to lay over her
+cold heart.
+
+For a time she upbraided Tommy passionately for not keeping away from
+this street, but soon her hunger for news of Thrums overcame her
+prudence, and she consented to let him go back if he promised never to
+tell that his mother came from Thrums. "And if ony-body wants to ken
+your name, say it's Tommy, but dinna let on that it's Tommy Sandys."
+
+"Elspeth," Tommy whispered that night, "I'm near sure there's something
+queer about my mother and me and you." But he did not trouble himself
+with wondering what the something queer might be, so engrossed was he in
+the new and exciting life that had suddenly opened to him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE ENCHANTED STREET
+
+
+In Thrums Street, as it ought to have been called, herded at least
+one-half of the Thrums folk in London, and they formed a colony, of
+which the grocer at the corner sometimes said wrathfully that not a
+member would give sixpence for anything except Bibles or whiskey. In the
+streets one could only tell they were not Londoners by their walk, the
+flagstones having no grip for their feet, or, if they had come south
+late in life, by their backs, which they carried at the angle on which
+webs are most easily supported. When mixing with the world they talked
+the English tongue, which came out of them as broad as if it had been
+squeezed through a mangle, but when the day's work was done, it was only
+a few of the giddier striplings that remained Londoners. For the
+majority there was no raking the streets after diversion, they spent the
+hour or two before bed-time in reproducing the life of Thrums. Few of
+them knew much of London except the nearest way between this street and
+their work, and their most interesting visitor was a Presbyterian
+minister, most of whose congregation lived in much more fashionable
+parts, but they were almost exclusively servant girls, and when
+descending area-steps to visit them he had been challenged often and
+jocularly by policemen, which perhaps was what gave him a subdued and
+furtive appearance.
+
+The rooms were furnished mainly with articles bought in London, but
+these became as like Thrums dressers and seats as their owners could
+make them, old Petey, for instance, cutting the back off a chair because
+he felt most at home on stools. Drawers were used as baking-boards,
+pails turned into salt-buckets, floors were sanded and hearthstones
+ca'med, and the popular supper consisted of porter, hot water, and
+soaked bread, after every spoonful of which, they groaned pleasantly,
+and stretched their legs. Sometimes they played at the dambrod, but more
+often they pulled down the blinds on London and talked of Thrums in
+their mother tongue. Nevertheless few of them wanted to return to it,
+and their favorite joke was the case of James Gloag's father, who being
+home-sick flung up his situation and took train for Thrums, but he was
+back in London in three weeks.
+
+Tommy soon had the entry to these homes, and his first news of the
+inmates was unexpected. It was that they were always sleeping. In broad
+daylight he had seen Thrums men asleep on beds, and he was somewhat
+ashamed of them until he heard the excuse. A number of the men from
+Thrums were bakers, the first emigrant of this trade having drawn others
+after him, and they slept great part of the day to be able to work all
+night in a cellar, making nice rolls for rich people. Baker Lumsden, who
+became a friend of Tommy, had got his place in the cellar when his
+brother died, and the brother had succeeded Matthew Croall when he died.
+
+They die very soon, Tommy learned from Lumsden, generally when they are
+eight and thirty. Lumsden was thirty-six, and when he died his nephew
+was to get the place. The wages are good.
+
+Then there were several masons, one of whom, like the first baker, had
+found work for all the others, and there were men who had drifted into
+trades strange to their birthplace, and there was usually one at least
+who had come to London to "better himself" and had not done it as yet.
+The family Tommy liked best was the Whamonds, and especially he liked
+old Petey and young Petey Whamond. They were a large family of women and
+men, all of whom earned their living in other streets, except the old
+man, who kept house and was a famous knitter of stockings, as probably
+his father had been before him. He was a great one, too, at telling what
+they would be doing at that moment in Thrums, every corner of which was
+as familiar to him as the ins and outs of the family hose. Young Petey
+got fourteen shillings a week from a hatter, and one of his duties was
+to carry as many as twenty band-boxes at a time through fashionable
+streets; it is a matter for elation that dukes and statesmen had often
+to take the curb-stone, because young Petey was coming. Nevertheless
+young Petey was not satisfied, and never would be (such is the Thrums
+nature) until he became a salesman in the shop to which he acted at
+present as fetch and carry, and he used to tell Tommy that this position
+would be his as soon as he could sneer sufficiently at the old hats.
+When gentlemen come into the shop and buy a new hat, he explained, they
+put it on, meaning to tell you to send the old one to their address, and
+the art of being a fashionable hatter lies in this: you must be able to
+curl your lips so contemptuously at the old hat that they tell you
+guiltily to keep it, as they have no further use for it. Then they
+retire ashamed of their want of moral courage and you have made an extra
+half-guinea.
+
+"But I aye snort," young Petey admitted, "and it should be done without
+a sound." When he graduated, he was to marry Martha Spens, who was
+waiting for him at Tillyloss. There was a London seamstress whom he
+preferred, and she was willing, but it is safest to stick to Thrums.
+
+When Tommy was among his new friends a Scotch word or phrase often
+escaped his lips, but old Petey and the others thought he had picked it
+up from them, and would have been content to accept him as a London waif
+who lived somewhere round the corner. To trick people so simply,
+however, is not agreeable to an artist, and he told them his name was
+Tommy Shovel, and that his old girl walloped him, and his father found
+dogs, all which inventions Thrums Street accepted as true. What is much
+more noteworthy is that, as he gave them birth, Tommy half believed them
+also, being already the best kind of actor.
+
+Not all the talking was done by Tommy when he came home with news, for
+he seldom mentioned a Thrums name, of which his mother could not tell
+him something more. But sometimes she did not choose to tell, as when he
+announced that a certain Elspeth Lindsay, of the Marywellbrae, was dead.
+After this she ceased to listen, for old Elspeth had been her
+grandmother, and she had now no kin in Thrums.
+
+"Tell me about the Painted Lady," Tommy said to her. "Is it true she's a
+witch?" But Mrs. Sandys had never heard of any woman so called: the
+Painted Lady must have gone to Thrums after her time.
+
+"There ain't no witches now," said Elspeth tremulously; Shovel's mother
+had told her so.
+
+"Not in London," replied Tommy, with contempt; and this is all that was
+said of the Painted Lady then. It is the first mention of her in these
+pages.
+
+The people Mrs. Sandys wanted to hear of chiefly were Aaron Latta and
+Jean Myles, and soon Tommy brought news of them, but at the same time he
+had heard of the Den, and he said first:
+
+"Oh, mother, I thought as you had told me about all the beauty places
+in Thrums, and you ain't never told me about the Den."
+
+His mother heaved a quick breath. "It's the only place I hinna telled
+you o'," she said.
+
+"Had you forget, it mother?"
+
+Forget the Den! Ah, no, Tommy, your mother had not forgotten the Den.
+
+"And, listen, Elspeth, in the Den there's a bonny spring of water called
+the Cuttle Well. Had you forgot the Cuttle Well, mother?"
+
+No, no; when Jean Myles forgot the names of her children she would still
+remember the Cuttle Well. Regardless now of the whispering between Tommy
+and Elspeth, she sat long over the fire, and it is not difficult to
+fathom her thoughts. They were of the Den and the Cuttle Well.
+
+Into the life of every man, and no woman, there comes a moment when he
+learns suddenly that he is held eligible for marriage. A girl gives him
+the jag, and it brings out the perspiration. Of the issue elsewhere of
+this stab with a bodkin let others speak; in Thrums its commonest effect
+is to make the callant's body take a right angle to his legs, for he has
+been touched in the fifth button, and he backs away broken-winded. By
+and by, however, he is at his work--among the turnip-shoots,
+say--guffawing and clapping his corduroys, with pauses for uneasy
+meditation, and there he ripens with the swedes, so that by the
+back-end of the year he has discovered, and exults to know, that the
+reward of manhood is neither more nor less than this sensation at the
+ribs. Soon thereafter, or at worst, sooner or later (for by holding out
+he only puts the women's dander up), he is led captive to the Cuttle
+Well. This well has the reputation of being the place where it is most
+easily said.
+
+The wooded ravine called the Den is in Thrums rather than on its western
+edge, but is so craftily hidden away that when within a stone's throw
+you may give up the search for it; it is also so deep that larks rise
+from the bottom and carol overhead, thinking themselves high in the
+heavens before they are on a level with Nether Drumley's farmland. In
+shape it is almost a semicircle, but its size depends on you and the
+maid. If she be with you, the Den is so large that you must rest here
+and there; if you are after her boldly, you can dash to the Cuttle Well,
+which was the trysting-place, in the time a stout man takes to lace his
+boots; if you are of those self-conscious ones who look behind to see
+whether jeering blades are following, you may crouch and wriggle your
+way onward and not be with her in half an hour.
+
+Old Petey had told Tommy that, on the whole, the greatest pleasure in
+life on a Saturday evening is to put your back against a stile that
+leads into the Den and rally the sweethearts as they go by. The lads,
+when they see you, want to go round by the other stile, but the lasses
+like it, and often the sport ends spiritedly with their giving you a
+clout on the head.
+
+Through the Den runs a tiny burn, and by its side is a pink path, dyed
+this pretty color, perhaps, by the blushes the ladies leave behind them.
+The burn as it passes the Cuttle Well, which stands higher and just out
+of sight, leaps in vain to see who is making that cooing noise, and the
+well, taking the spray for kisses, laughs all day at Romeo, who cannot
+get up. Well is a name it must have given itself, for it is only a
+spring in the bottom of a basinful of water, where it makes about as
+much stir in the world as a minnow jumping at a fly. They say that if a
+boy, by making a bowl of his hands, should suddenly carry off all the
+water, a quick girl could thread her needle at the spring. But it is a
+spring that will not wait a moment.
+
+Men who have been lads in Thrums sometimes go back to it from London or
+from across the seas, to look again at some battered little house and
+feel the blasts of their bairnhood playing through the old wynds, and
+they may take with them a foreign wife. They show her everything, except
+the Cuttle Well; they often go there alone. The well is sacred to the
+memory of first love. You may walk from the well to the round cemetery
+in ten minutes. It is a common walk for those who go back.
+
+First love is but a boy and girl playing at the Cuttle Well with a
+bird's egg. They blow it on one summer evening in the long grass, and on
+the next it is borne away on a coarse laugh, or it breaks beneath the
+burden of a tear. And yet--I once saw an aged woman, a widow of many
+years, cry softly at mention of the Cuttle Well. "John was a good man to
+you," I said, for John had been her husband. "He was a leal man to me,"
+she answered with wistful eyes, "ay, he was a leal man to me--but it
+wasna John I was thinking o'. You dinna ken what makes me greet so
+sair," she added, presently, and though I thought I knew now I was
+wrong. "It's because I canna mind his name," she said.
+
+So the Cuttle Well has its sad memories and its bright ones, and many of
+the bright memories have become sad with age, as so often happens to
+beautiful things, but the most mournful of all is the story of Aaron
+Latta and Jean Myles. Beside the well there stood for long a great pink
+stone, called the Shoaging, Stone, because it could be rocked like a
+cradle, and on it lovers used to cut their names. Often Aaron Latta and
+Jean Myles sat together on the Shoaging Stone, and then there came a
+time when it bore these words cut by Aaron Latta:
+
+HERE LIES THE MANHOOD OF AARON LATTA, A FOND SON, A FAITHFUL FRIEND
+AND A TRUE LOVER, WHO VIOLATED THE FEELINGS OF SEX ON THIS SPOT, AND IS
+NOW THE SCUNNER OF GOD AND MAN
+
+Tommy's mother now heard these words for the first time, Aaron having
+cut them on the stone after she left Thrums, and her head sank at each
+line, as if someone had struck four blows at her.
+
+The stone was no longer at the Cuttle Well. As the easiest way of
+obliterating the words, the minister had ordered it to be broken, and of
+the pieces another mason had made stands for watches, one of which was
+now in Thrums Street.
+
+"Aaron Latta ain't a mason now," Tommy rattled on: "he is a warper,
+because he can warp in his own house without looking on mankind or
+speaking to mankind. Auld Petey said he minded the day when Aaron Latta
+was a merry loon, and then Andrew McVittie said, 'God behears, to think
+that Aaron Latta was ever a merry man!' and Baker Lumsden said, 'Curse
+her!'"
+
+His mother shrank in her chair, but said nothing, and Tommy explained:
+"It was Jean Myles he was cursing; did you ken her, mother? she ruined
+Aaron Latta's life."
+
+"Ay, and wha ruined Jean Myles's life?" his mother cried passionately.
+
+Tommy did not know, but he thought that young Petey might know, for
+young Petey had said: "If I had been Jean Myles I would have spat in
+Aaron's face rather than marry him."
+
+Mrs. Sandys seemed pleased to hear this.
+
+"They wouldna tell me what it were she did," Tommy went on; "they said
+it was ower ugly a story, but she were a bad one, for they stoned her
+out of Thrums. I dinna know where she is now, but she were stoned out of
+Thrums!"
+
+"No alane?"
+
+"There was a man with her, and his name was--it was--"
+
+His mother clasped her hands nervously while Tommy tried to remember the
+name. "His name was Magerful Tam," he said at length.
+
+"Ay," said his mother, knitting her teeth, "that was his name."
+
+"I dinna mind any more," Tommy concluded. "Yes, I mind they aye called
+Aaron Latta 'Poor Aaron Latta.'"
+
+"Did they? I warrant, though, there wasna one as said 'Poor Jean
+Myles'?"
+
+She began the question in a hard voice, but as she said "Poor Jean
+Myles" something caught in her throat, and she sobbed, painful dry sobs.
+
+"How could they pity her when she were such a bad one?" Tommy answered
+briskly.
+
+"Is there none to pity bad ones?" said his sorrowful mother.
+
+Elspeth plucked her by the skirt. "There's God, ain't there?" she said,
+inquiringly, and getting no answer she flopped upon her knees, to say a
+babyish prayer that would sound comic to anybody except to Him to whom
+it was addressed.
+
+"You ain't praying for a woman as was a disgrace to Thrums!" Tommy
+cried, jealously, and he was about to raise her by force, when his
+mother stayed his hand.
+
+"Let her alane," she said, with a twitching mouth and filmy eyes. "Let
+her alane. Let my bairn pray for Jean Myles."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+COMIC OVERTURE TO A TRAGEDY
+
+
+"Jean Myles bides in London" was the next remarkable news brought by
+Tommy from Thrums Street. "And that ain't all, Magerful Tam is her man;
+and that ain't all, she has a laddie called Tommy and that ain't all,
+Petey and the rest has never seen her in London, but she writes letters
+to Thrums folks and they writes to Petey and tells him what she said.
+That ain't all neither, they canna find out what street she bides in,
+but it's on the bonny side of London, and it's grand, and she wears silk
+clothes, and her Tommy has velvet trousers, and they have a servant as
+calls him 'sir.' Oh, I would just like to kick him! They often looks for
+her in the grand streets, but they're angry at her getting on so well,
+and Martha Scrymgeour said it were enough to make good women like her
+stop going reg'lar to the kirk."
+
+"Martha said that!" exclaimed his mother, highly pleased. "Heard you
+anything of a woman called Esther Auld? Her man does the orra work at
+the Tappit Hen public in Thrums."
+
+"He's head man at the Tappit Hen public now," answered Tommy; "and she
+wishes she could find out where Jean Myles bides, so as she could write
+and tell her that she is grand too, and has six hair-bottomed chairs."
+
+"She'll never get the satisfaction," said his mother triumphantly. "Tell
+me more about her."
+
+"She has a laddie called Francie, and he has yellow curls, and she
+nearly greets because she canna tell Jean Myles that he goes to a school
+for the children of gentlemen only. She is so mad when she gets a letter
+from Jean Myles that she takes to her bed."
+
+"Yea, yea!" said Mrs. Sandys cheerily.
+
+"But they think Jean Myles has been brought low at last," continued
+Tommy, "because she hasna wrote for a long time to Thrums, and Esther
+Auld said that if she knowed for certain as Jean Myles had been brought
+low, she would put a threepenny bit in the kirk plate."
+
+"I'm glad you've telled me that, laddie," said Mrs. Sandys, and next
+day, unknown to her children, she wrote another letter. She knew she ran
+a risk of discovery, yet it was probable that Tommy would only hear her
+referred to in Thrums Street by her maiden name, which he had never
+heard from her, and as for her husband he had been Magerful Tam to
+everyone. The risk was great, but the pleasure--
+
+Unsuspicious Tommy soon had news of another letter from Jean Myles,
+which had sent Esther Auld to bed again.
+
+"Instead of being brought low," he announced, "Jean Myles is grander
+than ever. Her Tommy has a governess."
+
+"That would be a doush of water in Esther's face?" his mother said,
+smiling.
+
+"She wrote to Martha Scrymgeour," said Tommy, "that it ain't no pleasure
+to her now to boast as her laddie is at a school for gentlemen's
+children only. But what made her maddest was a bit in Jean Myles's
+letter about chairs. Jean Myles has give all her hair-bottomed chairs to
+a poor woman and buyed a new kind, because hair-bottomed ones ain't
+fashionable now. So Esther Auld can't not bear the sight of her chairs
+now, though she were windy of them till the letter went to Thrums."
+
+"Poor Esther!" said Mrs. Sandys gaily.
+
+"Oh, and I forgot this, mother. Jean Myles's reason for not telling
+where she bides in London is that she's so grand that she thinks if auld
+Petey and the rest knowed where the place was they would visit her and
+boast as they was her friends. Auld Petey stamped wi' rage when he heard
+that, and Martha Scrymgeour said, 'Oh, the pridefu' limmer!'"
+
+"Ay, Martha," muttered Mrs. Sandys, "you and Jean Myles is evens now."
+
+But the passage that had made them all wince the most was one giving
+Jean's reasons for making no calls in Thrums Street. "You can break it
+to Martha Scrymgeour's father and mither," the letter said, "and to
+Petey Whamond's sisters and the rest as has friends in London, that I
+have seen no Thrums faces here, the low part where they bide not being
+for the like of me to file my feet in. Forby that, I could not let my
+son mix with their bairns for fear they should teach him the vulgar
+Thrums words and clarty his blue-velvet suit. I'm thinking you have to
+dress your laddie in corduroy, Esther, but you see that would not do for
+mine. So no more at present, and we all join in compliments, and my
+little velvets says he wishes I would send some of his toys to your
+little corduroys. And so maybe I will, Esther, if you'll tell Aaron
+Latta how rich and happy I am, and if you're feared to say it to his
+face, tell it to the roaring farmer of Double Dykes, and he'll pass it
+on."
+
+"Did you ever hear of such a woman?" Tommy said indignantly, when he had
+repeated as much of this insult to Thrums as he could remember.
+
+But it was information his mother wanted.
+
+"What said they to that bit?" she asked.
+
+At first, it appears, they limited their comments to "Losh, losh,"
+"keeps a'," "it cows," "my eertie," "ay, ay," "sal, tal," "dagont" (the
+meaning of which is obvious). But by and by they recovered their breath,
+and then Baker Lamsden said, wonderingly:
+
+"Wha that was at her marriage could have thought it would turn out so
+weel? It was an eerie marriage that, Petey!"
+
+"Ay, man, you may say so," old Petey answered. "I was there; I was one
+o' them as went in ahint Aaron Latta, and I'm no' likely to forget it."
+
+"I wasna there," said the baker, "but I was standing at the door, and I
+saw the hearse drive up."
+
+"What did they mean, mother?" Tommy asked, but she shuddered and
+replied, evasively, "Did Martha Scrymgeour say anything?"
+
+"She said such a lot," he had to confess, "that I dinna mind none on it.
+But I mind what her father in Thrums wrote to her; he wrote to her that
+if she saw a carriage go by, she was to keep her eyes on the ground, for
+likely as not Jean Myles would be in it, and she thought as they was all
+dirt beneath her feet. But Kirsty Ross--who is she?"
+
+"She's Martha's mother. What about her?"
+
+"She wrote at the end of the letter that Martha was to hang on ahint the
+carriage and find out where Jean Myles bides."
+
+"Laddie, that was like Kirsty! Heard you what the roaring farmer o'
+Double Dykes said?"
+
+No, Tommy had not heard him mentioned. And indeed the roaring farmer of
+Double Dykes had said nothing. He was already lying very quiet on the
+south side of the cemetery.
+
+Tommy's mother's next question cost her a painful effort. "Did you
+hear," she asked, "whether they telled Aaron Latta about the letter?"
+
+"Yes, they telled him," Tommy replied, "and he said a queer thing; he
+said, 'Jean Myles is dead, I was at her coffining.' That's what he aye
+says when they tell him there's another letter. I wonder what he means,
+mother?"
+
+"I wonder!" she echoed, faintly. The only pleasure left her was to raise
+the envy of those who had hooted her from Thrums, but she paid a price
+for it. Many a stab she had got from the unwitting Tommy as he repeated
+the gossip of his new friends, and she only won their envy at the cost
+of their increased ill-will. They thought she was lording it in London,
+and so they were merciless; had they known how poor she was and how ill,
+they would have forgotten everything save that she was a Thrummy like
+themselves, and there were few but would have shared their all with her.
+But she did not believe this, and therefore you may pity her, for the
+hour was drawing near, and she knew it, when she must appeal to some one
+for her children's sake, not for her own.
+
+No, not for her own. When Tommy was wandering the pretty parts of London
+with James Gloag and other boys from Thrums Street in search of Jean
+Myles, whom they were to know by her carriage and her silk dress and her
+son in blue velvet, his mother was in bed with bronchitis in the
+wretched room we know of, or creeping to the dancing school, coughing
+all the way.
+
+Some of the fits of coughing were very near being her last, but she
+wrestled with her trouble, seeming at times to stifle it, and then for
+weeks she managed to go to her work, which was still hers, because
+Shovel's old girl did it for her when the bronchitis would not be
+defied. Shovel's old slattern gave this service unasked and without
+payment; if she was thanked it was ungraciously, but she continued to do
+all she could when there was need; she smelled of gin, but she continued
+to do all she could.
+
+The wardrobe had been put upon its back on the floor, and so converted
+into a bed for Tommy and Elspeth, who were sometimes wakened in the
+night by a loud noise, which alarmed them until they learned that it was
+only the man in the next room knocking angrily on the wall because their
+mother's cough kept him from sleeping.
+
+Tommy knew what death was now, and Elspeth knew its name, and both were
+vaguely aware that it was looking for their mother; but if she could
+only hold out till Hogmanay, Tommy said, they would fleg it out of the
+house. Hogmanay is the mighty winter festival of Thrums, and when it
+came round these two were to give their mother a present that would make
+her strong. It was not to be a porous plaster. Tommy knew now of
+something better than that.
+
+"And I knows too!" Elspeth gurgled, "and I has threepence a'ready, I
+has."
+
+"Whisht!" said Tommy, in an agony of dread, "she hears you, and she'll
+guess. We ain't speaking of nothing to give to you at Hogmanay," he said
+to his mother with great cunning. Then he winked at Elspeth and said,
+with his hand over his mouth, "I hinna twopence!" and Elspeth, about to
+cry in fright, "Have you spended it?" saw the joke and crowed instead,
+"Nor yet has I threepence!"
+
+They smirked together, until Tommy saw a change come over Elspeth's
+face, which made him run her outside the door.
+
+"You was a-going to pray!" he said, severely.
+
+"'Cos it was a lie, Tommy. I does have threepence."
+
+"Well, you ain't a-going to get praying about it. She would hear yer."
+
+"I would do it low, Tommy."
+
+"She would see yer."
+
+"Oh, Tommy, let me. God is angry with me."
+
+Tommy looked down the stair, and no one was in sight. "I'll let yer pray
+here," he whispered, "and you can say I have twopence. But be quick, and
+do it standing."
+
+Perhaps Mrs. Sandys had been thinking that when Hogmanay came her
+children might have no mother to bring presents to, for on their return
+to the room her eyes followed them woefully, and a shudder of
+apprehension shook her torn frame. Tommy gave Elspeth a look that meant
+"I'm sure there's something queer about her."
+
+There was also something queer about himself, which at this time had the
+strangest gallop. It began one day with a series of morning calls from
+Shovel, who suddenly popped his head over the top of the door (he was
+standing on the handle), roared "Roastbeef!" in the manner of a railway
+porter announcing the name of a station, and then at once withdrew.
+
+He returned presently to say that vain must be all attempts to wheedle
+his secret from him, and yet again to ask irritably why Tommy was not
+coming out to hear all about it. Then did Tommy desert Elspeth, and on
+the stair Shovel showed him a yellow card with this printed on it:
+"S.R.J.C.--Supper Ticket;" and written beneath, in a lady's hand: "Admit
+Joseph Salt." The letters, Shovel explained, meant Society for the
+somethink of Juvenile Criminals, and the toffs what ran it got hold of
+you when you came out of quod. Then if you was willing to repent they
+wrote down your name and the place what you lived at in a book, and one
+of them came to see yer and give yer a ticket for the blow-out night.
+This was blow-out night, and that were Shovel's ticket. He had bought it
+from Hump Salt for fourpence. What you get at the blow-out was
+roast-beef, plum-duff, and an orange; but when Hump saw the fourpence he
+could not wait.
+
+A favor was asked of Tommy. Shovel had been told by Hump that it was the
+custom of the toffs to sit beside you and question you about your
+crimes, and lacking the imagination that made Tommy such an ornament to
+the house, the chances were that he would flounder in his answers and
+be ejected. Hump had pointed this out to him after pocketing the
+fourpence. Would Tommy, therefore, make up things for him to say;
+reward, the orange.
+
+This was a proud moment for Tommy, as Shovel's knowledge of crime was
+much more extensive than his own, though they had both studied it in the
+pictures of a lively newspaper subscribed to by Shovel, senior. He
+became patronizing at once and rejected the orange as insufficient.
+
+Then suppose, after he got into the hall, Shovel dropped his ticket out
+at the window; Tommy could pick it up, and then it would admit him also.
+
+Tommy liked this, but foresaw a danger: the ticket might be taken from
+Shovel at the door, just as they took them from you at that singing
+thing in the church he had attended with young Petey.
+
+So help Shovel's davy, there was no fear of this. They were superior
+toffs, what trusted to your honor.
+
+Would Shovel swear to this?
+
+He would.
+
+But would he swear dagont?
+
+He swore dagont; and then Tommy had him. As he was so sure of it, he
+could not object to Tommy's being the one who dropped the ticket out at
+the window?
+
+Shovel did object for a time, but after a wrangle he gave up the ticket,
+intending to take it from Tommy when primed with the necessary tale. So
+they parted until evening, and Tommy returned to Elspeth, secretive but
+elated. For the rest of the day he was in thought, now waggling his head
+smugly over some dark, unutterable design and again looking a little
+scared. In growing alarm she watched his face, and at last she slipped
+upon her knees, but he had her up at once and said, reproachfully:
+
+"It were me as teached yer to pray, and now yer prays for me! That's
+fine treatment!"
+
+Nevertheless, after his mother's return, just before he stole out to
+join Shovel, he took Elspeth aside and whispered to her, nervously:
+
+"You can pray for me if you like, for, oh, Elspeth; I'm thinking as I'll
+need it sore!" And sore he needed it before the night was out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE BOY WITH TWO MOTHERS
+
+
+"I love my dear father and my dear mother and all the dear little kids
+at 'ome. You are a kind laidy or gentleman. I love yer. I will never do
+it again, so help me bob. Amen."
+
+This was what Shovel muttered to himself again and again as the two boys
+made their way across the lamp-lit Hungerford Bridge, and Tommy asked
+him what it meant.
+
+"My old gal learned me that; she's deep," Shovel said, wiping the words
+off his mouth with his sleeve.
+
+"But you got no kids at 'ome!" remonstrated Tommy. (Ameliar was now in
+service.)
+
+Shovel turned on him with the fury of a mother protecting her young.
+"Don't you try for to knock none on it out," he cried, and again fell
+a-mumbling.
+
+Said Tommy, scornfully: "If you says it all out at one bang you'll be
+done at the start."
+
+Shovel sighed.
+
+"And you should blubber when yer says it," added Tommy, who could laugh
+or cry merely because other people were laughing or crying, or even with
+less reason, and so naturally that he found it more difficult to stop
+than to begin. Shovel was the taller by half a head, and irresistible
+with his fists, but to-night Tommy was master.
+
+"You jest stick to me, Shovel," he said airily. "Keep a grip on my hand,
+same as if yer was Elspeth."
+
+"But what was we copped for, Tommy?" entreated humble Shovel.
+
+Tommy asked him if he knew what a butler was, and Shovel remembered,
+confusedly, that there had been a portrait of a butler in his father's
+news-sheet.
+
+"Well, then," said Tommy, inspired by this same source, "there's a room
+a butler has, and it is a pantry, so you and me we crawled through the
+winder and we opened the door to the gang. You and me was copped. They
+catched you below the table and me stabbing the butler."
+
+"It was me what stabbed the butler," Shovel interposed, jealously.
+
+"How could you do it, Shovel?"
+
+"With a knife, I tell yer!"
+
+"Why, you didn't have no knife," said Tommy, impatiently.
+
+This crushed Shovel, but he growled sulkily:
+
+"Well, I bit him in the leg."
+
+"Not you," said selfish Tommy. "You forgets about repenting, and if I
+let yer bite him, you would brag about it. It's safer without, Shovel."
+
+Perhaps it was. "How long did I get in quod, then, Tommy?"
+
+"Fourteen days."
+
+"So did you?" Shovel said, with quick anxiety.
+
+"I got a month," replied Tommy, firmly.
+
+Shovel roared a word that would never have admitted him to the hall.
+Then, "I'm as game as you, and gamer," he whined.
+
+"But I'm better at repenting. I tell yer, I'll cry when I'm repenting."
+Tommy's face lit up, and Shovel could not help saying, with a curious
+look at it:
+
+"You--you ain't like any other cove I knows," to which Tommy replied,
+also in an awe-struck voice:
+
+"I'm so queer, Shovel, that when I thinks 'bout myself I'm--I'm
+sometimes near feared."
+
+"What makes your face for to shine like that? Is it thinking about the
+blow-out?"
+
+No, it was hardly that, but Tommy could not tell what it was. He and the
+saying about art for art's sake were in the streets that night, looking
+for each other.
+
+The splendor of the brightly lighted hall, which was situated in one of
+the meanest streets of perhaps the most densely populated quarter in
+London, broke upon the two boys suddenly and hit each in his vital part,
+tapping an invitation on Tommy's brain-pan and taking Shovel
+coquettishly in the stomach. Now was the moment when Shovel meant to
+strip Tommy of the ticket, but the spectacle in front dazed him, and he
+stopped to tell a vegetable barrow how he loved his dear father and his
+dear mother, and all the dear kids at home. Then Tommy darted forward
+and was immediately lost in the crowd surging round the steps of the
+hall.
+
+Several gentlemen in evening dress stood framed in the lighted doorway,
+shouting: "Have your tickets in your hands and give them up as you pass
+in." They were fine fellows, helping in a splendid work, and their
+society did much good, though it was not so well organized as others
+that have followed in its steps; but Shovel, you may believe, was in no
+mood to attend to them. He had but one thought: that the traitor Tommy
+was doubtless at that moment boring his way toward them, underground,
+as it were, and "holding his ticket in his hand." Shovel dived into the
+rabble and was flung back upside down. Falling with his arms round a
+full-grown man, he immediately ran up him as if he had been a lamp-post,
+and was aloft just sufficiently long to see Tommy give up the ticket and
+saunter into the hall.
+
+The crowd tried at intervals to rush the door. It was mainly composed of
+ragged boys, but here and there were men, women, and girls, who came
+into view for a moment under the lights as the mob heaved and went round
+and round like a boiling potful. Two policemen joined the
+ticket-collectors, and though it was a good-humored gathering, the air
+was thick with such cries as these:
+
+"I lorst my ticket, ain't I telling yer? Gar on, guv'nor, lemme in!"
+
+"Oh, crumpets, look at Jimmy! Jimmy never done nothink, your honor;
+he's a himposter"'
+
+"I'm the boy what kicked the peeler. Hie, you toff with the choker,
+ain't I to step up?"
+
+"Tell yer, I'm a genooine criminal, I am. If yer don't lemme in I'll
+have the lawr on you."
+
+"Let a poor cove in as his father drownded hisself for his country."
+
+"What air yer torking about? Warn't I in larst year, and the cuss as
+runs the show, he says to me, 'Allers welcome,' he says. None on your
+sarse, Bobby. I demands to see the cuss what runs--"
+
+"Jest keeping on me out 'cos I ain't done nothin'. Ho, this is a
+encouragement to honesty, I don't think."
+
+Mighty in tongue and knee and elbow was an unknown knight, ever
+conspicuous; it might be but by a leg waving for one brief moment in the
+air. He did not want to go in, would not go in though they went on their
+blooming knees to him; he was after a viper of the name of Tommy. Half
+an hour had not tired him, and he was leading another assault, when a
+magnificent lady, such as you see in wax-works, appeared in the
+vestibule and made some remark to a policeman, who then shouted:
+
+"If so there be hany lad here called Shovel, he can step forrard."
+
+A dozen lads stepped forward at once, but a flail drove them right and
+left, and the unknown knight had mounted the parapet amid a shower of
+execrations. "If you are the real Shovel," the lady said to him, "you
+can tell me how this proceeds, 'I love my dear father and my dear
+mother--' Go on."
+
+Shovel obeyed, tremblingly. "And all the dear little kids at 'ome. You
+are a kind laidy or gentleman. I love yer. I will never do it again, so
+help me bob. Amen."
+
+"Charming!" chirped the lady, and down pleasant-smelling aisles she led
+him, pausing to drop an observation about Tommy to a clergyman: "So glad
+I came; I have discovered the most delightful little monster called
+Tommy." The clergyman looked after her half in sadness, half
+sarcastically; he was thinking that he had discovered a monster also.
+
+At present the body of the hall was empty, but its sides were lively
+with gorging boys, among whom ladies moved, carrying platefuls of good
+things. Most of them were sweet women, fighting bravely for these boys,
+and not at all like Shovel's patroness, who had come for a sensation.
+Tommy falling into her hands, she got it.
+
+Tommy, who had a corner to himself, was lolling in it like a little
+king, and he not only ordered roast-beef for the awe-struck Shovel, but
+sent the lady back for salt. Then he whispered, exultantly: "Quick,
+Shovel, feel my pocket" (it bulged with two oranges), "now the inside
+pocket" (plum-duff), "now my waistcoat pocket" (threepence); "look in my
+mouth" (chocolates).
+
+When Shovel found speech he began excitedly: "I love my dear father and
+my dear--"
+
+"Gach!" said Tommy, interrupting him contemptuously. "Repenting ain't no
+go, Shovel. Look at them other coves; none of them has got no money, nor
+full pockets, and I tell you, it's 'cos they has repented."
+
+"Gar on!"
+
+"It's true, I tells you. That lady as is my one, she's called her
+ladyship, and she don't care a cuss for boys as has repented," which of
+course was a libel, her ladyship being celebrated wherever paragraphs
+penetrate for having knitted a pair of stockings for the deserving poor.
+
+"When I saw that," Tommy continued, brazenly, "I bragged 'stead of
+repenting, and the wuss I says I am, she jest says, 'You little
+monster,' and gives me another orange."
+
+"Then I'm done for," Shovel moaned, "for I rolled off that 'bout loving
+my dear father and my dear mother, blast 'em, soon as I seen her."
+
+He need not let that depress him. Tommy had told her he would say it,
+but that it was all flam.
+
+Shovel thought the ideal arrangement would be for him to eat and leave
+the torking to Tommy. Tommy nodded. "I'm full, at any rate," he said,
+struggling with his waistcoat. "Oh, Shovel, I _am_ full!"
+
+Her ladyship returned, and the boys held by their contract, but of the
+dark character Tommy seems to have been, let not these pages bear the
+record. Do you wonder that her ladyship believed him? On this point we
+must fight for our Tommy. You would have believed him. Even Shovel, who
+knew, between the bites, that it was all whoppers, listened as to his
+father reading aloud. This was because another boy present half believed
+it for the moment also. When he described the eerie darkness of the
+butler's pantry, he shivered involuntarily, and he shut his eyes
+once--ugh!--that was because he saw the blood spouting out of the
+butler. He was turning up his trousers to show the mark of the butler's
+boot on his leg when the lady was called away, and then Shovel shook
+him, saying: "Darn yer, doesn't yer know as it's all your eye?" which
+brought Tommy to his senses with a jerk.
+
+"Sure's death, Shovel," he whispered, in awe, "I was thinking I done it,
+every bit!"
+
+Had her ladyship come back she would have found him a different boy. He
+remembered now that Elspeth, for whom he had filled his pockets, was
+praying for him; he could see her on her knees, saying, "Oh, God, I'se
+praying for Tommy," and remorse took hold of him and shook him on his
+seat. He broke into one hysterical laugh and then immediately began to
+sob. This was the moment when Shovel should have got him quietly out of
+the hall.
+
+Members of the society discussing him afterwards with bated breath said
+that never till they died could they forget her ladyship's face while he
+did it. "But did you notice the boy's own face? It was positively
+angelic." "Angelic, indeed; the little horror was intoxicated." No,
+there was a doctor present, and according to him it was the meal that
+had gone to the boy's head; he looked half starved. As for the
+clergyman, he only said: "We shall lose her subscription; I am glad of
+it."
+
+Yes, Tommy was intoxicated, but with a beverage not recognized by the
+faculty. What happened was this: Supper being finished, the time had
+come for what Shovel called the jawing, and the boys were now mustered
+in the body of the hall. The limited audience had gone to the gallery,
+and unluckily all eyes except Shovel's were turned to the platform.
+Shovel was apprehensive about Tommy, who was not exactly sobbing now;
+but strange, uncontrollable sounds not unlike the winding up of a clock
+proceeded from his throat; his face had flushed; there was a purposeful
+look in his usually unreadable eye; his fingers were fidgeting on the
+board in front of him, and he seemed to keep his seat with difficulty.
+
+The personage who was to address the boys sat on the platform with
+clergymen, members of committee, and some ladies, one of them Tommy's
+patroness. Her ladyship saw Tommy and smiled to him, but obtained no
+response. She had taken a front seat, a choice that she must have
+regretted presently.
+
+The chairman rose and announced that the. Rev. Mr. ----would open the
+proceedings with prayer. The Rev. Mr. ---- rose to pray in a loud voice
+for the waifs in the body of the hall. At the same moment rose Tommy,
+and began to pray in a squeaky voice for the people on the platform.
+
+He had many Biblical phrases, mostly picked up in Thrums Street, and
+what he said was distinctly heard in the stillness, the clergyman being
+suddenly bereft of speech. "Oh," he cried, "look down on them ones
+there, for, oh, they are unworthy of Thy mercy, and, oh, the worst
+sinner is her ladyship, her sitting there so brazen in the black frock
+with yellow stripes, and the worse I said I were the better pleased were
+she. Oh, make her think shame for tempting of a poor boy, for getting
+suffer little children, oh, why cumbereth she the ground, oh--"
+
+He was in full swing before any one could act. Shovel having failed to
+hold him in his seat, had done what was perhaps the next best thing, got
+beneath it himself. The arm of the petrified clergyman was still
+extended, as if blessing his brother's remarks; the chairman seemed to
+be trying to fling his right hand at the culprit; but her ladyship,
+after the first stab, never moved a muscle. Thus for nearly half a
+minute, when the officials woke up, and squeezing past many knees,
+seized Tommy by the neck and ran him out of the building. All down the
+aisle he prayed hysterically, and for some time afterwards, to Shovel,
+who had been cast forth along with him.
+
+At an hour of that night when their mother was asleep, and it is to be
+hoped they were the only two children awake in London, Tommy sat up
+softly in the wardrobe to discover whether Elspeth was still praying for
+him. He knew that she was on the floor in a night-gown some twelve sizes
+too large for her, but the room was as silent and black as the world he
+had just left by taking his fingers from his ears and the blankets off
+his face.
+
+"I see you," he said mendaciously, and in a guarded voice, so as not to
+waken his mother, from whom he had kept his escapade. This had not the
+desired effect of drawing a reply from Elspeth, and he tried bluster.
+
+"You needna think as I'll repent, you brat, so there! What?
+
+"I wish I hadna told you about it!" Indeed, he had endeavored not to do
+so, but pride in his achievement had eventually conquered prudence.
+
+"Reddy would have laughed, she would, and said as I was a wonder. Reddy
+was the kind I like. What?
+
+"You ate up the oranges quick, and the plum-duff too, so you should pray
+for yoursel' as well as for me. It's easy to say as you didna know how I
+got them till after you eated them, but you should have found out. What?
+
+"Do you think it was for my own self as I done it? I jest done it to get
+the oranges and plum-duff to you, I did, and the threepence too. Eh?
+Speak, you little besom.
+
+"I tell you as I did repent in the hall. I was greeting, and I never
+knowed I put up that prayer till Shovel told me on it. We was sitting in
+the street by that time."
+
+This was true. On leaving the hall Tommy had soon dropped to the cold
+ground and squatted there till he came to, when he remembered nothing of
+what had led to his expulsion. Like a stream that has run into a pond
+and only finds itself again when it gets out, he was but a continuation
+of the boy who when last conscious of himself was in the corner crying
+remorsefully over his misdeed; and in this humility he would have
+returned to Elspeth had no one told him of his prayer. Shovel, however,
+was at hand, not only to tell him all about it, but to applaud, and home
+strutted Tommy chuckling.
+
+"I am sleeping," he next said to Elspeth, "so you may as well come to
+your bed."
+
+He imitated the breathing of a sleeper, but it was the only sound to be
+heard in London, and he desisted fearfully. "Come away, Elspeth," he
+said, coaxingly, for he was very fond of her and could not sleep while
+she was cold and miserable.
+
+Still getting no response he pulled his body inch by inch out of the
+bed-clothes, and holding his breath, found the floor with his feet
+stealthily, as if to cheat the wardrobe into thinking that he was still
+in it. But his reason was to discover whether Elspeth had fallen asleep
+on her knees without her learning that he cared to know. Almost
+noiselessly he worked himself along the floor, but when he stopped to
+bring his face nearer hers, there was such a creaking of his joints that
+if Elspeth did not hear it she--she must be dead! His knees played whack
+on the floor.
+
+Elspeth only gasped once, but he heard, and remained beside her for a
+minute, so that she might hug him if such was her desire; and she put
+out her hand in the darkness so that his should not have far to travel
+alone if it chanced to be on the way to her. Thus they sat on their
+knees, each aghast at the hard-heartedness of the other.
+
+Tommy put the blankets over the kneeling figure, and presently announced
+from the wardrobe that if he died of cold before repenting the blame of
+keeping him out of heaven would be Elspeth's. But the last word was
+muffled, for the blankets were tucked about him as he spoke, and two
+motherly little arms gave him the embrace they wanted to withhold.
+Foiled again, he kicked off the bed-clothes and said: "I tell yer I wants
+to die!"
+
+This terrified both of them, and he added, quickly:
+
+"Oh, God, if I was sure I were to die to-night I would repent at once."
+It is the commonest prayer in all languages, but down on her knees
+slipped Elspeth again, and Tommy, who felt that it had done him good,
+said indignantly: "Surely that is religion. What?"
+
+He lay on his face until he was frightened by a noise louder than
+thunder in the daytime--the scraping of his eyelashes on the pillow.
+Then he sat up in the wardrobe and fired his three last shots.
+
+"Elspeth Sandys, I'm done with yer forever, I am. I'll take care on yer,
+but I'll never kiss yer no more.
+
+"When yer boasts as I'm your brother I'll say you ain't. I'll tell my
+mother about Reddy the morn, and syne she'll put you to the door smart.
+
+"When you are a grown woman I'll buy a house to yer, but you'll have
+jest to bide in it by your lonely self, and I'll come once a year to
+speir how you are, but I won't come in, I won't--I'll jest cry up the
+stair."
+
+The effect of this was even greater than he had expected, for now two
+were in tears instead of one, and Tommy's grief was the more
+heartrending, he was so much better at everything than Elspeth. He
+jumped out of the wardrobe and ran to her, calling her name, and he put
+his arms round her cold body, and the dear mite, forgetting how cruelly
+he had used her, cried, "Oh, tighter, Tommy, tighter; you didn't not
+mean it, did yer? Oh, you is terrible fond on me, ain't yer? And you
+won't not tell my mother 'bout Reddy, will yer, and you is no done wi'
+me forever, is yer? and you won't not put me in a house by myself, will
+yer? Oh, Tommy, is that the tightest you can do?"
+
+And Tommy made it tighter, vowing, "I never meant it; I was a bad un to
+say it. If Reddy were to come back wanting for to squeeze you out, I
+would send her packing quick, I would. I tell yer what, I'll kiss you
+with folk looking on, I will, and no be ashamed to do it, and if Shovel
+is one of them what sees me, and he puts his finger to his nose, I'll
+blood the mouth of him, I will, dagont!"
+
+Then he prayed for forgiveness, and he could always pray more
+beautifully than Elspeth. Even she was satisfied with the way he did it,
+and so, alack, was he.
+
+"But you forgot to tell," she said fondly, when once more they were in
+the wardrobe together--"you forgot to tell as you filled your pockets
+wif things to me."
+
+"I didn't forget," Tommy replied modestly. "I missed it out, on purpose,
+I did, 'cos I was sure God knows on it without my telling him, and I
+thought he would be pleased if I didn't let on as I knowed it was good
+of me."
+
+"Oh, Tommy," cried Elspeth, worshipping him, "I couldn't have doned
+that, I couldn't!" She was barely six, and easily taken in, but she
+would save him from himself if she could.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+AULD LANG SYNE
+
+
+What to do with her ladyship's threepence? Tommy finally decided to drop
+it into the charity-box that had once contained his penny. They held it
+over the slit together, Elspeth almost in tears because it was such a
+large sum to give away, but Tommy looking noble he was so proud of
+himself; and when he said "Three!" they let go.
+
+There followed days of excitement centred round their money-box. Shovel
+introduced Tommy to a boy what said as after a bit you forget how much
+money was in your box, and then when you opened it, oh, Lor'! there is
+more than you thought, so he and Elspeth gave this plan a week's trial,
+affecting not to know how much they had gathered, but when they unlocked
+it, the sum was still only eightpence; so then Tommy told the liar to
+come on, and they fought while the horrified Elspeth prayed, and Tommy
+licked him, a result due to one of the famous Thrums left-handers then
+on exhibition in that street for the first time, as taught the victor by
+Petey Whamond the younger, late of Tillyloss.
+
+The money did come in, once in spate (twopence from Bob in twenty-four
+hours), but usually so slowly that they saw it resting on the way, and
+then, when they listened intently, they could hear the thud of Hogmanay.
+The last halfpenny was a special aggravation, strolling about, just out
+of reach, with all the swagger of sixpence, but at last Elspeth had it,
+and after that, the sooner Hogmanay came the better.
+
+They concealed their excitement under too many wrappings, but their
+mother suspected nothing. When she was dressing on the morning of
+Hogmanay, her stockings happened to be at the other side of the room,
+and they were such a long way off that she rested on the way to them. At
+the meagre breakfast she said what a heavy teapot that was, and Tommy
+thought this funny, but the salt had gone from the joke when he
+remembered it afterwards. And when she was ready to go off to her work
+she hesitated at the door, looking at her bed and from it to her
+children as if in two minds, and then went quietly downstairs.
+
+The distance seems greater than ever to-day, poor woman, and you stop
+longer at the corners, where rude men jeer at you. Scarcely can you push
+open the door of the dancing-school or lift the pail; the fire has gone
+out, you must again go on your knees before it, and again the smoke
+makes you cough. Gaunt slattern, fighting to bring up the phlegm, was it
+really you for whom another woman gave her life, and thought it a rich
+reward to get dressing you once in your long clothes, when she called
+you her beautiful, and smiled, and smiling, died? Well, well; but take
+courage, Jean Myles. The long road still lies straight up hill, but your
+climbing is near an end. Shrink from the rude men no more, they are soon
+to forget you, so soon! It is a heavy door, but soon you will have
+pushed it open for the last time. The girls will babble still, but not
+to you, not of you. Cheer up, the work is nearly done. Her beautiful!
+Come, beautiful, strength for a few more days, and then you can leave
+the key of the leaden door behind you, and on your way home you may kiss
+your hand joyously to the weary streets, for you are going to die.
+
+Tommy and Elspeth had been to the foot of the stair many times to look
+for her before their mother came back that evening, yet when she
+re-entered her home, behold, they were sitting calmly on the fender as
+if this were a day like yesterday or to-morrow, as if Tommy had not been
+on a business visit to Thrums Street, as if the hump on the bed did not
+mean that a glorious something was hidden under the coverlet. True,
+Elspeth would look at Tommy imploringly every few minutes, meaning that
+she could not keep it in much longer, and then Tommy would mutter the
+one word "Bell" to remind her that it was against the rules to begin
+before the Thrums eight-o'clock bell rang. They also wiled away the time
+of waiting by inviting each other to conferences at the window where
+these whispers passed--
+
+"She ain't got a notion, Tommy."
+
+"Dinna look so often at the bed."
+
+"If I could jest get one more peep at it!"
+
+"No, no; but you can put your hand on the top of it as you go by."
+
+The artfulness of Tommy lured his unsuspecting mother into telling how
+they would be holding Hogmanay in Thrums to-night, how cartloads of
+kebbock cheeses had been rolling into the town all the livelong day ("Do
+you hear them, Elspeth?"), and in dark closes the children were already
+gathering, with smeared faces and in eccentric dress, to sally forth as
+guisers at the clap of eight, when the ringing of a bell lets Hogmanay
+loose. ("You see, Elspeth?") Inside the houses men and women were
+preparing (though not by fasting, which would have been such a good way
+that it is surprising no one ever thought of it) for a series of visits,
+at every one of which they would be offered a dram and kebbock and
+bannock, and in the grander houses "bridies," which are a sublime kind
+of pie.
+
+Tommy had the audacity to ask what bridies were like. And he could not
+dress up and be a guiser, could he, mother, for the guisers sang a song,
+and he did not know the words? What a pity they could not get bridies to
+buy in London, and learn the song and sing it. But of course they could
+not! ("Elspeth, if you tumble off the fender again, she'll guess.")
+
+Such is a sample of Tommy, but Elspeth was sly also, if in a smaller
+way, and it was she who said: "There ain't nothin' in the bed, is there,
+Tommy!" This duplicity made her uneasy, and she added, behind her teeth,
+"Maybe there is," and then, "O God, I knows as there is."
+
+But as the great moment drew near there were no more questions; two
+children were staring at the clock and listening intently for the peal
+of a bell nearly five hundred miles away.
+
+The clock struck. "Whisht! It's time, Elspeth! They've begun! Come on!"
+
+A few minutes afterwards Mrs. Sandys was roused by a knock at the door,
+followed by the entrance of two mysterious figures. The female wore a
+boy's jacket turned outside in, the male a woman's bonnet and a shawl,
+and to make his disguise the more impenetrable he carried a poker in his
+right hand. They stopped in the middle of the floor and began to recite,
+rather tremulously,
+
+Get up, good wife, and binna sweir,
+And deal your bread to them that's here.
+For the time will come when you'll be dead,
+And then you'll need neither ale nor bread.
+
+Mrs. Sandys had started, and then turned piteously from them; but when
+they were done she tried to smile, and said, with forced gayety, that
+she saw they were guisers, and it was a fine night, and would they take
+a chair. The male stranger did so at once, but the female said, rather
+anxiously: "You are sure as you don't know who we is?" Their hostess
+shook her head, and then he of the poker offered her three guesses, a
+daring thing to do, but all went well, for her first guess was Shovel
+and his old girl; second guess, Before and After; third guess, Napoleon
+Buonaparte and the Auld Licht minister. At each guess the smaller of the
+intruders clapped her hands gleefully, but when, with the third, she was
+unmuzzled, she putted with her head at Mrs. Sandys and hugged her,
+screaming, "It ain't none on them; it's jest me, mother, it's Elspeth!"
+and even while their astounded hostess was asking could it be true, the
+male conspirator dropped his poker noisily (to draw attention to
+himself) and stood revealed as Thomas Sandys.
+
+Wasn't it just like Thrums, wasn't it just the very, very same? Ah, it
+was wonderful, their mother said, but, alas, there was one thing
+wanting: she had no Hogmanay to give the guisers.
+
+Had she not? What a pity, Elspeth! What a pity, Tommy! What might that
+be in the bed, Elspeth? It couldn't not be their Hogmanay, could it,
+Tommy? If Tommy was his mother he would look and see. If Elspeth was her
+mother she would look and see.
+
+Her curiosity thus cunningly aroused, Mrs. Sandys raised the coverlet
+of the bed and--there were three bridies, an oatmeal cake, and a hunk of
+kebbock. "And they comed from Thrums!" cried Elspeth, while Tommy cried,
+"Petey and the others got a lot sent from Thrums, and I bought the
+bridies from them, and they gave me the bannock and the kebbock for
+nuthin'!" Their mother did not utter the cry of rapture which Tommy
+expected so confidently that he could have done it for her; instead, she
+pulled her two children toward her, and the great moment was like to be
+a tearful rather than an ecstatic one, for Elspeth had begun to whimper,
+and even Tommy--but by a supreme effort he shouldered reality to the
+door.
+
+"Is this my Hogmanay, guidwife?" he asked in the nick of time, and the
+situation thus being saved, the luscious feast was partaken of, the
+guisers listening solemnly as each bite went down. They also took care
+to address their hostess as "guidwife" or "mistress," affecting not to
+have met her lately, and inquiring genially after the health of herself
+and family. "How many have you?" was Tommy's masterpiece, and she
+answered in the proper spirit, but all the time she was hiding great
+part of her bridie beneath her apron, Hogmanay having come too late for
+her.
+
+Everything was to be done exactly as they were doing it in Thrums
+Street, and so presently Tommy made a speech; it was the speech of old
+Petey, who had rehearsed it several times before him. "Here's a toast,"
+said Tommy, standing up and waving his arms, "here's a toast that we'll
+drink in silence, one that maun have sad thoughts at the back o't to
+some of us, but one, my friends, that keeps the hearts of Thrums folk
+green and ties us all thegither, like as it were wi' twine. It's to all
+them, wherever they may be the night, wha' have sat as lads and lasses
+at the Cuttle Well."
+
+To one of the listeners it was such an unexpected ending that a faint
+cry broke from her, which startled the children, and they sat in silence
+looking at her. She had turned her face from them, but her arm was
+extended as if entreating Tommy to stop.
+
+"That was the end," he said, at length, in a tone of expostulation;
+"it's auld Petey's speech."
+
+"Are you sure," his mother asked wistfully, "that Petey was to say _all_
+them as have sat at the Cuttle Well? He made no exception, did he?"
+
+Tommy did not know what exception was, but he assured her that he had
+repeated the speech, word for word. For the remainder of the evening she
+sat apart by the fire, while her children gambled for crack-nuts, young
+Petey having made a teetotum for Tommy and taught him what the letters
+on it meant. Their mirth rang faintly in her ear, and they scarcely
+heard her fits of coughing; she was as much engrossed in her own
+thoughts as they in theirs, but hers were sad and theirs were
+jocund--Hogmanay, like all festivals, being but a bank from which we
+can only draw what we put in. So an hour or more passed, after which
+Tommy whispered to Elspeth: "Now's the time; they're at it now," and
+each took a hand of their mother, and she woke from her reverie to find
+that they had pulled her from her chair and were jumping up and down,
+shouting, excitedly, "For Auld Lang Syne, my dear, for Auld Lang Syne,
+Auld Lang Syne, my dear, Auld Lang Syne." She tried to sing the words
+with her children, tried to dance round with them, tried to smile, but--
+
+It was Tommy who dropped her hand first. "Mother," he cried, "your face
+is wet, you're greeting sair, and you said you had forgot the way."
+
+"I mind it now, man, I mind it now," she said, standing helplessly in
+the middle of the room.
+
+Elspeth nestled against her, crying, "My mother was thinking about
+Thrums, wasn't she, Tommy?"
+
+"I was thinking about the part o't I'm most awid to be in," the poor
+woman said, sinking back into her chair.
+
+"It's the Den," Tommy told Elspeth.
+
+"It's the Square," Elspeth told Tommy.
+
+"No, it's Monypenny."
+
+"No, it's the Commonty."
+
+But it was none of these places. "It's the cemetery," the woman said,
+"it's the hamely, quiet cemetery on the hillside. Oh, there's mony a
+bonny place in my nain bonny toon, but there's nain so hamely like as
+the cemetery." She sat shaking in the chair, and they thought she was to
+say no more, but presently she rose excitedly, and with a vehemence that
+made them shrink from her she cried: "I winna lie in London! tell Aaron
+Latta that; I winna lie in London!"
+
+For a few more days she trudged to her work, and after that she seldom
+left her bed. She had no longer strength to coax up the phlegm, and a
+doctor brought in by Shovel's mother warned her that her days were near
+an end. Then she wrote her last letter to Thrums, Tommy and Elspeth
+standing by to pick up the pen when it fell from her feeble hand, and in
+the intervals she told them that she was Jean Myles.
+
+"And if I die and Aaron hasna come," she said, "you maun just gang to
+auld Petey and tell him wha you are."
+
+"But how can you be Jean Myles?" asked astounded Tommy. "You ain't a
+grand lady and--"
+
+His mother looked at Elspeth. "No' afore her," she besought him; but
+before he set off to post the letter she said: "Come canny into my bed
+the night, when Elspeth 's sleeping, and syne I'll tell you all there is
+to tell about Jean Myles."
+
+"Tell me now whether the letter is to Aaron Latta?"
+
+"It's for him," she said, "but it's no' to him. I'm feared he might burn
+it without opening it if he saw my write on the cover, so I've wrote it
+to a friend of his wha will read it to him."
+
+"And what's inside, mother?" the boy begged, inquisitively. "It must be
+queer things if they'll bring Aaron Latta all the way from Thrums."
+
+"There's but little in it, man," she said, pressing her hand hard upon
+her chest. "It's no muckle mair than 'Auld Lang Syne, my dear, for Auld
+Lang Syne.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE FAVORITE OF THE LADIES
+
+
+That night the excited boy was wakened by a tap-tap, as of someone
+knocking for admittance, and stealing to his mother's side, he cried,
+"Aaron Latta has come; hearken to him chapping at the door!"
+
+It was only the man through the wall, but Mrs. Sandys took Tommy into
+bed with her, and while Elspeth slept, told him the story of her life.
+She coughed feebly now, but the panting of the dying is a sound that no
+walls can cage, and the man continued to remonstrate at intervals. Tommy
+never recalled his mother's story without seeming, through the darkness
+in which it was told, to hear Elspeth's peaceful breathing and the angry
+tap-tap on the wall.
+
+"I'm sweer to tell it to you," she began, "but tell I maun, for though
+it's just a warning to you and Elspeth no' to be like them that brought
+you into the world, it's all I have to leave you. Ay, and there's
+another reason: you may soon be among folk wha ken but half the story
+and put a waur face on it than I deserve."
+
+She had spoken calmly, but her next words were passionate.
+
+"They thought I was fond o'him," she cried; "oh, they were blind,
+blind! Frae the first I could never thole the sight o' him.
+
+"Maybe that's no' true," she had to add. "I aye kent he was a black, but
+yet I couldna put him out o' my head; he took sudden grips o' me like an
+evil thought. I aye ran frae him, and yet I sair doubt that I went
+looking for him too."
+
+"Was it Aaron Latta?" Tommy asked.
+
+"No, it was your father. The first I ever saw of him was at Cullew, four
+lang miles frae Thrums. There was a ball after the market, and Esther
+Auld and me went to it. We went in a cart, and I was wearing a pink
+print, wi' a white bonnet, and blue ribbons that tied aneath the chin. I
+had a shawl abune, no' to file them. There wasna a more innocent lassie
+in Thrums, man, no, nor a happier one; for Aaron Latta--Aaron came half
+the way wi' us, and he was hauding my hand aneath the shawl. He hadna
+speired me at that time, but I just kent.
+
+"It was an auld custom to choose a queen of beauty at the ball, but that
+night the men couldna 'gree wha should be judge, and in the tail-end
+they went out thegither to look for one, determined to mak' judge o' the
+first man they met, though they should have to tear him off a horse and
+bring him in by force. You wouldna believe to look at me now, man, that
+I could have had any thait o' being made queen, but I was fell bonny,
+and I was as keen as the rest. How simple we were, all pretending to
+one another that we didna want to be chosen! Esther Auld said she would
+hod ahint the tent till a queen was picked, and at the very time she
+said it, she was in a palsy, through no being able to decide whether she
+looked better in her shell necklace or wanting it. She put it on in the
+end, and syne when we heard the tramp o' the men, her mind misgave her,
+and she cried: 'For the love o' mercy, keep them out till I get it off
+again!' So we were a' laughing when they came in.
+
+"Laddie, it was your father and Elspeth's that they brought wi' them,
+and he was a stranger to us, though we kent something about him afore
+the night was out. He was finely put on, wi' a gold chain, and a free
+w'y of looking at women, and if you mind o' him ava, you ken that he was
+fair and buirdly, wi' a full face, and aye a laugh ahint it. I tell ye,
+man, that when our een met, and I saw that triumphing laugh ahint his
+face, I took a fear of him, as if I had guessed the end.
+
+"For years and years after that night I dreamed it ower again, and aye I
+heard mysel' crying to God to keep that man awa' frae me. But I doubt I
+put up no sic prayer at the time; his masterful look fleid me, and yet
+it drew me against my will, and I was trembling wi' pride as well as
+fear when he made me queen. We danced thegither and fought thegither a'
+through the ball, and my will was no match for his, and the worst o't
+was I had a kind o' secret pleasure in being mastered.
+
+"Man, he kissed me. Lads had kissed me afore that night, but never since
+first I went wi' Aaron Latta to the Cuttle Well. Aaron hadna done it,
+but I was never to let none do it again except him. So when your father
+did it I struck him, but ahint the redness that came ower his face, I
+saw his triumphing laugh, and he whispered that he liked me for the
+blow. He said, 'I prefer the sweer anes, and the more you struggle, my
+beauty, the better pleased I'll be.' Almost his hinmost words to me was,
+'I've been hearing of your Aaron, and that pleases me too!' I fired up
+at that and telled him what I thought of him, but he said, 'If you canna
+abide me, what made you dance wi' me so often?' and, oh, laddie, that's
+a question that has sung in my head since syne.
+
+"I've telled you that we found out wha he was, and 'deed he made no
+secret of it. Up to the time he was twal year auld he had been a kent
+face in that part, for his mither was a Cullew woman called Mag Sandys,
+ay, and a single woman. She was a hard ane too, for when he was twelve
+year auld he flung out o' the house saying he would ne'er come back, and
+she said he shouldna run awa' wi' thae new boots on, so she took the
+boots off him and let him go.
+
+"He was a grown man when more was heard o' him, and syne stories came
+saying he was at Redlintie, playing queer games wi' his father. His
+father was gauger there, that's exciseman, a Mr. Cray, wha got his wife
+out o' Thrums, and even when he was courting her (so they say) had the
+heart to be ower chief wi' this other woman. Weel, Magerful Tam, as he
+was called through being so masterful, cast up at Redlintie frae none
+kent where, gey desperate for siller, but wi' a black coat on his back,
+and he said that all he wanted was to be owned as the gauger's son. Mr.
+Cray said there was no proof that he was his son, and syne the queer
+sport began. Your father had noticed he was like Mr. Cray, except in the
+beard, and so he had his beard clippit the same, and he got hand o' some
+weel-kent claethes o' the gauger's that had been presented to a poor
+body, and he learned up a' the gauger's tricks of speech and walking,
+especially a droll w'y he had o' taking snuff and syne flinging back his
+head. They were as like as buckies after that, and soon there was a town
+about it, for one day ladies would find that they had been bowing to the
+son thinking he was the father, and the next they wouldna speak to the
+father, mistaking him for the son; and a report spread to the head
+office o' the excise that the gauger of Redlintie spent his evenings at
+a public house, singing 'The De'il's awa' wi' the Exciseman.' Tam drank
+nows and nans, and it ga'e Mr. Cray a turn to see him come rolling yont
+the street, just as if it was himsel' in a looking-glass. He was a
+sedate-living man now, but chiefly because his wife kept him in good
+control, and this sight brought back auld times so vive to him, that he
+a kind of mistook which ane he was, and took to dropping,
+forgetful-like, into public-houses again. It was high time Tam should be
+got out of the place, and they did manage to bribe him into leaving,
+though no easily, for it had been fine sport to him, and to make a
+sensation was what he valued above all things. We heard that he went
+back to Redlintie a curran years after, but both the gauger and his wife
+were dead, and I ken that he didna trouble the twa daughters. They were
+Miss Ailie and Miss Kitty, and as they werena left as well off as was
+expected they came to Thrums, which had been their mother's town, and
+started a school for the gentry there. I dinna doubt but what it's the
+school that Esther Auld's laddie is at.
+
+"So after being long lost sight o' he turned up at Cullew, wi' what
+looked to simple folk a fortune in his pouches, and half a dozen untrue
+stories about how he made it. He had come to make a show o' himsel'
+afore his mither, and I dare say to give her some gold, for he was aye
+ready to give when he had, I'll say that for him; but she had flitted to
+some unkent place, and so he bade on some weeks at the Cullew public. He
+caredna whether the folk praised or blamed him so long as they wondered
+at him, and queer stories about his doings was aye on the road to
+Thrums. One was that he gave wild suppers to whaever would come; another
+that he went to the kirk just for the glory of flinging a sovereign
+into the plate wi' a clatter; another that when he lay sleeping on twa
+chairs, gold and silver dribbled out o' his trouser pouches to the
+floor.
+
+"There was an ugly story too, about a lassie, that led to his leaving
+the place and coming to Thrums, after he had near killed the Cullew
+smith, in a fight. The first I heard o' his being in Thrums was when
+Aaron Latta walked into my granny's house and said there was a strange
+man at the Tappit Hen public standing drink to any that would tak', and
+boasting that he had but to waggle his finger to make me give Aaron up.
+I went wi' Aaron and looked in at the window, but I kent wha it was
+afore I looked. If Aaron had just gone in and struck him! All decent
+women, laddie, has a horror of being fought about. I'm no sure but what
+that's just the difference atween guid ones and ill ones, but this man
+had a power ower me; and if Aaron had just struck him! Instead o'
+meddling he turned white, and I couldna help contrasting them, and
+thinking how masterful your father looked. Fine I kent he was a brute,
+and yet I couldna help admiring him for looking so magerful.
+
+"He bade on at the Tappit Hen, flinging his siller about in the way that
+made him a king at Cullew, but no molesting Miss Ailie and Miss Kitty,
+which all but me thought was what he had come to Thrums to do. Aaron and
+me was cried for the first time the Sabbath after he came, and the next
+Sabbath for the second time, but afore that he was aye getting in my
+road and speaking to me, but I ran frae him and hod frae him when I
+could, and he said the reason I did that was because I kent his will was
+stronger than mine. He was aye saying things that made me think he saw
+down to the bottom o' my soul; what I didna understand was that in
+mastering other women he had been learning to master me. Ay, but though
+I thought ower muckle about him, never did I speak him fair. I loo'ed
+Aaron wi' all my heart, and your father kent it; and that, I doubt, was
+what made him so keen, for, oh, but he was vain!
+
+"And now we've come to the night I'm so sweer to speak about. She was a
+good happy lassie that went into the Den that moonlight night wi'
+Aaron's arm round her, but it was another woman that came out. We
+thought we had the Den to oursel's, and as we sat on the Shoaging Stane
+at the Cuttle Well, Aaron wrote wi' a stick on the ground 'Jean Latta,'
+and prigged wi' me to look at it, but I spread my hands ower my face,
+and he didna ken that I was keeking at it through my fingers all the
+time. We was so ta'en up with oursel's that we saw nobody coming, and
+all at once there was your father by the side o' us! 'You've written the
+wrong name, Aaron,' he said, jeering and pointing with his foot at the
+letters; 'it should be Jean Sandys.'
+
+"Aaron said not a word, but I had a presentiment of ill, and I cried,
+'Dinna let him change the name, Aaron!' Your father had been to change
+it himsel', but at that he had a new thait, and he said, 'No, I'll no'
+do it; your brave Aaron shall do it for me.'
+
+"Laddie, it doesna do for a man to be a coward afore a woman that's fond
+o' him. A woman will thole a man's being anything except like hersel'.
+When I was sure Aaron was a coward I stood still as death, waiting to
+ken wha's I was to be.
+
+"Aaron did it. He was loath, but your father crushed him to the ground,
+and said do it he should, and warned him too that if he did it he would
+lose me, bantering him and cowing him and advising him no' to shame me,
+all in a breath. He kent so weel, you see, what was in my mind, and aye
+there was that triumphing laugh ahint his face. If Aaron had fought and
+been beaten, even if he had just lain there and let the man strike away,
+if he had done anything except what he was bidden, he would have won,
+for it would have broken your father's power ower me. But to write the
+word! It was like dishonoring me to save his ain skin, and your father
+took good care he should ken it. You've heard me crying to Aaron in my
+sleep, but it wasna for him I cried, it was for his fire-side. All the
+love I had for him, and it was muckle, was skailed forever that night at
+the Cuttle Well. Without a look ahint me away I went wi' my master, and
+I had no more will to resist him--and oh, man, man, when I came to
+mysel' next morning I wished I had never been born!
+
+"The men folk saw that Aaron had shamed them, and they werena quite so
+set agin me as the women, wha had guessed the truth, though they couldna
+be sure o't. Sair I pitied mysel', and sair I grat, but only when none
+was looking. The mair they miscalled me the higher I held my head, and I
+hung on your father's arm as if I adored him, and I boasted about his
+office and his clerk in London till they believed what I didna believe a
+word o' myself.
+
+"But though I put sic a brave face on't, I was near demented in case he
+shouldna marry me, and he kent that and jokit me about it. Dinna think I
+was fond o' him; I hated him now. And dinna think his masterfulness had
+any more power ower me; his power was broken forever when I woke up that
+weary morning. But that was ower late, and to wait on by mysel' in
+Thrums for what might happen, and me a single woman--I daredna! So I
+flattered at him, and flattered at him, till I got the fool side o' him,
+and he married me.
+
+"My granny let the marriage take place in her house, and he sent in so
+muckle meat and drink that some folk was willing to come. One came that
+wasna wanted. In the middle o' the marriage Aaron Latta, wha had refused
+to speak to anybody since that night, walked in wearing his blacks, wi'
+crape on them, as if it was a funeral, and all he said was that he had
+come to see Jean Myles coffined. He went away quietly as soon as we was
+married, but the crowd outside had fathomed his meaning, and abune the
+minister's words I could hear them crying, 'Ay, it's mair like a burial
+than a marriage!'
+
+"My heart was near breaking wi' woe, but, oh, I was awid they shouldna
+ken it, and the bravest thing I ever did was to sit through the supper
+that night, making muckle o' your father, looking fond-like at him,
+laughing at his coarse jokes, and secretly hating him down to my very
+marrow a' the time. The crowd got word o' the ongoings, and they took a
+cruel revenge. A carriage had been ordered for nine o'clock to take us
+to Tilliedrum, where we should get the train to London, and when we
+heard it, as we thought, drive up to the door, out we went, me on your
+father's arm laughing, but wi' my teeth set. But Aaron's words had put
+an idea into their heads, though he didna intend it, and they had got
+out the hearse. It was the hearse they had brought to the door instead
+of a carriage.
+
+"We got awa' in a carriage in the tail-end, and the stanes hitting it was
+all the good luck flung after me. It had just one horse, and I mind how
+I cried to Esther Auld, wha had been the first to throw, that when I
+came back it would be in a carriage and pair.
+
+"Ay, I had pride! In the carriage your father telled me as a joke that
+he had got away without paying the supper, and that about all the money
+he had now, forby what was to pay our tickets to London, was the
+half-sovereign on his watch-chain. But I was determined to have Thrums
+think I had married grand, and as I had three pound six on me, the
+savings o' all my days, I gave two pound of it to Malcolm Crabb, the
+driver, unbeknown to your father, but pretending it was frae him, and
+telled him to pay for the supper and the carriage with it. He said it
+was far ower muckle, but I just laughed, and said wealthy gentlemen like
+Mr. Sandys couldna be bothered to take back change, so Malcolm could
+keep what was ower. Malcolm was the man Esther Auld had just married,
+and I counted on this maddening her and on Malcolm's spreading the story
+through the town. Laddie, I've kent since syne what it is to be without
+bite or sup, but I've never grudged that siller."
+
+The poor woman had halted many times in her tale, and she was glad to
+make an end. "You've forgotten what a life he led me in London," she
+said, "and it could do you no good to hear it, though it might be a
+lesson to thae lassies at the dancing-school wha think so much o'
+masterful men. It was by betting at horseraces that your father made a
+living, and whiles he was large o' siller, but that didna last, and I
+question whether he would have stuck to me if I hadna got work. Well,
+he's gone, and the Thrums folk'll soon ken the truth about Jean Myles
+now."
+
+She paused, and then cried, with extraordinary vehemence: "Oh, man, how
+I wish I could keep it frae them for ever and ever!"
+
+But presently she was calm again and she said: "What I've been telling
+you, you can understand little o' the now, but some of it will come
+back to you when you're a grown man, and if you're magerful and have
+some lassie in your grip, maybe for the memory of her that bore you,
+you'll let the poor thing awa'."
+
+And she asked him to add this to his nightly prayer: "O God, keep me
+from being a magerful man!" and to teach this other prayer to Elspeth,
+"O God, whatever is to be my fate, may I never be one of them that bow
+the knee to magerful men, and if I was born like that and canna help it,
+oh, take me up to heaven afore I'm fil't."
+
+The wardrobe was invisible in the darkness, but they could still hear
+Elspeth's breathing as she slept, and the exhausted woman listened long
+to it, as if she would fain carry away with her to the other world the
+memory of that sweet sound.
+
+"If you gang to Thrums," she said at last, "you may hear my story frae
+some that winna spare me in the telling; but should Elspeth be wi' you
+at sic times, dinna answer back; just slip quietly away wi' her. She's
+so young that she'll soon forget all about her life in London and all
+about me, and that'll be best for her. I would like her lassiehood to be
+bright and free frae cares, as if there had never been sic a woman as
+me. But laddie, oh, my laddie, dinna you forget me; you and me had him
+to thole thegither, dinna you forget me! Watch ower your little sister
+by day and hap her by night, and when the time comes that a man wants
+her--if he be magerful, tell her my story at once. But gin she loves
+one that is her ain true love, dinna rub off the bloom, laddie, with a
+word about me. Let her and him gang to the Cuttle Well, as Aaron and me
+went, kenning no guile and thinking none, and with their arms round one
+another's waists. But when her wedding-day comes round--"
+
+Her words broke in a sob and she cried: "I see them, I see them standing
+up thegither afore the minister! Oh! you lad, you lad that's to be
+married on my Elspeth, turn your face and let me see that you're no' a
+magerful man!"
+
+But the lad did not turn his face, and when she spoke next it was to
+Tommy.
+
+"In the bottom o' my kist there's a little silver teapot. It's no' real
+silver, but it's fell bonny. I bought it for Elspeth twa or three months
+back when I saw I couldna last the winter. I bought it to her for a
+marriage present. She's no' to see it till her wedding-day comes round.
+Syne you're to give it to her, man, and say it's with her mother's love.
+Tell her all about me, for it canna harm her then. Tell her of the fool
+lies I sent to Thrums, but dinna forget what a bonny place I thought it
+all the time, nor how I stood on many a driech night at the corner of
+that street, looking so waeful at the lighted windows, and hungering for
+the wring of a Thrums hand or the sound of the Thrums word, and all the
+time the shrewd blasts cutting through my thin trails of claithes. Tell
+her, man, how you and me spent this night, and how I fought to keep my
+hoast down so as no' to waken her. Mind that whatever I have been, I
+was aye fond o' my bairns, and slaved for them till I dropped. She'll
+have long forgotten what I was like, and it's just as well, but
+yet--Look at me, Tommy, look long, long, so as you'll be able to call up
+my face as it was on the far-back night when I telled you my mournful
+story. Na, you canna see in the dark, but haud my hand, haud it tight,
+so that, when you tell Elspeth, you'll mind how hot it was, and the skin
+loose on it; and put your hand on my cheeks, man, and feel how wet they
+are wi' sorrowful tears, and lay it on my breast, so that you can tell
+her how I was shrunk awa'. And if she greets for her mother a whiley,
+let her greet."
+
+The sobbing boy hugged his mother. "Do you think I'm an auld woman?" she
+said to him.
+
+"You're gey auld, are you no'?" he answered.
+
+"Ay," she said, "I'm gey auld; I'm nine and twenty. I was seventeen on
+the day when Aaron Latta went half-road in the cart wi' me to Cullew,
+hauding my hand aneath my shawl. He hadna spiered me, but I just kent."
+
+Tommy remained in his mother's bed for the rest of the night, and so
+many things were buzzing in his brain that not for an hour did he think
+it time to repeat his new prayer. At last he said reverently: "O God,
+keep me from being a magerful man!" Then he opened his eyes to let God
+see that his prayer was ended, and added to himself: "But I think I
+would fell like it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+AARON LATTA
+
+
+The Airlie post had dropped the letters for outlying farms at the
+Monypenny smithy and trudged on. The smith having wiped his hand on his
+hair, made a row of them, without looking at the addresses, on his
+window-sill, where, happening to be seven in number, they were almost a
+model of Monypenny, which is within hail of Thrums, but round the corner
+from it, and so has ways of its own. With the next clang on the anvil
+the middle letter fell flat, and now the likeness to Monypenny was
+absolute.
+
+Again all the sound in the land was the melancholy sweet kink, kink,
+kink of the smith's hammer.
+
+Across the road sat Dite Deuchars, the mole-catcher, a solitary figure,
+taking his pleasure on the dyke. Behind him was the flour-miller's
+field, and beyond it the Den, of which only some tree-tops were visible.
+He looked wearily east the road, but no one emerged from Thrums; he
+looked wearily west the road, which doubled out of sight at Aaron
+Latta's cottage, little more than a stone's throw distant. On the inside
+of Aaron's window an endless procession seemed to be passing, but it
+was only the warping mill going round. It was an empty day, but Dite,
+the accursed, was used to them; nothing ever happened where he was, but
+many things as soon as he had gone.
+
+He yawned and looked at the houses opposite. They were all of one story;
+the smith's had a rusty plough stowed away on its roof; under a window
+stood a pew and bookboard, bought at the roup of an old church, and thus
+transformed into a garden-seat. There were many of them in Thrums that
+year. All the doors, except that of the smithy, were shut, until one of
+them blew ajar, when Dite knew at once, from the smell which crossed the
+road, that Blinder was in the bunk pulling the teeth of his potatoes.
+May Ann Irons, the blind man's niece, came out at this door to beat the
+cistern with a bass, and she gave Dite a wag of her head. He was to be
+married to her if she could get nothing better.
+
+By and by the Painted Lady came along the road. She was a little woman,
+brightly dressed, so fragile that a collie might have knocked her over
+with his tail, and she had a beautiful white-and-pink face, the white
+ending of a sudden in the middle of her neck, where it met skin of a
+duller color. As she tripped along with mincing gait, she was speaking
+confidentially to herself, but when she saw Dite grinning, she seemed,
+first, afraid, and then sorry for herself, and then she tried to carry
+it off with a giggle, cocking her head impudently at him. Even then she
+looked childish, and a faded guilelessness, with many pretty airs and
+graces, still lingered about her, like innocent birds loath to be gone
+from the spot where their nest has been. When she had passed monotony
+again reigned, and Dite crossed to the smithy window, though none of the
+letters could be for him. He could read the addresses on six of them,
+but the seventh lay on its back, and every time he rose on his tip-toes
+to squint down at it, the spout pushed his bonnet over his eyes.
+
+"Smith," he cried in at the door, "to gang hame afore I ken wha that
+letter's to is more than I can do."
+
+The smith good-naturedly brought the letter to him, and then glancing at
+the address was dumfounded. "God behears," he exclaimed, with a sudden
+look at the distant cemetery, "it's to Double Dykes!"
+
+Dite also shot a look at the cemetery. "He'll never get it," he said,
+with mighty conviction.
+
+The two men gazed at the cemetery for some time, and at last Dite
+muttered, "Ay, ay, Double Dykes, you was aye fond o' your joke!"
+
+"What has that to do wi' 't?" rapped out the smith, uncomfortably.
+
+Dite shuddered. "Man," he said, "does that letter no bring Double Dykes
+back terrible vive again! If we was to see him climbing the cemetery
+dyke the now, and coming stepping down the fields in his moleskin
+waistcoat wi' the pearl buttons--"
+
+Auchterlonie stopped him with a nervous gesture.
+
+"But it couldna be the pearl buttons," Dite added thoughtfully, "for
+Betty Finlayson has been wearing them to the kirk this four year. Ay,
+ay, Double Dykes, that puts you farther awa' again."
+
+The smith took the letter to a neighbor's house to ask the advice of old
+Irons, the blind tailor, who when he lost his sight had given himself
+the name of Blinder for bairns to play with.
+
+"Make your mind easy, smith," was Blinder's counsel. "The letter is
+meant for the Painted Lady. What's Double Dykes? It's but the name of a
+farm, and we gave it to Sanders because he was the farmer. He's dead,
+and them that's in the house now become Double Dykes in his place."
+
+But the Painted Lady only had the house, objected Dite; Nether Drumgley
+was farming the land, and so he was the real Double Dykes. True, she
+might have pretended to her friends that she had the land also.
+
+She had no friends, the smith said, and since she came to Double Dykes
+from no one could find out where, though they knew her furniture was
+bought in Tilliedrum, she had never got a letter. Often, though, as she
+passed his window she had keeked sideways at the letters, as bairns
+might look at parlys. If he made a tinkle with his hammer at such times
+off she went at once, for she was as easily flichtered as a field of
+crows, that take wing if you tap your pipe on the loof of your hand. It
+was true she had spoken to him once; when he suddenly saw her standing
+at his smiddy door, the surprise near made him fall over his brot. She
+looked so neat and ladylike that he gave his hair a respectful pull
+before he remembered the kind of woman she was.
+
+And what was it she said to him? Dite asked eagerly.
+
+She had pointed to the letters on the window-sill, and said she, "Oh,
+the dear loves!" It was a queer say, but she had a bonny English word.
+The English word was no doubt prideful, but it melted in the mouth like
+a lick of sirup. She offered him sixpence for a letter, any letter he
+liked, but of course he refused it. Then she prigged with him just to
+let her hold one in her hands, for said she, bairnlike, "I used to get
+one every day." It so happened that one of the letters was to Mysy
+Bobbie; and Mysy was of so little importance that he thought there would
+be no harm in letting the Painted Lady hold her letter, so he gave it to
+her, and you should have seen her dawting it with her hand and holding
+it to her breast like a lassie with a pigeon. "Isn't it sweet?" she
+said, and before he could stop her she kissed it. She forgot it was no
+letter of hers, and made to open it, and then she fell a-trembling and
+saying she durst not read it, for you never knew whether the first words
+might not break your heart. The envelope was red where her lips had
+touched it, and yet she had an innocent look beneath the paint. When he
+took the letter from her, though, she called him a low, vulgar fellow
+for presuming to address a lady. She worked herself into a fury, and
+said far worse than that; a perfect guller of clarty language came
+pouring out of her. He had heard women curse many a time without turning
+a hair, but he felt wae when she did it, for she just spoke it like a
+bairn that had been in ill company.
+
+The smith's wife, Suphy, who had joined the company, thought that men
+were easily taken in, especially smiths. She offered, however, to convey
+the letter to Double Dykes. She was anxious to see the inside of the
+Painted Lady's house, and this would be a good opportunity. She admitted
+that she had crawled to the east window of it before now, but that dour
+bairn of the Painted Lady's had seen her head and whipped down the
+blind.
+
+Unfortunate Suphy! she could not try the window this time, as it was
+broad daylight, and the Painted Lady took the letter from her at the
+door. She returned crestfallen, and for an hour nothing happened. The
+mole-catcher went off to the square, saying, despondently, that nothing
+would happen until he was round the corner. No sooner had he rounded the
+corner than something did happen.
+
+A girl who had left Double Dykes with a letter was walking quickly
+toward Monypenny. She wore a white pinafore over a magenta frock, and no
+one could tell her whether she was seven or eight, for she was only the
+Painted Lady's child. Some boys, her natural enemies, were behind; they
+had just emerged from the Den, and she heard them before they saw her,
+and at once her little heart jumped and ran off with her. But the halloo
+that told her she was discovered checked her running. Her teeth went
+into her underlip; now her head was erect. After her came the rabble
+with a rush, flinging stones that had no mark and epithets that hit.
+Grizel disdained to look over her shoulder. Little hunted child, where
+was succor to come from if she could not fight for herself?
+
+Though under the torture she would not cry out. "What's a father?" was
+their favorite jeer, because she had once innocently asked this question
+of a false friend. One tried to snatch the letter from her, but she
+flashed him a look that sent him to the other side of the dyke, where,
+he said, did she think he was afraid of her? Another strutted by her
+side, mimicking her in such diverting manner that presently the others
+had to pick him out of the ditch. Thus Grizel moved onward defiantly
+until she reached Monypenny, where she tossed the letter in at the
+smithy door and immediately returned home. It was the letter that had
+been sent to her mother, now sent back, because it was meant for the
+dead farmer after all.
+
+The smith read Jean Myles's last letter, with a face of growing gravity.
+"Dear Double Dykes," it said, "I send you these few scrapes to say I am
+dying, and you and Aaron Latta was seldom sindry, so I charge you to go
+to him and say to him 'Aaron Latta, it's all lies Jean Myles wrote to
+Thrums about her grandeur, and her man died mony year back, and it was
+the only kindness he ever did her, and if she doesna die quick, her and
+her starving bairns will be flung out into the streets.' If that doesna
+move him, say, 'Aaron Latta, do you mind yon day at Inverquharity and
+the cushie doos?' likewise, 'Aaron Latta, do you mind yon day at the
+Kaims of Airlie?' likewise, 'Aaron Latta, do you mind that Jean Myles
+was ower heavy for you to lift? Oh, Aaron, you could lift me so pitiful
+easy now.' And syne says you solemnly three times, 'Aaron Latta, Jean
+Myles is lying dying all alone in a foreign land; Aaron Latta, Jean
+Myles is lying dying all alone in a foreign land; Aaron Latta, Jean
+Myles is lying dying all alone in a foreign land.' And if he's sweer to
+come, just say, 'Oh, Aaron, man, you micht; oh, Aaron, oh, Aaron, are
+you coming?'"
+
+The smith had often denounced this woman, but he never said a word
+against her again. He stood long reflecting, and then took the letter to
+Blinder and read it to him.
+
+"She doesna say, 'Oh, Aaron Latta, do you mind the Cuttle Well?'" was
+the blind man's first comment.
+
+"She was thinking about it," said Auchterlonie.
+
+"Ay, and he's thinking about it," said Blinder, "night and day, night
+and day. What a town there'll be about that letter, smith!"
+
+"There will. But I'm to take it to Aaron afore the news spreads. He'll
+never gang to London though."
+
+"I think he will, smith."
+
+"I ken him well."
+
+"Maybe I ken him better."
+
+"You canna see the ugly mark it left on his brow."
+
+"I can see the uglier marks it has left in his breast."
+
+"Well, I'll take the letter; I can do no more."
+
+When the smith opened the door of Aaron's house he let out a draught of
+hot air that was glad to be gone from the warper's restless home. The
+usual hallan, or passage, divided the but from the ben, and in the ben a
+great revolving thing, the warping-mill, half filled the room. Between
+it and a pile of webs that obscured the light a little silent man was
+sitting on a box turning a handle. His shoulders were almost as high as
+his ears, as if he had been caught forever in a storm, and though he was
+barely five and thirty, he had the tattered, dishonored beard of black
+and white that comes to none till the glory of life has gone.
+
+Suddenly the smith appeared round the webs. "Aaron," he said, awkwardly,
+"do you mind Jean Myles?"
+
+The warper did not for a moment take his eyes off a contrivance with
+pirns in it that was climbing up and down the whirring mill.
+
+"She's dead," he answered.
+
+"She's dying," said the smith.
+
+A thread broke, and Aaron had to rise to mend it.
+
+"Stop the mill and listen," Auchterlonie begged him, but the warper
+returned to his seat and the mill again revolved.
+
+"This is her dying words to you," continued the smith. "Did you speak?"
+
+"I didna, but I wish you would take your arm off the haik."
+
+"She's loath to die without seeing you. Do you hear, man? You shall
+listen to me, I tell you."
+
+"I am listening, smith," the warper replied, without rancour. "It's but
+right that you should come here to take your pleasure on a shamed man."
+His calmness gave him a kind of dignity.
+
+"Did I ever say you was a shamed man, Aaron?"
+
+"Am I not?" the warper asked quietly; and Auchterlonie hung his head.
+
+Aaron continued, still turning the handle, "You're truthful, and you
+canna deny it. Nor will you deny that I shamed you and every other
+mother's son that night. You try to hod it out o' pity, smith, but even
+as you look at me now, does the man in you no rise up against me?"
+
+"If so," the smith answered reluctantly, "if so, it's against my will."
+
+"It is so," said Aaron, in the same measured voice, "and it's right
+that it should be so. A man may thieve or debauch or murder, and yet no
+be so very different frae his fellow-men, but there's one thing he shall
+not do without their wanting to spit him out o' their mouths, and that
+is, violate the feelings of sex."
+
+The strange words in which the warper described his fall had always an
+uncomfortable effect on those who heard him use them, and Auchterlonie
+could only answer in distress, "Maybe that's what it is."
+
+"That's what it is. I have had twal lang years sitting on this box to
+think it out. I blame none but mysel'."
+
+"Then you'll have pity on Jean in her sair need," said the smith. He
+read slowly the first part of the letter, but Aaron made no comment, and
+the mill had not stopped for a moment.
+
+"She says," the smith proceeded, doggedly--"she says to say to you,
+'Aaron Latta, do you mind yon day at Inverquharity and the cushie
+doos?'"
+
+Only the monotonous whirr of the mill replied.
+
+"She says, 'Aaron Latta, do you mind that Jean Myles was ower heavy for
+you to lift? Oh, Aaron, you could lift me so pitiful easy now.'"
+
+Another thread broke and the warper rose with sudden fury.
+
+"Now that you've eased your conscience, smith," he said, fiercely, "make
+your feet your friend."
+
+"I'll do so," Auchterlonie answered, laying the letter on the webs, "but
+I leave this ahint me."
+
+"Wap it in the fire."
+
+"If that's to be done, you do it yoursel'. Aaron, she treated you ill,
+but--"
+
+"There's the door, smith."
+
+The smith walked away, and had only gone a few steps when he heard the
+whirr of the mill again. He went back to the door.
+
+"She's dying, man!" he cried.
+
+"Let her die!" answered Aaron.
+
+In an hour the sensational news was through half of Thrums, of which
+Monypenny may be regarded as a broken piece, left behind, like the dot
+of quicksilver in the tube, to show how high the town once rose. Some
+could only rejoice at first in the down-come of Jean Myles, but most
+blamed the smith (and himself among them) for not taking note of her
+address, so that Thrums Street could be informed of it and sent to her
+relief. For Blinder alone believed that Aaron would be softened.
+
+"It was twa threads the smith saw him break," the blind man said, "and
+Aaron's good at his work. He'll go to London, I tell you."
+
+"You forget, Blinders, that he was warping afore I was a dozen steps
+frae the door."
+
+"Ay, and that just proves he hadna burned the letter, for he hadna time.
+If he didna do it at the first impulse, he'll no do it now."
+
+Every little while the boys were sent along the road to look in at
+Aaron's end window and report.
+
+At seven in the evening Aaron had not left his box, and the blind man's
+reputation for seeing farther than those with eyes was fallen low.
+
+"It's a good sign," he insisted, nevertheless. "It shows his mind's
+troubled, for he usually louses at six."
+
+By eight the news was that Aaron had left his mill and was sitting
+staring at his kitchen fire.
+
+"He's thinking o' Inverquharity and the cushie doos," said Blinder.
+
+"More likely," said Dite Deuchars, "he's thinking o' the Cuttle Well."
+
+Corp Shiach clattered along the road about nine to say that Aaron Latta
+was putting on his blacks as if for a journey.
+
+At once the blind man's reputation rose on stilts. It fell flat,
+however, before the ten-o'clock bell rang, when three of the
+Auchterlonie children, each pulling the others back that he might arrive
+first, announced that Aaron had put on his corduroys again, and was back
+at the mill.
+
+"That settles it," was everyone's good-night to Blinder, but he only
+answered thoughtfully, "There's a fierce fight going on, my billies."
+
+Next morning when his niece was shaving the blind man, the razor had to
+travel over a triumphant smirk which would not explain itself to
+womankind, Blinder being a man who could bide his time. The time came
+when the smith looked in to say, "Should I gang yont to Aaron's and see
+if he'll give me the puir woman's address?"
+
+"No, I wouldna advise that," answered Blinder, cleverly concealing his
+elation, "for Aaron Latta's awa' to London."
+
+"What! How can you ken?"
+
+"I heard him go by in the night."
+
+"It's no possible!"
+
+"I kent his foot."
+
+"You're sure it was Aaron?"
+
+Blinder did not consider the question worth answering, his sharpness at
+recognizing friends by their tread being proved. Sometimes he may have
+carried his pretensions too far. Many granted that he could tell when a
+doctor went by, when a lawyer, when a thatcher, when a herd, and this is
+conceivable, for all callings have their walk. But he was regarded as
+uncanny when he claimed not only to know ministers in this way, but to
+be able to distinguish between the steps of the different denominations.
+
+He had made no mistake about the warper, however. Aaron was gone, and
+ten days elapsed before he was again seen in Thrums.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A CHILD'S TRAGEDY
+
+
+No one in Thrums ever got a word from Aaron Latta about how he spent
+those ten days, and Tommy and Elspeth, whom he brought back with him,
+also tried to be reticent, but some of the women were too clever for
+them. Jean and Aaron did not meet again. Her first intimation that he
+had come she got from Shovel, who said that a little high-shouldered man
+in black had been inquiring if she was dead, and was now walking up and
+down the street, like one waiting. She sent her children out to him, but
+he would not come up. He had answered Tommy roughly, but when Elspeth
+slipped her hand into his, he let it stay there, and he instructed her
+to tell Jean Myles that he would bury her in the Thrums cemetery and
+bring up her bairns. Jean managed once to go to the window and look down
+at him, and by and by he looked up and saw her. They looked long at each
+other, and then he turned away his head and began to walk up and down
+again.
+
+At Tilliedrum the coffin was put into a hearse and thus conveyed to
+Monypenny, Aaron and the two children sitting on the box-seat. Someone
+said, "Jean Myles boasted that when she came back to Thrums it would be
+in her carriage and pair, and she has kept her word," and the saying is
+still preserved in that Bible for week-days of which all little places
+have their unwritten copy, one of the wisest of books, but nearly every
+text in it has cost a life.
+
+About a score of men put on their blacks and followed the hearse from
+the warper's house to the grave. Elspeth wanted to accompany Tommy, but
+Aaron held her back, saying, quietly, "In this part, it's only men that
+go to burials, so you and me maun bide at name," and then she cried, no
+one understood why, except Tommy. It was because he would see Thrums
+first; but he whispered to her, "I promise to keep my eyes shut and no
+look once," and so faithfully did he keep his promise on the whole that
+the smith held him by the hand most of the way, under the impression
+that he was blind.
+
+But he had opened his eyes at the grave, when a cord was put into his
+hand, and then he wept passionately, and on his way back to Monypenny,
+whether his eyes were open or shut, what he saw was his mother being
+shut up in a black hole and trying for ever and ever to get out. He ran
+to Elspeth for comfort, but in the meantime she had learned from
+Blinder's niece that graves are dark and cold, and so he found her
+sobbing even like himself. Tommy could never bear to see Elspeth
+crying, and he revealed his true self in his way of drying her tears.
+
+"It will be so cold in that hole," she sobbed.
+
+"No," he said, "it's warm."
+
+"It will be dark."
+
+"No, it's clear."
+
+"She would like to get out."
+
+"No, she was terrible pleased to get in."
+
+It was characteristic of him that he soon had Elspeth happy by arguments
+not one of which he believed himself; characteristic also that his own
+grief was soothed by the sound of them. Aaron, who was in the garret
+preparing their bed, had told the children that they must remain indoors
+to-day out of respect to their mother's memory (to-morrow morning they
+could explore Thrums); but there were many things in that kitchen for
+them to look at and exult over. It had no commonplace ceiling, the
+couples, or rafters, being covered with the loose flooring of a romantic
+garret, and in the rafters were several great hooks, from one of which
+hung a ham, and Tommy remembered, with a thrill which he communicated to
+Elspeth, that it is the right of Thrums children to snip off the ham as
+much as they can remove with their finger-nails and roast it on the ribs
+of the fire. The chief pieces of furniture were a dresser, a corner
+cupboard with diamond panes, two tables, one of which stood beneath the
+other, but would have to come out if Aaron tried to bake, and a bed
+with a door. These two did not know it, but the room was full of
+memories of Jean Myles. The corner cupboard had been bought by Aaron at
+a roup because she said she would like to have one; it was she who had
+chosen the six cups and saucers with the blue spots on them. A
+razor-strop, now hard as iron, hung on a nail on the wall; it had not
+been used since the last time Aaron strutted through the Den with his
+sweetheart. One day later he had opened the door of the bird-cage, which
+still stood in the window, and let the yellow yite go. Many things were
+where no woman would have left them: clothes on the floor with the nail
+they had torn from the wall; on a chair a tin basin, soapy water and a
+flannel rag in it; horn spoons with whistles at the end of them were
+anywhere--on the mantelpiece, beneath the bed; there were drawers that
+could not be opened because their handles were inside. Perhaps the
+windows were closed hopelessly also, but this must be left doubtful; no
+one had ever tried to open them.
+
+The garret where Tommy and Elspeth were to sleep was reached by a ladder
+from the hallan; when you were near the top of the ladder your head hit
+a trap-door and pushed it open. At one end of the garret was the bed,
+and at the other end were piled sticks for firewood and curious
+dark-colored slabs whose smell the children disliked until Tommy said,
+excitedly, "Peat!" and then they sniffed reverently.
+
+It was Tommy, too, who discovered the tree-tops of the Den, and Elspeth
+seeing him gazing in a transport out at the window cried, "What is it,
+Tommy? Quick!"
+
+"Promise no to scream," he replied, warningly. "Well, then, Elspeth
+Sandys, that's where the Den is!"
+
+Elspeth blinked with awe, and anon said, wistfully, "Tommy, do you see
+that there? That's where the Den is!"
+
+"It were me what told you," cried Tommy, jealously.
+
+"But let me tell you, Tommy!"
+
+"Well, then, you can tell me."
+
+"That there is the Den, Tommy!"
+
+"Dagont!"
+
+Oh, that to-morrow were here! Oh, that Shovel could see these two
+to-morrow!
+
+Here is another splendid game, T. Sandys, inventor. The girl goes into
+the bed, the boy shuts the door on her, and imitates the sound of a
+train in motion. He opens the door and cries, "Tickets, please." The
+girl says, "What is the name of this place?" The boy replies, "It's
+Thrums!" There is more to follow, but the only two who have played the
+game always roared so joyously at this point that they could get no
+farther.
+
+"Oh, to-morrow, come quick, quick!"
+
+"Oh, poor Shovel!"
+
+To-morrow came, and with it two eager little figures rose and gulped
+their porridge, and set off to see Thrums. They were dressed in the
+black clothes Aaron Latta had bought for them in London, and they had
+agreed just to walk, but when they reached the door and saw the
+tree-tops of the Den they--they ran. Would you not like to hold them
+back? It is a child's tragedy.
+
+They went first into the Den, and the rocks were dripping wet, all the
+trees, save the firs, were bare, and the mud round a tiny spring pulled
+off one of Elspeth's boots.
+
+"Tommy," she cried, quaking, "that narsty puddle can't not be the Cuttle
+Well, can it?"
+
+"No, it ain't," said Tommy, quickly, but he feared it was.
+
+"It's c-c-colder here than London," Elspeth said, shivering, and Tommy
+was shivering too, but he answered, "I'm--I'm--I'm warm."
+
+The Den was strangely small, and soon they were on a shabby brae where
+women in short gowns came to their doors and men in night-caps sat down
+on the shafts of their barrows to look at Jean Myles's bairns.
+
+"What does yer think?" Elspeth whispered, very doubtfully.
+
+"They're beauties," Tommy answered, determinedly.
+
+Presently Elspeth cried, "Oh, Tommy, what a ugly stair! Where is the
+beauty stairs as is wore outside for show?"
+
+This was one of them and Tommy knew it. "Wait till you see the west
+town end," he said bravely; "it's grand." But when they were in the west
+town end, and he had to admit it, "Wait till you see the square," he
+said, and when they were in the square, "Wait," he said, huskily, "till
+you see the town-house." Alas, this was the town-house facing them, and
+when they knew it, he said hurriedly, "Wait till you see the Auld Licht
+Kirk."
+
+They stood long in front of the Auld Licht Kirk, which he had sworn was
+bigger and lovelier than St. Paul's, but--well, it is a different style
+of architecture, and had Elspeth not been there with tears in waiting,
+Tommy would have blubbered. "It's--it's littler than I thought," he said
+desperately, "but--the minister, oh, what a wonderful big man he is!"
+
+"Are you sure?" Elspeth squeaked.
+
+"I swear he is."
+
+The church door opened and a gentleman came out, a little man, boyish in
+the back, with the eager face of those who live too quickly. But it was
+not at him that Tommy pointed reassuringly; it was at the monster church
+key, half of which protruded from his tail pocket and waggled like the
+hilt of a sword.
+
+Speaking like an old residenter, Tommy explained that he had brought his
+sister to see the church, "She's ta'en aback," he said, picking out
+Scotch words carefully, "because it's littler than the London kirks,
+but I telled her--I telled her that the preaching is better."
+
+This seemed to please the stranger, for he patted Tommy on the head
+while inquiring, "How do you know that the preaching is better?"
+
+"Tell him, Elspeth," replied Tommy modestly.
+
+"There ain't nuthin' as Tommy don't know," Elspeth explained. "He knows
+what the minister is like too."
+
+"He's a noble sight," said Tommy.
+
+"He can get anything from God he likes," said Elspeth.
+
+"He's a terrible big man," said Tommy.
+
+This seemed to please the little gentleman less. "Big!" he exclaimed,
+irritably; "why should he be big?"
+
+"He is big," Elspeth almost screamed, for the minister was her last
+hope.
+
+"Nonsense!" said the little gentleman. "He is--well, I am the minister."
+
+"You!" roared Tommy, wrathfully.
+
+"Oh, oh, oh!" sobbed Elspeth.
+
+For a moment the Rev. Mr. Dishart looked as if he would like to knock
+two little heads together, but he walked away without doing it.
+
+"Never mind," Tommy whispered hoarsely to Elspeth. "Never mind, Elspeth,
+you have me yet."
+
+This consolation seldom failed to gladden her, but her disappointment
+was so sharp to-day that she would not even look up.
+
+"Come away to the cemetery, it's grand," he said; but still she would
+not be comforted.
+
+"And I'll let you hold my hand--as soon as we're past the houses," he
+added.
+
+"I'll let you hold it now," he said eventually; but even then Elspeth
+cried dismally, and her sobs were hurting him more than her.
+
+He knew all the ways of getting round Elspeth, and when next he spoke it
+was with a sorrowful dignity. "I didna think," he said, "as yer wanted
+me never to be able to speak again; no, I didna think it, Elspeth."
+
+She took her hands from her face and looked at him inquiringly.
+
+"One of the stories mamma telled me and Reddy," he said, "were about a
+man what saw such a beauty thing that he was struck dumb with
+admiration. Struck dumb is never to be able to speak again, and I wish I
+had been struck dumb when you wanted it."
+
+"But I didn't want it!" Elspeth cried.
+
+"If Thrums had been one little bit beautier than it is," he went on
+solemnly, "it would have struck me dumb. It would have hurt me sore, but
+what about that, if it pleased you!"
+
+Then did Elspeth see what a wicked girl she had been, and when next the
+two were observed by the curious (it was on the cemetery road), they
+were once more looking cheerful. At the smallest provocation they
+exchanged notes of admiration, such as, "Oh, Tommy, what a bonny
+barrel!" or "Oh, Elspeth, I tell yer that's a dyke, and there's just
+walls in London," but sometimes Elspeth would stoop hastily, pretending
+that she wanted to tie her bootlace, but really to brush away a tear,
+and there were moments when Tommy hung very limp. Each was trying to
+deceive the other for the other's sake, and one of them was never good
+at deception. They saw through each other, yet kept up the chilly game,
+because they could think of nothing better, and perhaps the game was
+worth playing, for love invented it.
+
+They sat down on their mother's grave. No stone was ever erected to the
+memory of Jean Myles, but it is enough for her that she lies at home.
+That comfort will last her to the Judgment Day.
+
+The man who had dug the grave sent them away, and they wandered to the
+hill, and thence down the Roods, where there were so many outside stairs
+not put there for show that it was well Elspeth remembered how
+susceptible Tommy was to being struck dumb. For her sake he said,
+"They're bonny," and for his sake she replied, "I'm glad they ain't
+bonnier."
+
+When within one turn of Monypenny they came suddenly upon some boys
+playing at capey-dykey, a game with marbles that is only known in
+Thrums. There are thirty-five ways of playing marbles, but this is the
+best way, and Elspeth knew that Tommy was hungering to look on, but
+without her, lest he should be accused of sweethearting. So she offered
+to remain in the background.
+
+Was she sure she shouldn't mind?
+
+She said falteringly that of course she would mind a little, but--
+
+Then Tommy was irritated, and said he knew she would mind, but if she
+just pretended she didn't mind, he could leave her without feeling that
+he was mean.
+
+So Elspeth affected not to mind, and then he deserted her, conscience at
+rest, which was his nature. But he should have remained with her. The
+players only gave him the side of their eye, and a horrid fear grew on
+him that they did not know he was a Thrums boy. "Dagont!" he cried to
+put them right on that point, but though they paused in their game, it
+was only to laugh at him uproariously. Let the historian use an oath for
+once; dagont, Tommy had said the swear in the wrong place!
+
+How fond he had been of that word! Many a time he had fired it in the
+face of Londoners, and the flash had often blinded them and always him.
+Now he had brought it home, and Thrums would have none of it; it was as
+if these boys were jeering at their own flag. He tottered away from them
+until he came to a trance, or passage, where he put his face to the wall
+and forgot even Elspeth.
+
+He had not noticed a girl pass the mouth of the trance, trying not very
+successfully to conceal a brandy-bottle beneath her pinafore, but
+presently he heard shouts, and looking out he saw Grizel, the Painted
+Lady's child, in the hands of her tormentors. She was unknown to him, of
+course, but she hit back so courageously that he watched her with
+interest, until--until suddenly he retreated farther into the trance. He
+had seen Elspeth go on her knees, obviously to ask God to stay the hands
+and tongues of these cruel boys.
+
+Elspeth had disgraced him, he felt. He was done with her forever. If
+they struck her, serve her right.
+
+Struck her! Struck little Elspeth! His imagination painted the picture
+with one sweep of its brush. Take care, you boys, Tommy is scudding
+back.
+
+They had not molested Elspeth as yet. When they saw and heard her
+praying, they had bent forward, agape, as if struck suddenly in the
+stomach. Then one of them, Francie Crabb, the golden-haired son of
+Esther Auld, recovered and began to knead Grizel's back with his fists,
+less in viciousness than to show that the prayer was futile. Into this
+scene sprang Tommy, and he thought that Elspeth was the kneaded one. Had
+he taken time to reflect he would probably have used the Thrums feint,
+and then in with a left-hander, which is not very efficacious in its own
+country; but being in a hurry he let out with Shovel's favorite, and
+down went Francie Crabb.
+
+"Would you!" said Tommy, threatening, when Francie attempted to rise.
+
+He saw now that Elspeth was untouched, that he had rescued an unknown
+girl, and it cannot be pretended of him that he was the boy to squire
+all ladies in distress. In ordinary circumstances he might have left
+Grizel to her fate, but having struck for her, he felt that he would
+like to go on striking. He had also the day's disappointments to avenge.
+It is startling to reflect that the little minister's height, for
+instance, put an extra kick in him.
+
+So he stood stridelegs over Francie, who whimpered, "I wouldna have
+struck this one if that one hadna prayed for me. It wasna likely I would
+stand that."
+
+"You shall stand it," replied Tommy, and turning to Elspeth, who had
+risen from her knees, he said: "Pray away, Elspeth."
+
+Elspeth refused, feeling that there would be something wrong in praying
+from triumph, and Tommy, about to be very angry with her, had a glorious
+inspiration. "Pray for yourself," he said to Francie, "and do it out
+loud."
+
+The other boys saw that a novelty promised, and now Francie need expect
+no aid from them. At first he refused to pray, but he succumbed when
+Tommy had explained the consequences, and illustrated them.
+
+Tommy dictated: "Oh, God, I am a sinner. Go on."
+
+Francie not only said it, but looked it.
+
+"And I pray to you to repent me, though I ain't worthy," continued
+Tommy.
+
+"And I pray to you to repent me, though I ain't worthy," growled
+Francie. (It was the arrival of ain't in Thrums.)
+
+Tommy considered, and then: "I thank Thee, O God," he said, "for telling
+this girl--this lassie--to pray for me."
+
+Two gentle taps helped to knock this out of Francie.
+
+Being an artist, Tommy had kept his best for the end (and made it up
+first). "And lastly," he said, "I thank this boy for thrashing me--I
+mean this here laddie. Oh, may he allus be near to thrash me when I
+strike this other lassie again. Amen."
+
+When it was all over Tommy looked around triumphantly, and though he
+liked the expression on several faces, Grizel's pleased him best. "It
+ain't no wonder you would like to be me, lassie!" he said, in an
+ecstasy.
+
+"I don't want to be you, you conceited boy," retorted the Painted Lady's
+child hotly, and her heat was the greater because the clever little
+wretch had read her thoughts aright. But it was her sweet voice that
+surprised him.
+
+"You're English!" he cried.
+
+"So are you," broke in a boy offensively, and then Tommy said to Grizel
+loftily, "Run away; I'll not let none on them touch you."
+
+"I am not afraid of them," she rejoined, with scorn, "and I shall not
+let you help me, and I won't run." And run she did not; she walked off
+leisurely with her head in the air, and her dignity was beautiful,
+except once when she made the mistake of turning round to put out her
+tongue.
+
+But, alas! in the end someone ran. If only they had not called him
+"English." In vain he fired a volley of Scotch; they pretended not to
+understand it. Then he screamed that he and Shovel could fight the lot
+of them. Who was Shovel? they asked derisively. He replied that Shovel
+was a bloke who could lick any two of them--and with one hand tied
+behind his back.
+
+No sooner had he made this proud boast than he went white, and soon two
+disgraceful tears rolled down his cheeks. The boys saw that for some
+reason unknown his courage was gone, and even Francie Crabb began to
+turn up his sleeves and spit upon his hands.
+
+Elspeth was as bewildered as the others, but she slipped her hand into
+his and away they ran ingloriously, the foe too much astounded to jeer.
+She sought to comfort him by saying (and it brought her a step nearer
+womanhood), "You wasn't feared for yourself, you wasn't; you was just
+feared they would hurt me."
+
+But Tommy sobbed in reply, "That ain't it. I bounced so much about the
+Thrums folk to Shovel, and now the first day I'm here I heard myself
+bouncing about Shovel to Thrums folk, and it were that what made me
+cry. Oh, Elspeth, it's--it's not the same what I thought it would be!"
+
+Nor was it the same to Elspeth, so they sat down by the roadside and
+cried with their arms round each other, and any passer-by could look who
+had the heart. But when night came, and they were in their garret bed,
+Tommy was once more seeking to comfort Elspeth with arguments he
+disbelieved, and again he succeeded. As usual, too, the make-believe
+made him happy also.
+
+"Have you forgot," he whispered, "that my mother said as she would come
+and see us every night in our bed? If yer cries, she'll see as we're
+terrible unhappy, and that will make her unhappy too."
+
+"Oh, Tommy, is she here now?"
+
+"Whisht! She's here, but they don't like living ones to let on as they
+knows it."
+
+Elspeth kept closer to Tommy, and with their heads beneath the blankets,
+so as to stifle the sound, he explained to her how they could cheat
+their mother. When she understood, he took the blankets off their faces
+and said in the darkness in a loud voice:
+
+"It's a grand place, Thrums!"
+
+Elspeth replied in a similar voice, "Ain't the town-house just big!"
+
+Said Tommy, almost chuckling, "Oh, the bonny, bonny Auld Licht Kirk!"
+
+Said Elspeth, "Oh, the beauty outside stairs!"
+
+Said Tommy, "The minister is so long!"
+
+Said Elspeth, "The folk is so kind!"
+
+Said Tommy, "Especially the laddies!"
+
+"Oh, I is so happy!" cried Elspeth.
+
+"Me too!" cried Tommy.
+
+"My mother would be so chirpy if she could jest see us!" Elspeth said,
+quite archly.
+
+"But she canna!" replied Tommy, slyly pinching Elspeth in the rib.
+
+Then they dived beneath the blankets, and the whispering was resumed.
+
+"Did she hear, does yer think?" asked Elspeth.
+
+"Every word," Tommy replied. "Elspeth, we've done her!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+SHOWS HOW TOMMY TOOK CARE OF ELSPETH
+
+
+Thus the first day passed, and others followed in which women, who had
+known Jean Myles, did her children kindnesses, but could not do all they
+would have done, for Aaron forbade them to enter his home except on
+business though it was begging for a housewife all day. Had Elspeth at
+the age of six now settled down to domestic duties she would not have
+been the youngest housekeeper ever known in Thrums, but she was never
+very good at doing things, only at loving and being loved, and the
+observant neighbors thought her a backward girl; they forgot, like most
+people, that service is not necessarily a handicraft. Tommy discovered
+what they were saying, and to shield Elspeth he took to housewifery with
+the blind down; but Aaron, entering the kitchen unexpectedly, took the
+besom from, him, saying:
+
+"It's an ill thing for men folk to ken ower muckle about women's work."
+
+"You do it yoursel'," Tommy argued.
+
+"I said men folk," replied Aaron, quietly.
+
+The children knew that remarks of this sort had reference to their
+mother, of whom he never spoke more directly; indeed he seldom spoke to
+them at all, and save when he was cooking or giving the kitchen a
+slovenly cleaning they saw little of him. Monypenny had predicted that
+their presence must make a new man of him, but he was still unsociable
+and morose and sat as long as ever at the warping-mill, of which he
+seemed to have become the silent wheel. Tommy and Elspeth always dropped
+their voices when they spoke of him, and sometimes when his mill stopped
+he heard one of them say to the other, "Whisht, he's coming!" Though he
+seldom, spoke sharply to them, his face did not lose its loneliness at
+sight of them. Elspeth was his favorite (somewhat to the indignation of
+both); they found this out without his telling them or even showing it
+markedly, and when they wanted to ask anything of him she was deputed to
+do it, but she did it quavering, and after drawing farther away from him
+instead of going nearer. A dreary life would have lain before them had
+they not been sent to school.
+
+There were at this time three schools in Thrums, the chief of them ruled
+over by the terrible Cathro (called Knuckly when you were a street away
+from him). It was a famous school, from which a band of three or four or
+even six marched every autumn to the universities as determined after
+bursaries as ever were Highlandmen to lift cattle, and for the same
+reason, that they could not do without.
+
+A very different kind of dominie was Cursing Ballingall, who had been
+dropped at Thrums by a travelling circus, and first became familiar to
+the town as, carrying two carpet shoes, two books, a pillow, and a
+saucepan, which were all his belongings, he wandered from manse to manse
+offering to write sermons for the ministers at circus prices. That
+scheme failing, he was next seen looking in at windows in search of a
+canny calling, and eventually he cut one of his braces into a pair of
+tawse, thus with a single stroke of the knife, making himself a
+school-master and lop-sided for life. His fee was but a penny a week,
+"with a bit o' the swine when your father kills," and sometimes there
+were so many pupils on a form that they could only rise as one. During
+the first half of the scholastic day Ballingall's shouts and pounces
+were for parents to listen to, but after his dinner of crowdy, which is
+raw meal and hot water, served in a cogie, or wooden bowl, languor
+overcame him and he would sleep, having first given out a sum in
+arithmetic and announced:
+
+"The one as finds out the answer first, I'll give him his licks."
+
+Last comes the Hanky School, which was for the genteel and for the
+common who contemplated soaring. You were not admitted to it in
+corduroys or bare-footed, nor did you pay weekly; no, your father called
+four times a year with the money in an envelope. He was shown into the
+blue-and-white room, and there, after business had been transacted, very
+nervously on Miss Ailie's part, she offered him his choice between
+ginger wine and what she falteringly called wh-wh-whiskey. He partook in
+the polite national manner, which is thus:
+
+"You will take something, Mr. Cortachy?"
+
+"No, I thank you, ma'am."
+
+"A little ginger wine?"
+
+"It agrees ill with me."
+
+"Then a little wh-wh-whiskey?"
+
+"You are ower kind."
+
+"Then may I?"
+
+"I am not heeding."
+
+"Perhaps, though, you don't take?"
+
+"I can take it or want it."
+
+"Is that enough?"
+
+"It will do perfectly."
+
+"Shall I fill it up?"
+
+"As you please, ma'am."
+
+Miss Ailie's relationship to the magerful man may be remembered; she
+shuddered to think of it herself, for in middle-age she retained the
+mind of a young girl, but when duty seemed to call, this school-mistress
+could be brave, and she offered to give Elspeth her schooling free of
+charge. Like the other two hers was a "mixed" school, but she did not
+want Tommy, because she had seen him in the square one day, and there
+was a leer on his face that reminded her of his father.
+
+Another woman was less particular. This was Mrs. Crabb, of the Tappit
+Hen, the Esther Auld whom Jean Myles's letters had so frequently sent
+to bed. Her Francie was still a pupil of Miss Ailie, and still he wore
+the golden hair, which, despite all advice, she would not crop. It was
+so beautiful that no common boys could see it without wanting to give it
+a tug in passing, and partly to prevent this, partly to show how high
+she had risen in the social scale, Esther usually sent him to school
+under the charge of her servant lass. She now proposed to Aaron that
+this duty should devolve on Tommy, and for the service she would pay his
+fees at the Hanky School.
+
+"We maun all lend a hand to poor Jean's bairns," she said, with a gleam
+in her eye. "It would have been well for her, Aaron, if she had married
+you."
+
+"Is that all you have to say?" asked the warper, who had let her enter
+no farther than the hallan.
+
+"I would expect him to lift Francie ower the pools in wet weather; and
+it might be as well if he called him Master Francie."
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"Ay, I ask no more, for we maun all help Jean's bairns. If she could
+only look down, Aaron, and see her little velvets, as she called him,
+lifting my little corduroys ower the pools!"
+
+Aaron flung open the door. "Munt!" he said, and he looked so dangerous
+that she retired at once. He sent Tommy to Ballingall's, and accepted
+Miss Ailie's offer for Elspeth, but this was an impossible arrangement,
+for it was known to the two persons primarily concerned that Elspeth
+would die if she was not where Tommy was. The few boys he had already
+begun to know were at Cathro's or Ballingall's, and as they called Miss
+Ailie's a lassie school he had no desire to attend it, but where he was
+there also must Elspeth be. Daily he escaped from Ballingall's and hid
+near the Dovecot, as Miss Ailie's house was called, and every little
+while he gave vent to Shovel's whistle, so that Elspeth might know of
+his proximity and be cheered. Thrice was he carried back, kicking, to
+Ballingall's by urchins sent in pursuit, stern ministers of justice on
+the first two occasions; but on the third they made him an offer: if he
+would hide in Couthie's hen-house they were willing to look for him
+everywhere else for two hours.
+
+Tommy's behavior seemed beautiful to the impressionable Miss Ailie, but
+it infuriated Aaron, and on the fourth day he set off for the parish
+school, meaning to put the truant in the hands of Cathro, from whom
+there was no escape. Vainly had Elspeth implored him to let Tommy come
+to the Dovecot, and vainly apparently was she trotting at his side now,
+looking up appealingly in his face. But when they reached the gate of
+the parish school-yard he walked past it because she was tugging him,
+and always when he seemed about to turn she took his hand again, and he
+seemed to have lost the power to resist Jean Myles's bairn. So they came
+to the Dovecot, and Miss Ailie gained a pupil who had been meant for
+Cathro. Tommy's arms were stronger than Elspeth's, but they could not
+hare done as much for him that day.
+
+Thus did the two children enter upon the genteel career, to the
+indignation of the other boys and girls of Monypenny, all of whom were
+commoners.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE HANKY SCHOOL
+
+
+The Dovecot was a prim little cottage standing back from the steepest
+brae in Thrums and hidden by high garden walls, to the top of which
+another boy's shoulders were, for apple-lovers, but one step up.
+Jargonelle trees grew against the house, stretching their arms round it
+as if to measure its girth, and it was also remarkable for several
+"dumb" windows with the most artful blinds painted on them. Miss Ailie's
+fruit was famous, but she loved her flowers best, and for long a notice
+board in her garden said, appealingly: "Persons who come to steal the
+fruit are requested not to walk on the flower-beds." It was that old
+bachelor, Dr. McQueen, who suggested this inscription to her, and she
+could never understand why he chuckled every time he read it.
+
+There were seven rooms in the house, but only two were of public note,
+the school-room, which was downstairs, and the blue-and-white room
+above. The school-room was so long that it looked very low in the
+ceiling, and it had a carpet, and on the walls were texts as well as
+maps. Miss Ailie's desk was in the middle of the room, and there was
+another desk in the corner; a cloth had been hung over it, as one covers
+a cage to send the bird to sleep. Perhaps Miss Ailie thought that a bird
+had once sung there, for this had been the desk of her sister, Miss
+Kitty, who died years before Tommy came to Thrums. Dainty Miss Kitty,
+Miss Kitty with the roguish curls, it is strange to think that you are
+dead, and that only Miss Ailie hears you singing now at your desk in the
+corner! Miss Kitty never sang there, but the playful ringlets were once
+the bright thing in the room, and Miss Ailie sees them still, and they
+are a song to her.
+
+The pupils had to bring handkerchiefs to the Dovecot, which led to its
+being called the Hanky School, and in time these handkerchiefs may be
+said to have assumed a religious character, though their purpose was
+merely to protect Miss Ailie's carpet. She opened each scholastic day by
+reading fifteen verses from the Bible, and then she said sternly,
+"Hankies!" whereupon her pupils whipped out their handkerchiefs, spread
+them on the floor and kneeled on them while Miss Ailie repeated the
+Lord's Prayer. School closed at four o'clock, again with hankies.
+
+Only on great occasions were the boys and girls admitted to the
+blue-and-white room, when they were given shortbread, but had to eat it
+with their heads flung back so that no crumbs should fall. Nearly
+everything in this room was blue or white, or both. There were white
+blinds and blue curtains, a blue table-cover and a white crumb-cloth, a
+white sheepskin with a blue footstool on it, blue chairs dotted with
+white buttons. Only white flowers came into this room, where there were
+blue vases for them, not a book was to be seen without a blue alpaca
+cover. Here Miss Ailie received visitors in her white with the blue
+braid, and enrolled new pupils in blue ink with a white pen. Some
+laughed at her, others remembered that she must have something to love
+after Miss Kitty died.
+
+Miss Ailie had her romance, as you may hear by and by, but you would not
+have thought it as she came forward to meet you in the blue-and-white
+room, trembling lest your feet had brought in mud, but too much a lady
+to ask you to stand on a newspaper, as she would have liked dearly to
+do. She was somewhat beyond middle-age, and stoutly, even squarely,
+built, which gave her a masculine appearance; but she had grown so timid
+since Miss Kitty's death that when she spoke you felt that either her
+figure or her manner must have been intended for someone else. In
+conversation she had a way of ending a sentence in the middle which gave
+her a reputation of being "thro'ither," though an artificial tooth was
+the cause. It was slightly loose, and had she not at times shut her
+mouth suddenly, and then done something with her tongue, an accident
+might have happened. This tooth fascinated Tommy, and once when she was
+talking he cried, excitedly, "Quick, it's coming!" whereupon her mouth
+snapped close, and she turned pink in the blue-and-white room.
+
+Nevertheless Tommy became her favorite, and as he had taught himself to
+read, after a fashion, in London, where his lesson-books were chiefly
+placards and the journal subscribed to by Shovel's father, she often
+invited him after school hours to the blue-and-white room, where he sat
+on a kitchen chair (with his boots off) and read aloud, very slowly,
+while Miss Ailie knitted. The volume was from the Thrums Book Club, of
+which Miss Ailie was one of the twelve members. Each member contributed
+a book every year, and as their tastes in literature differed, all sorts
+of books came into the club, and there was one member who invariably
+gave a ro-ro-romance. He was double-chinned and forty, but the
+school-mistress called him the dashing young banker, and for months she
+avoided his dangerous contribution. But always there came a black day
+when a desire to read the novel seized her, and she hurried home with it
+beneath her rokelay. This year the dashing banker's choice was a lady's
+novel called "I Love My Love with an A," and it was a frivolous tale,
+those being before the days of the new fiction, with its grand discovery
+that women have an equal right with men to grow beards. The hero had
+such a way with him and was so young (Miss Ailie could not stand them a
+day more than twenty) that the school-mistress was enraptured and scared
+at every page, but she fondly hoped that Tommy did not understand.
+However, he discovered one day what something printed thus, "D--n,"
+meant, and he immediately said the word with such unction that Miss
+Ailie let fall her knitting. She would have ended the readings then had
+not Agatha been at that point in the arms of an officer who, Miss Ailie
+felt almost certain, had a wife in India, and so how could she rest till
+she knew for certain? To track the officer by herself was not to be
+thought of, to read without knitting being such shameless waste of time,
+and it was decided to resume the readings on a revised plan: Tommy to
+say "stroke" in place of the "D--ns," and "word we have no concern with"
+instead of "Darling" and "Little One."
+
+Miss Ailie was not the only person at the Dovecot who admired Tommy.
+Though in duty bound, as young patriots, to jeer at him for having been
+born in the wrong place, the pupils of his own age could not resist the
+charm of his reminiscences; even Gav Dishart, a son of the manse,
+listened attentively to him. His great topic was his birthplace, and
+whatever happened in Thrums, he instantly made contemptible by citing
+something of the same kind, but on a larger scale, that had happened in
+London; he turned up his nose almost farther than was safe when they
+said Catlaw was a stiff mountain to climb. ("Oh, Gav, if you just saw
+the London mountains!") Snow! why they didn't know what snow was in
+Thrums. If they could only see St. Paul's or Hyde Park or Shovel! he
+couldn't help laughing at Thrums, he couldn't--Larfing, he said at
+first, but in a short time his Scotch was better than theirs, though
+less unconscious. His English was better also, of course, and you had to
+speak in a kind of English when inside the Hanky School; you got your
+revenge at "minutes." On the whole, Tommy irritated his fellow-pupils a
+good deal, but they found it difficult to keep away from him.
+
+He also contrived to enrage the less genteel boys of Monypenny. Their
+leader was Corp Shiach, three years Tommy's senior, who had never been
+inside a school except once, when he broke hopefully into Ballingall's
+because of a stirring rumor (nothing in it) that the dominie had hangit
+himself with his remaining brace; then in order of merit came Birkie
+Fleemister; then, perhaps, the smith's family, called the
+Haggerty-Taggertys, they were such slovens. When school was over Tommy
+frequently stepped out of his boots and stockings, so that he no longer
+looked offensively genteel, and then Monypenny was willing to let him
+join in spyo, smuggle bools, kickbonnety, peeries, the preens, suckers
+pilly, or whatever game was in season, even to the baiting of the
+Painted Lady, but they would not have Elspeth, who should have been
+content to play dumps with the female Haggerty-Taggertys, but could
+enjoy no game of which Tommy was not the larger half. Many times he
+deserted her for manlier joys, but though she was out of sight he could
+not forget her longing face, and soon he sneaked off to her; he
+upbraided her, but he stayed with her. They bore with him for a time,
+but when they discovered that she had persuaded him (after prayer) to
+put back the spug's eggs which he had brought home in triumph, then they
+drove him from their company, and for a long time afterwards his deadly
+enemy was the hard-hitting Corp Shiach.
+
+Elspeth was not invited to attend the readings of "I Love My Love with
+an A," perhaps because there were so many words in it that she had no
+concern with, but she knew they ended as the eight-o'clock bell began to
+ring, and it was her custom to meet Tommy a few yards from Aaron's door.
+Farther she durst not venture in the gloaming through fear of the
+Painted Lady, for Aaron's house was not far from the fearsome lane that
+led to Double Dykes, and even the big boys who made faces at this woman
+by day ran from her in the dusk. Creepy tales were told of what happened
+to those on whom she cast a blighting eye before they could touch cold
+iron, and Tommy was one of many who kept a bit of cold iron from the
+smithy handy in his pocket. On his way home from the readings he never
+had occasion to use it, but at these times he sometimes met Grizel, who
+liked to do her shopping in the evenings when her persecutors were more
+easily eluded, and he forced her to speak to him. Not her loneliness
+appealed to him, but that look of admiration she had given him when he
+was astride of Francie Crabb. For such a look he could pardon many
+rebuffs; without it no praise greatly pleased him; he was always on the
+outlook for it.
+
+"I warrant," he said to her one evening, "you want to have some man-body
+to take care of you the way I take care of Elspeth."
+
+"No, I don't," she replied, promptly.
+
+"Would you no like somebody to love you?"
+
+"Do you mean kissing?" she asked.
+
+"There's better things in it than that," he said guardedly; "but if you
+want kissing, I--I--Elspeth'll kiss you."
+
+"Will she want to do it?" inquired Grizel, a little wistfully.
+
+"I'll make her do it," Tommy said.
+
+"I don't want her to do it," cried Grizel, and he could not draw another
+word from her. However he was sure she thought him a wonder, and when
+next they met he challenged her with it.
+
+"Do you not now?"
+
+"I won't tell you," answered Grizel, who was never known to lie.
+
+"You think I'm a wonder," Tommy persisted, "but you dinna want me to
+know you think it."
+
+Grizel rocked her arms, a quaint way she had when excited, and she
+blurted out, "How do you know?"
+
+The look he liked had come back to her face, but he had no time to enjoy
+it, for just then Elspeth appeared, and Elspeth's jealousy was easily
+aroused.
+
+"I dinna ken you, lassie," he said coolly to Grizel, and left her
+stamping her foot at him. She decided never to speak to Tommy again, but
+the next time they met he took her into the Den and taught her how to
+fight.
+
+It is painful to have to tell that Miss Ailie was the person who
+provided him with the opportunity. In the readings they arrived one
+evening at the scene in the conservatory, which has not a single Stroke
+in it, but is so full of Words We have no Concern with that Tommy reeled
+home blinking, and next day so disgracefully did he flounder in his
+lessons that the gentle school-mistress cast up her arms in despair.
+
+"I don't know what to say to you," she exclaimed.
+
+"Fine I know what you want to say," he retorted, and unfortunately she
+asked, "What?"
+
+"Stroke!" he replied, leering horridly.
+
+"I Love My Love with an A" was returned to the club forthwith (whether
+he really did have a wife in India Miss Ailie never knew) and "Judd on
+the Shorter Catechism" took its place. But mark the result. The readings
+ended at a quarter to eight now, at twenty to eight, at half-past seven,
+and so Tommy could loiter on the way home without arousing Elspeth's
+suspicion. One evening he saw Grizel cutting her way through the
+Haggerty-Taggerty group, and he offered to come to her aid if she would
+say "Help me." But she refused.
+
+When, however, the Haggerty-Taggertys were gone she condescended to say,
+"I shall never, never ask you to help me, but--if you like--you can
+show me how to hit without biting my tongue."
+
+"I'll learn you Shovel's curly ones," replied Tommy, cordially, and he
+adjourned with her to the Den for that purpose. He said he chose the Den
+so that Corp Shiach and the others might not interrupt them, but it was
+Elspeth he was thinking of.
+
+"You are like Miss Ailie with her cane when she is pandying," he told
+Grizel. "You begin well, but you slacken just when you are going to
+hit."
+
+"It is because my hand opens," Grizel said.
+
+"And then it ends in a shove," said her mentor, severely. "You should
+close your fists like this, with the thumbs inside, and then play dab,
+this way, that way, yon way. That's what Shovel calls, 'You want it,
+take it, you've got it.'"
+
+Thus did the hunted girl get her first lesson in scientific warfare in
+the Den, and neither she nor Tommy saw the pathos of it. Other lessons
+followed, and during the rests Grizel told Tommy all that she knew about
+herself. He had won her confidence at last by--by swearing dagont that
+he was English also.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE MAN WHO NEVER CAME
+
+
+"Is it true that your mother's a bonny swearer?"
+
+Tommy wanted to find out all about the Painted Lady, and the best way
+was to ask.
+
+"She does not always swear," Grizel said eagerly. "She sometimes says
+sweet, sweet things."
+
+"What kind of things?"
+
+"I won't tell you."
+
+"Tell me one."
+
+"Well, then, 'Beloved.'"
+
+"Word We have no Concern with," murmured Tommy. He was shocked, but
+still curious. "Does she say 'Beloved' to you?" he inquired.
+
+"No, she says it to him."
+
+"Him! Wha is he?" Tommy thought he was at the beginning of a discovery,
+but she answered, uncomfortably,
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"But you've seen him?"
+
+"No, he--he is not there."
+
+"Not there! How can she speak to him if he's no there?"
+
+"She thinks he is there. He--he comes on a horse."
+
+"What is the horse like?"
+
+"There is no horse."
+
+"But you said--"
+
+"She just thinks there is a horse. She hears it."
+
+"Do you ever hear it?"
+
+"No."
+
+The girl was looking imploringly into Tommy's face as if begging it to
+say that these things need not terrify her, but what he wanted was
+information.
+
+"What does the Painted Lady do," he asked, "when she thinks she hears
+the horse?"
+
+"She blows kisses, and then--then she goes to the Den."
+
+"What to do?"
+
+"She walks up and down the Den, talking to the man."
+
+"And him no there?" cried Tommy, scared.
+
+"No, there is no one there."
+
+"And syne what do you do?"
+
+"I won't tell you."
+
+Tommy reflected, and then he said, "She's daft."
+
+"She is not always daft," cried Grizel. "There are whole weeks when she
+is just sweet."
+
+"Then what do you make of her being so queer in the Den?"
+
+"I am not sure, but I think--I think there was once a place like the Den
+at her own home in England, where she used to meet the man long ago,
+and sometimes she forgets that it is not long ago now."
+
+"I wonder wha the man was?"
+
+"I think he was my father."
+
+"I thought you didna ken what a father was?"
+
+"I know now. I think my father was a Scotsman."
+
+"What makes you think that?"
+
+"I heard a Thrums woman say it would account for my being called Grizel,
+and I think we came to Scotland to look for him, but it is so long, long
+ago."
+
+"How long?"
+
+"I don't know. We have lived here four years, but we were looking for
+him before that. It was not in this part of Scotland we looked for him.
+We gave up looking for him before we came here."
+
+"What made the Painted Lady take a house here, then?"
+
+"I think it was because the Den is so like the place she used to meet
+him in long ago."
+
+"What was his name?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Does the Painted Lady no tell you about yoursel'?"
+
+"No, she is angry if I ask."
+
+"Her name is Mary, I've heard?"
+
+"Mary Gray is her name, but--but I don't think it is her real name."
+
+"How, does she no use her real name?"
+
+"Because she wants her own mamma to think she is dead."
+
+"What makes her want that?"
+
+"I am not sure, but I think it is because there is me. I think it was
+naughty of me to be born. Can you help being born?"
+
+Tommy would have liked to tell her about Reddy, but forbore, because he
+still believed that he had acted criminally in that affair, and so for
+the time being the inquisition ended. But though he had already
+discovered all that Grizel knew about her mother and nearly all that
+curious Thrums ever ferreted out, he returned to the subject at the next
+meeting in the Den.
+
+"Where does the Painted Lady get her money?"
+
+"Oh," said Grizel, "that is easy. She just goes into that house called
+the bank, and asks for some, and they give her as much as she likes."
+
+"Ay, I've heard that, but--"
+
+The remainder of the question was never uttered. Instead,
+
+"Hod ahint a tree!" cried Tommy, hastily, and he got behind one himself;
+but he was too late; Elspeth was upon them; she had caught them together
+at last.
+
+Tommy showed great cunning. "Pretend you have eggs in your hand," he
+whispered to Grizel, and then, in a loud voice, he said: "Think shame of
+yoursel', lassie, for harrying birds' nests. It's a good thing I saw
+you, and brought you here to force you to put them back. Is that you,
+Elspeth? I catched this limmer wi' eggs in her hands (and the poor birds
+sic bonny singers, too!), and so I was forcing her to--"
+
+But it would not do. Grizel was ablaze with indignation. "You are a
+horrid story-teller," she said, "and if I had known you were ashamed of
+being seen with me, I should never have spoken to you. Take him," she
+cried, giving Tommy a push toward Elspeth, "I don't want the mean little
+story-teller."
+
+"He's not mean!" retorted Elspeth.
+
+"Nor yet little!" roared Tommy.
+
+"Yes, he is," insisted Grizel, "and I was not harrying nests. He came
+with me here because he wanted to."
+
+"Just for the once," he said, hastily.
+
+"This is the sixth time," said Grizel, and then she marched out of the
+Den. Tommy and Elspeth followed slowly, and not a word did either say
+until they were in front of Aaron's house. Then by the light in the
+window Tommy saw that Elspeth was crying softly, and he felt miserable.
+
+"I was just teaching her to fight," he said humbly.
+
+"You looked like it!" she replied, with the scorn that comes
+occasionally to the sweetest lady.
+
+He tried to comfort her in various tender ways, but none of them
+sufficed this time, "You'll marry her as soon as you're a man," she
+insisted, and she would not let this tragic picture go. It was a case
+for his biggest efforts, and he opened his mouth to threaten instant
+self-destruction unless she became happy at once. But he had threatened
+this too frequently of late, even shown himself drawing the knife across
+his throat.
+
+As usual the right idea came to him at the right moment. "If you just
+kent how I did it for your sake," he said, with gentle dignity, "you
+wouldna blame me; you would think me noble."
+
+She would not help him with a question, and after waiting for it he
+proceeded. "If you just kent wha she is! And I thought she was dead!
+What a start it gave me when I found out it was her!"
+
+"Wha is she?" cried Elspeth, with a sudden shiver.
+
+"I was trying to keep it frae you," replied Tommy, sadly.
+
+She seized his arm. "Is it Reddy?" she gasped, for the story of Reddy
+had been a terror to her all her days.
+
+"She doesna ken I was the laddie that diddled her in London," he said,
+"and I promise you never to let on, Elspeth. I--I just went to the Den
+with her to say things that would put her off the scent. If I hadna done
+that she might have found out and ta'en your place here and tried to
+pack you off to the Painted Lady's."
+
+Elspeth stared at him, the other grief already forgotten, and he thought
+he was getting on excellently, when she cried with passion, "I don't
+believe as it is Reddy!" and ran into the house.
+
+"Dinna believe it, then!" disappointed Tommy shouted, and now he was in
+such a rage with himself that his heart hardened against her. He sought
+the company of old Blinder.
+
+Unfortunately Elspeth had believed it, and her woe was the more pitiful
+because she saw at once, what had never struck Tommy, that it would be
+wicked to keep Grizel out of her rights. "I'll no win to Heaven now,"
+she said, despairingly, to herself, for to offer to change places with
+Grizel was beyond her courage, and she tried some childish ways of
+getting round God, such as going on her knees and saying, "I'm so
+little, and I hinna no mother!" That was not a bad way.
+
+Another way was to give Grizel everything she had, except Tommy. She
+collected all her treasures, the bottle with the brass top that she had
+got from Shovel's old girl, the "housewife" that was a present from Miss
+Ailie, the teetotum, the pretty buttons Tommy had won for her at the
+game of buttony, the witchy marble, the twopence she had already saved
+for the Muckley, these and some other precious trifles she made a little
+bundle of and set off for Double Dykes with them, intending to leave
+them at the door. This was Elspeth, who in ordinary circumstances would
+not have ventured near that mysterious dwelling even in daylight and in
+Tommy's company. There was no room for vulgar fear in her bursting
+little heart to-night.
+
+Tommy went home anon, meaning to be whatever kind of boy she seemed
+most in need of, but she was not in the house, she was not in the
+garden; he called her name, and it was only Birkie Fleemister, mimicking
+her, who answered, "Oh, Tommy, come to me!" But Birkie had news for him.
+
+"Sure as death," he said in some awe, "I saw Elspeth ganging yont the
+double dykes, and I cried to her that the Painted Lady would do her a
+mischief, but she just ran on."
+
+Elspeth in the double dykes--alone--and at night! Oh, how Tommy would
+have liked to strike himself now! She must have believed his wicked lie
+after all, and being so religious she had gone to--He gave himself no
+time to finish the thought. The vital thing was that she was in peril,
+he seemed to hear her calling to him, "Oh, Tommy, come quick! oh, Tommy,
+oh, Tommy!" and in an agony of apprehension he ran after her. But by the
+time he got to the beginning of the double dykes he knew that she must
+be at the end of them, and in the Painted Lady's maw, unless their
+repute by night had blown her back. He paused on the Coffin Brig, which
+is one long narrow stone; and along the funnel of the double dykes he
+sent the lonely whisper, "Elspeth, are you there?" He tried to shout it,
+but no boy could shout there after nightfall in the Painted Lady's time,
+and when the words had travelled only a little way along the double
+dykes, they came whining back to him, like a dog despatched on uncanny
+work. He heard no other sound save the burn stealing on tiptoe from an
+evil place, and the uneasy rustling of tree-tops, and his own breathing.
+
+The Coffin Brig remains, but the double dykes have fallen bit by bit
+into the burn, and the path they made safe is again as naked as when the
+Kingoldrum Jacobites filed along it, and sweer they were, to the support
+of the Pretender. It traverses a ridge and is streaked with slippery
+beech-roots which like to fling you off your feet, on the one side into
+a black burn twenty feet below, on the other down a pleasant slope. The
+double dykes were built by a farmer fond of his dram, to stop the tongue
+of a water-kelpie which lived in a pool below and gave him a turn every
+night he staggered home by shouting, "Drunk again, Peewitbrae!" and
+announcing, with a smack of the lips, that it had a bed ready for him in
+the burn. So Peewitbrae built two parallel dykes two feet apart and two
+feet high, between which he could walk home like a straight man. His
+cunning took the heart out of the brute, and water-kelpies have not been
+seen near Thrums since about that time.
+
+By day even girls played at palaulays here, and it was a favorite resort
+of boys, who knew that you were a man when you could stand on both dykes
+at once. They also stripped boldly to the skin and then looked
+doubtfully at the water. But at night! To test your nerves you walked
+alone between the double dykes, and the popular practice was to start
+off whistling, which keeps up the courage. At the point where you turned
+to run back (the Painted Lady after you, or so you thought) you dropped
+a marked stone, which told next day how far you had ventured. Corp
+Shiach long held the championship, and his stone was ostentatiously
+fixed in one of the dykes with lime. Tommy had suffered at his hands for
+saying that Shovel's mark was thirty yards farther on.
+
+With head bent to the level of the dykes, though it was almost a mirk
+night beneath the trees, and one arm outstretched before him straight as
+an elvint, Tommy faced this fearful passage, sometimes stopping to touch
+cold iron, but on the whole hanging back little, for Elspeth was in
+peril. Soon he reached the paling that was not needed to keep boys out
+of the Painted Lady's garden, one of the prettiest and best-tended
+flower-gardens in Thrums, and crawling through where some spars had
+fallen, he approached the door as noiseless as an Indian brave after
+scalps. There he crouched, with a heart that was going like a shuttle on
+a loom, and listened for Elspeth's voice.
+
+On a night he had come nearly as far as this before, but in the tail of
+big fellows with a turnip lantern. Into the wood-work of the east window
+they had thrust a pin, to which a button was tied, and the button was
+also attached to a long string. They hunkered afar off and pulled this
+string, and then the button tapped the death-rap on the window, and the
+sport was successful, for the Painted Lady screamed. But suddenly the
+door opened and they were put to flight by the fierce barking of a dog.
+One said that the brute nabbed him in the leg, another saw the vive
+tongue of it, a third played lick at it with the lantern; this was
+before they discovered that the dog had been Grizel imitating one, brave
+Grizel, always ready to protect her mother, and never allowed to cherish
+the childish fears that were hers by birthright.
+
+Tommy could not hear a sound from within, but he had startling proof
+that Elspeth was near. His foot struck against something at the door,
+and, stooping, he saw that it was a little bundle of the treasures she
+valued most. So she had indeed come to stay with the Painted Lady if
+Grizel proved merciless! Oh, what a black he had been!
+
+Though originally a farm-house, the cottage was no larger than Aaron's,
+and of its two front windows only one showed a light, and that through a
+blind. Tommy sidled round the house in the hope that the small east
+window would be more hospitable, and just as he saw that it was
+blindless something that had been crouching rose between him and it.
+
+"Let go!" he cried, feeling the Painted Lady's talons in his neck.
+
+"Tommy!" was the answer.
+
+"It's you, Elspeth?"
+
+"Is it you, Tommy?"
+
+"Of course. Whisht!"
+
+"But say it is."
+
+"It is."
+
+"Oh, Tommy, I'm so fleid!"
+
+He drew her farther from the window and told her it had all been a
+wicked lie, and she was so glad that she forgot to chide him, but he
+denounced himself, and he was better than Elspeth even at that. However,
+when he learned what had brought her here he dried his eyes and skulked
+to the door again and brought back her belongings, and then she wanted
+him to come away at once. But the window fascinated him; he knew he
+should never find courage to come here again, and he glided toward it,
+signing to Elspeth to accompany him. They were now too near Double Dykes
+for speaking to be safe, but he tapped his head as a warning to her to
+remove her hat, for a woman's head-gear always reaches a window in front
+of its wearer, and he touched his cold iron and passed it to her as if
+it were a snuff-mull. Thus fortified, they approached the window
+fearfully, holding hands and stepping high, like a couple in a minuet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE PAINTED LADY
+
+
+It had been the ordinary dwelling room of the unknown poor, the mean
+little "end"--ah, no, no, the noblest chamber in the annals of the
+Scottish nation. Here on a hard anvil has its character been fashioned
+and its history made at rush-lights and its God ever most prominent.
+Always within reach of hands which trembled with reverence as they
+turned its broad page could be found the Book that is compensation for
+all things, and that was never more at home than on bare dressers and
+worm-eaten looms. If you were brought up in that place and have
+forgotten it, there is no more hope for you.
+
+But though still recalling its past, the kitchen into which Tommy and
+Elspeth peered was trying successfully to be something else. The
+plate-rack had been a fixture, and the coffin-bed and the wooden bole,
+or board in the wall, with its round hole through which you thrust your
+hand when you wanted salt, and instead of a real mantelpiece there was a
+quaint imitation one painted over the fireplace. There were some pieces
+of furniture too, such as were usual in rooms of the kind, but most of
+them, perhaps in ignorance, had been put to novel uses, like the
+plate-rack, where the Painted Lady kept her many pretty shoes instead of
+her crockery. Gossip said she had a looking-glass of such prodigious
+size that it stood on the floor, and Tommy nudged Elspeth to signify,
+"There it is!" Other nudges called her attention to the carpet, the
+spinet, a chair that rocked like a cradle, and some smaller oddities, of
+which the queerest was a monster velvet glove hanging on the nail that
+by rights belonged to the bellows. The Painted Lady always put on this
+glove before she would touch the coals, which diverted Tommy, who knew
+that common folk lift coals with their bare hands while society uses the
+fringe of its second petticoat.
+
+It might have been a boudoir through which a kitchen and bedroom had
+wandered, spilling by the way, but though the effect was tawdry,
+everything had been rubbed clean by that passionate housewife, Grizel.
+She was on her knees at present ca'ming the hearth-stone a beautiful
+blue, and sometimes looking round to address her mother, who was busy
+among her plants and cut flowers. Surely they were know-nothings who
+called this woman silly, and blind who said she painted. It was a little
+face all of one color, dingy pale, not chubby, but retaining the soft
+contours of a child's face, and the features were singularly delicate.
+She was clad in a soft gray, and her figure was of the smallest; there
+was such an air of youth about her that Tommy thought she could become a
+girl again by merely shortening her frock, not such a girl as gaunt
+Grizel, though, who would have looked a little woman had she let her
+frock down. In appearance indeed the Painted Lady resembled her plain
+daughter not at all, but in manner in a score of ways, as when she
+rocked her arms joyously at sight of a fresh bud or tossed her brown
+hair from her brows with a pretty gesture that ought, God knows, to have
+been for some man to love. The watchers could not hear what she and
+Grizel said, but evidently it was pleasant converse, and mother and
+child, happy in each other's company, presented a picture as sweet as it
+is common, though some might have complained that they were doing each
+other's work. But the Painted Lady's delight in flowers was a scandal in
+Thrums, where she would stand her ground if the roughest boy approached
+her with roses in his hand, and she gave money for them, which was one
+reason why the people thought her daft. She was tending her flowers now
+with experienced eye, smelling them daintily, and every time she touched
+them it was a caress.
+
+The watchers retired into the field to compare impressions, and Elspeth
+said emphatically, "I like her, Tommy, I'm not none fleid at her."
+
+Tommy had liked her also, but being a man he said, "You forget that
+she's an ill one."
+
+"She looks as if she didna ken that hersel'," answered Elspeth, and
+these words of a child are the best picture we can hope to get of the
+Painted Lady.
+
+On their return to the window, they saw that Grizel had finished her
+ca'ming and was now sitting on the floor nursing a doll. Tommy had not
+thought her the kind to shut her eyes to the truth about dolls, but she
+was hugging this one passionately. Without its clothes it was of the
+nine-pin formation, and the painted eyes and mouth had been incorporated
+long since in loving Grizel's system; but it became just sweet as she
+swaddled it in a long yellow frock and slipped its bullet head into a
+duck of a pink bonnet. These articles of attire and the others that you
+begin with had all been made by Grizel herself out of the colored
+tissue-paper that shopkeepers wrap round brandy bottles. The doll's name
+was Griselda, and it was exactly six months old, and Grizel had found
+it, two years ago, lying near the Coffin Brig, naked and almost dead.
+
+It was making the usual fuss at having its clothes put on, and Grizel
+had to tell it frequently that of all the babies--which shamed it now
+and again, but kept her so occupied that she forgot her mother. The
+Painted Lady had sunk into the rocking-chair, and for a time she amused
+herself with it, but by and by it ceased to rock, and as she sat looking
+straight before her a change came over her face. Elspeth's hand
+tightened its clutch on Tommy's; the Painted Lady had begun to talk to
+herself.
+
+She was not speaking aloud, for evidently Grizel, whose back was toward
+her, heard nothing, but her lips moved and she nodded her head and
+smiled and beckoned, apparently to the wall, and the childish face
+rapidly became vacant and foolish. This mood passed, and now she was
+sitting very still, only her head moving, as she looked in apprehension
+and perplexity this way and that, like one who no longer knew where she
+was, nor who was the child by the fire. When at last Grizel turned and
+observed the change, she may have sighed, but there was no fear in her
+face; the fear was on the face of her mother, who shrank from her in
+unmistakable terror and would have screamed at a harsh word or a hasty
+movement. Grizel seemed to know this, for she remained where she was,
+and first she nodded and smiled reassuringly to her mother, and then,
+leaning forward, took her hand and stroked it softly and began to talk.
+She had laid aside her doll, and with the act become a woman again.
+
+The Painted Lady was soothed, but her bewildered look came and went, as
+if she only caught at some explanation Grizel was making, to lose it in
+a moment. Yet she seemed most eager to be persuaded. The little watchers
+at this queer play saw that Grizel was saying things to her which she
+repeated docilely and clung to and lost hold of. Often Grizel
+illustrated her words by a sort of pantomime, as when she sat down on a
+chair and placed the doll in her lap, then sat down on her mother's lap;
+and when she had done this several times Tommy took Elspeth into the
+field to say to her:
+
+"Do you no see? She means as she is the Painted Lady's bairn, just the
+same as the doll is her bairn."
+
+If the Painted Lady needed to be told this every minute she was daft
+indeed, and Elspeth could peer no longer at the eerie spectacle. To
+leave Tommy, however, was equally difficult, so she crouched at his feet
+when he returned to the window, drawn there hastily by the sound of
+music.
+
+The Painted Lady could play on the spinet beautifully, but Grizel could
+not play, though it was she who was trying to play now. She was running
+her fingers over the notes, producing noises from them, while she swayed
+grotesquely on her seat and made comic faces. Her object was to capture
+her mother's mind, and she succeeded for a short time, but soon it
+floated away from all control, and the Painted Lady fell a-shaking
+violently. Then Grizel seemed to be alarmed, and her arms rocked
+despairingly, but she went to her mother and took loving hold of her,
+and the woman clung to her child in a way pitiful to see. She was on
+Grizel's knee now, but she still shivered as if in a deadly chill, and
+her feet rattled on the floor, and her arms against the sides of the
+chair. Grizel pinned the trembling arms with her own and twisted her
+legs round her mother's, and still the Painted Lady's tremors shook
+them both, so that to Tommy they were as two people wrestling.
+
+The shivering slowly lessened and at last ceased, but this seemed to
+make Grizel no less unhappy. To her vehement attempt to draw her
+mother's attention she got no response; the Painted Lady was hearkening
+intently for some sound other than Grizel's voice, and only once did she
+look at her child. Then it was with cruel, ugly eyes, and at the same
+moment she shoved Grizel aside so viciously that it was almost a blow.
+Grizel sat down sorrowfully beside her doll, like one aware that she
+could do no more, and her mother at once forgot her. What was she
+listening for so eagerly? Was it for the gallop of a horse? Tommy
+strained his ears.
+
+"Elspeth--speak low--do you hear anything?"
+
+"No; I'm ower fleid to listen."
+
+"Whisht! do you no hear a horse?"
+
+"No, everything's terrible still. Do you hear a horse?"
+
+"I--I think I do, but far awa'."
+
+His imagination was on fire. Did he hear a distant galloping or did he
+only make himself hear it? He had bent his head, and Elspeth, looking
+affrighted into his face, whispered, "I hear it too, oh, Tommy, so do
+I!"
+
+And the Painted Lady had heard it. She kissed her hand toward the Den
+several times, and each time Tommy seemed to hear that distant
+galloping. All the sweetness had returned to her face now, and with it a
+surging joy, and she rocked her arms exultantly, but quickly controlled
+them lest Grizel should see. For evidently Grizel must be cheated, and
+so the Painted Lady became very sly. She slipped off her shoes to be
+able to make her preparations noiselessly, and though at all other times
+her face expressed the rapture of love, when she glanced at her child it
+was suspiciously and with a gleam of hatred. Her preparations were for
+going out. She was long at the famous mirror, and when she left it her
+hair was elaborately dressed and her face so transformed that first
+Tommy exclaimed "Bonny!" and then corrected himself with a scornful
+"Paint!" On her feet she put a foolish little pair of red shoes, on her
+head a hat too gay with flowers, and across her shoulders a flimsy white
+shawl at which the night air of Thrums would laugh. Her every movement
+was light and cautious and accompanied by side-glances at Grizel, who
+occasionally looked at her, when the Painted Lady immediately pretended
+to be tending her plants again. She spoke to Grizel sweetly to deceive
+her, and shot baleful glances at her next moment. Tommy saw that Grizel
+had taken up her doll once more and was squeezing it to her breast. She
+knew very well what was going on behind her back.
+
+Suddenly Tommy took to his heels, Elspeth after him. He had seen the
+Painted Lady coming on her tip-toes to the window. They saw the window
+open and a figure in a white shawl creep out of it, as she had doubtless
+escaped long ago by another window when the door was barred. They lost
+sight of her at once.
+
+"What will Grizel do now?" Tommy whispered, and he would have returned
+to his watching place, but Elspeth pointed to the window. Grizel was
+there closing it, and next moment the lamp was extinguished. They heard
+a key turn in the lock, and presently Grizel, carrying warm wraps,
+passed very near them and proceeded along the double dykes, not anxious
+apparently to keep her mother in view, but slowly, as if she knew where
+to find her. She went into the Den, where Tommy dared not follow her,
+but he listened at the stile and in the awful silence he fancied he
+heard the neighing of a horse.
+
+The next time he met Grizel he was yearning to ask her how she spent
+that night, but he knew she would not answer; it would be a long time
+before she gave him her confidence again. He offered her his piece of
+cold iron, however, and explained why he carried it, whereupon she flung
+it across the road, crying, "You horrid boy, do you think I am
+frightened at my mamma!" But when he was out of sight she came back and
+slipped the cold iron into her pocket.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+IN WHICH TOMMY SOLVES THE WOMAN PROBLEM
+
+
+Pity made Elspeth want to like the Painted Lady's child now, but her own
+rules of life were all from a book never opened by Grizel, who made her
+religion for herself and thought God a swear; she also despised Elspeth
+for being so dependent on Tommy, and Elspeth knew it. The two great
+subjects being barred thus, it was not likely that either girl, despite
+some attempts on Elspeth's part, should find out the best that was in
+the other, without which friendship has no meaning, and they would have
+gone different ways had not Tommy given an arm to each. He, indeed, had
+as little in common with Grizel, for most conspicuous of his traits was
+the faculty of stepping into other people's shoes and remaining there
+until he became someone else; his individuality consisted in having
+none, while she could only be herself and was without tolerance for
+those who were different; he had at no time in his life the least desire
+to make other persons like himself, but if they were not like Grizel she
+rocked her arms and cried, "Why, why, why?" which is the mark of the
+"womanly" woman. But his tendency to be anyone he was interested in
+implied enormous sympathy (for the time being), and though Grizel
+spurned his overtures, this only fired his pride of conquest. We can all
+get whatever we want if we are quite determined to have it (though it be
+a king's daughter), and in the end Tommy vanquished Grizel. How? By
+offering to let her come into Aaron's house and wash it and dust it and
+ca'm it, "just as if you were our mother," an invitation she could not
+resist. To you this may seem an easy way, but consider the penetration
+he showed in thinking of it. It came to him one day when he saw her lift
+the smith's baby out of the gutter, and hug it with a passionate delight
+in babies.
+
+"She's so awid to do it," he said basely to Elspeth, "that we needna let
+on how much we want it done." And he also mentioned her eagerness to
+Aaron as a reason why she should be allowed to do it for nothing.
+
+For Aaron to hold out against her admittance would have been to defraud
+himself, for she transformed his house. When she saw the brass lining of
+the jelly-pan discolored, and that the stockings hanging from the string
+beneath the mantelpiece had given way where the wearers were hardest on
+them; when she found dripping adhering to a cold frying-pan instead of
+in a "pig," and the pitcher leaking and the carrot-grater stopped--when
+these and similar discoveries were made by Grizel, was it a squeal of
+horror she gave that such things should be, or a cry of rapture because
+to her had fallen the task of setting them right?
+
+"She just made a jump for the besom," was Tommy's graphic description of
+how it all began.
+
+You should have seen Grizel on the hoddy-table knocking nails into the
+wall. The hoddy-table is so called because it goes beneath the larger
+one at night, like a chicken under its mother, and Grizel, with the
+nails in her mouth, used them up so quickly that you would have sworn
+she swallowed half of them; yet she rocked her arms because she could
+not be at all four walls at once. She rushed about the room until she
+was dizzy, and Tommy knew the moment to cry "Grip her, she'll tumble!"
+when he and Elspeth seized her and put her on a stool.
+
+It is on the hoddy-table that you bake and iron. "There's not a
+baking-board in the house," Elspeth explained. "There is!" cried Grizel,
+there and then converting a drawer into one.
+
+Between her big bannocks she made baby ones, for no better reason than
+that she was so fond of babies, and she kissed the baby ones and said,
+"Oh, the loves, they are just sweet!" and she felt for them when Tommy
+took a bite. She could go so quickly between the board and the girdle
+that she was always at one end of the course or the other, but never
+gave you time to say at which end, and on the limited space round the
+fire she could balance such a number of bannocks that they were as much
+a wonder as the Lord's prayer written on a sixpence. Such a vigilant eye
+she kept on them, too, that they dared not fall. Yet she had never been
+taught to bake; a good-natured neighbor had now and again allowed her to
+look on.
+
+Then her ironing! Even Aaron opened his mouth on this subject, Blinder
+being his confidant. "I thought there was a smell o' burning," he said,
+"and so I went butt the house; but man, as soon as my een lighted on her
+I minded of my mother at the same job. The crittur was so busy with her
+work that she looked as if, though the last trumpet had blawn, she would
+just have cried, 'I canna come till my ironing's done!' Ay, I went ben
+without a word."
+
+But best of all was to see Grizel "redding up" on a Saturday afternoon.
+Where were Tommy and Elspeth then? They were shut up in the coffin-bed
+to be out of the way, and could scarce have told whether they fled
+thither or were wrapped into it by her energetic arms. Even Aaron dared
+not cross the floor until it was sanded. "I believe," he said, trying to
+jest, "you would like to shut me up in the bed too!" "I should just love
+it," she cried, eagerly; "will you go?" It is an inferior woman who has
+a sense of humor when there is a besom in her hand.
+
+Thus began great days to Grizel, "sweet" she called them, for she had
+many of her mother's words, and a pretty way of emphasizing them with
+her plain face that turned them all into superlatives. But though Tommy
+and Elspeth were her friends now, her mouth shut obstinately the moment
+they mentioned the Painted Lady; she regretted ever having given Tommy
+her confidence on that subject, and was determined not to do so again.
+He did not dare tell her that he had once been at the east window of her
+home, but often he and Elspeth spoke to each other of that adventure,
+and sometimes they woke in their garret bed thinking they heard the
+horseman galloping by. Then they crept closer to each other, and
+wondered whether Grizel was cosey in her bed or stalking an eerie figure
+in the Den.
+
+Aaron said little, but he was drawn to the girl, who had not the
+self-consciousness of Tommy and Elspeth in his presence, and sometimes
+he slipped a penny into her hand. The pennies were not spent, they were
+hoarded for the fair, or Muckle Friday, or Muckley, great day of the
+year in Thrums. If you would know how Tommy was making ready for this
+mighty festival, listen.
+
+One of his sources of income was the _Mentor_, a famous London weekly
+paper, which seemed to visitors to be taken in by every person of
+position in Thrums. It was to be seen not only in parlors, but on the
+armchair at the Jute Bank, in the gauger's gig, in the Spittal factor's
+dog-cart, on a shoemaker's form, protruding from Dr. McQueen's tail
+pocket and from Mr. Duthie's oxter pocket, on Cathro's school-desk, in
+the Rev. Mr. Dishart's study, in half a dozen farms. Miss Ailie
+compelled her little servant, Gavinia, to read the _Mentor_, and stood
+over her while she did it; the phrase, "this week's," meant this week's
+_Mentor_. Yet the secret must be told: only one copy of the paper came
+to Thrums weekly; it was subscribed for by the whole reading public
+between them, and by Miss Ailie's influence Tommy had become the boy who
+carried it from house to house.
+
+This brought him a penny a week, but so heavy were his incidental
+expenses that he could have saved little for the Muckley had not another
+organization given him a better chance. It was a society, newly started,
+for helping the deserving poor; they had to subscribe not less than a
+penny weekly to it, and at the end of the year each subscriber was to be
+given fuel, etc., to the value of double what he or she had put in. "The
+three Ps" was a nickname given to the society by Dr. McQueen, because it
+claimed to distribute "Peats and Potatoes with Propriety," but he was
+one of its heartiest supporters nevertheless. The history of this
+society in the first months of its existence not only shows how Tommy
+became a moneyed man, but gives a glimpse into the character of those it
+benefited.
+
+Miss Ailie was treasurer, and the pennies were to be brought to her on
+Monday evenings between the hours of seven and eight. The first Monday
+evening found her ready in the school-room, in her hand the famous
+pencil that wrote red with the one end and blue with the other; by her
+side her assistant, Mr. T. Sandys, a pen balanced on his ear. For a
+whole hour did they wait, but though many of the worthiest poor had been
+enrolled as members, the few who appeared with their pennies were
+notoriously riff-raff. At eight Miss Ailie disconsolately sent Tommy
+home, but he was back in five minutes.
+
+"There's a mask of them," he told her, excitedly, "hanging about, but
+feared to come in because the others would see them. They're ashamed to
+have it kent that they belong to a charity society, and Meggy Robbie is
+wandering round the Dovecot wi' her penny wrapped in a paper, and Watty
+Rattray and Ronny-On is walking up and down the brae pretending they
+dinna ken one another, and auld Connacher's Jeanie Ann says she has been
+four times round the town waiting for Kitty Elshioner to go away, and
+there's a one-leggit man hodding in the ditch, and Tibbie Birse is out
+wi' a lantern counting them."
+
+Miss Ailie did not know what to do. "Here's Jeanie Ann's penny," Tommy
+continued, opening his hand, "and this is three bawbees frae Kitty
+Elshioner and you and me is no to tell a soul they've joined."
+
+A furtive tapping was heard at the door. It was Ronny-On, who had
+skulked forward with twopence, but Gavinia answered his knock, so he
+just said, "Ay, Gavinia, it's yoursel'. Well, I'll be stepping," and
+would have retired had not Miss Ailie caught him. Even then he said,
+"Three bawbees is to you to lay by, and one bawbee to Gavinia no to
+tell."
+
+To next Monday evening Miss Ailie now looked with apprehension, but
+Tommy lay awake that night until, to use a favorite crow of his, he
+"found a way." He borrowed the school-mistress's blue-and-red pencil and
+sought the houses of the sensitive poor with the following effect. One
+sample will suffice; take him at the door of Meggy Robbie in the West
+Muir, which he flung open with the effrontery of a tax-collector.
+
+"You're a three P," he said, with a wave of his pencil.
+
+"I'm no sic thing!" cried the old lady.
+
+"It winna do, woman," Tommy said sternly. "Miss Ailie telled me you paid
+in your first penny on the chap of ten." He wetted the pencil on his
+tongue to show that it was vain to trifle with him, and Meggy bowed her
+head.
+
+"It'll be through the town that I've joined," she moaned, but Tommy
+explained that he was there to save her.
+
+"I'm willing to come to your house," he said, "and collect the money
+every week, and not a soul will I tell except the committee."
+
+"Kitty Elshioner would see you coming," said Meggy.
+
+"No, no, I'll creep yont the hedge and climb the hen-house."
+
+"But it would be a' found out at any rate," she remembered, "when I go
+for the peats and things at Hogmanay."
+
+"It needna be," eagerly replied Tommy. "I'll bring them to you in a
+barrow in the dead o' night."
+
+"Could you?" she cried passionately, and he promised he would, and it
+may be mentioned here that he did.
+
+"And what for yoursel'?" she inquired.
+
+"A bawbee," he said, "the night afore the Muckley."
+
+The bargain was made, but before he could get away, "Tell me, laddie,"
+said Meggy, coaxingly, "has Kitty Elshioner joined?" They were all as
+curious to know who had joined as they were anxious to keep their own
+membership a secret; but Tommy betrayed none, at least none who agreed
+to his proposal. There were so many of these that on the night before
+the Muckley he had thirteen pence.
+
+"And you was doing good all the time you was making the thirteen pence,"
+Elspeth said, fondly. "I believe that was the reason you did it."
+
+"I believe it was!" Tommy exclaimed. He had not thought of this before,
+but it was easy to him to believe anything.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE MUCKLEY
+
+
+Every child in Thrums went to bed on the night before the Muckley
+hugging a pirly, or, as the vulgar say, a money-box; and all the pirlies
+were ready for to-morrow, that is to say, the mouths of them had been
+widened with gully knives by owners now so skilful at the jerk which
+sends their contents to the floor that pirlies they were no longer.
+"Disgorge!" was the universal cry, or, in the vernacular, "Out you come,
+you sweer deevils!"
+
+Not a coin but had its history, not a boy who was unable to pick out his
+own among a hundred. The black one came from the 'Sosh, the bent lad he
+got for carrying in Ronny-On's sticks. Oh michty me, sure as death he
+had nearly forgotten the one with the warts on it. Which to spend first?
+The goldy one? Na faags, it was ower ill to come by. The scartit one?
+No, no, it was a lucky. Well, then, the one found in the rat's hole?
+(That was a day!) Ay, dagont, ay, we'll make the first blatter with it.
+
+It was Tommy's first Muckley, and the report that he had thirteen pence
+brought him many advisers about its best investment. Even Corp Shiach
+(five pence) suspended hostilities for this purpose. "Mind this," he
+said solemnly, "there's none o' the candies as sucks so long as
+Californy's Teuch and Tasty. Other kinds may be sweeter, but Teuch and
+Tasty lasts the longest, and what a grip it has! It pulls out your
+teeth!" Corp seemed to think that this was a recommendation.
+
+"I'm nane sure o' Teuch and Tasty," Birkie said. "If you dinna keep a
+watch on it, it slips ower when you're swallowing your spittle."
+
+"Then you should tie a string to it," suggested Tommy, who was thought
+more of from that hour.
+
+_Beware of Pickpockets!_ Had it not been for placards with this glorious
+announcement (it is the state's first printed acknowledgment that boys
+and girls form part of the body politic) you might have thought that the
+night before the Muckley was absurdly like other nights. Not a show had
+arrived, not a strange dog, no romantic figures were wandering the
+streets in search of lodgings, no stands had sprung up in the square.
+You could pass hours in pretending to fear that when the morning came
+there would be no fairyland. And all the time you _knew_.
+
+About ten o'clock Ballingall's cat was observed washing its face, a
+deliberate attempt to bring on rain. It was immediately put to death.
+
+Tommy and Elspeth had agreed to lie awake all night; if Tommy nipped
+Elspeth, Elspeth would nip Tommy. Other children had made the same
+arrangement, though the experienced ones were aware that it would fail.
+If it was true that all the witches were dead, then the streets of
+stands and shows and gaming-tables and shooting-galleries were erected
+by human hands, and it followed that were you to listen through the
+night you must hear the hammers. But always in the watches the god of
+the Muckley came unseen and glued your eyes, as if with Teuch and Tasty,
+and while you slept--Up you woke with a start. What was it you were to
+mind as soon as you woke? Listen! That's a drum beating! It's the
+Muckley! They are all here! It has begun! Oh, michty, michty, michty,
+whaur's my breeks?
+
+When Tommy, with Elspeth and Grizel, set off excitedly for the town, the
+country folk were already swarming in. The Monypenny road was thick with
+them, braw loons in blue bonnets with red bobs to them, tartan
+waistcoats, scarves of every color, woollen shirts as gay, and the
+strutting wearers in two minds--whether to take off the scarf to display
+the shirt, or hide the shirt and trust to the scarf. Came lassies, too,
+in wincey bodices they were like to burst through, and they were
+listening apprehensively as they ploughed onward for a tearing at the
+seams. There were red-headed lasses, yellow-chy-headed and black-headed,
+blue-shawled and red-shawled lasses; boots on every one of them,
+stockings almost as common, the skirt kilted up for the present, but
+down it should go when they were in the thick of things, and then it
+must take care of itself. All were solemn and sheepish as yet, but wait
+a bit.
+
+The first-known face our three met was Corp. He was only able to sign to
+them, because Californy's specialty had already done its work and glued
+his teeth together. He was off to the smithy to be melted, but gave them
+to understand that though awkward it was glorious. Then came Birkie, who
+had sewn up the mouths of his pockets, all but a small slit in each, as
+a precaution against pickpockets, and was now at his own request being
+held upside down by the Haggerty-Taggertys on the chance that a
+halfpenny which had disappeared mysteriously might fall out. A more
+tragic figure was Francie Crabb (one and seven pence), who, like a mad,
+mad thing, had taken all his money to the fair at once. In ten minutes
+he had bought fourteen musical instruments.
+
+Tommy and party had not yet reached the celebrated corner of the west
+town end where the stands began, but they were near it, and he stopped
+to give Grizel and Elspeth his final instructions: "(1) Keep your money
+in your purse, and your purse in your hand, and your hand in your
+pocket; (2) if you lose me, I'll give Shovel's whistle, and syne you
+maun squeeze and birse your way back to me."
+
+Now then, are you ready? Bang! They were in it. Strike up, ye fiddlers;
+drums, break; tooters, fifers, at it for your lives; trumpets, blow;
+bagpipes, skirl; music-boxes, all together now--Tommy has arrived.
+
+Even before he had seen Thrums, except with his mother's eye, Tommy knew
+that the wise begin the Muckley by measuring its extent. That the square
+and adjoining wynds would be crammed was a law of nature, but boyhood
+drew imaginary lines across the Roods, the west town end, the east town
+end, and the brae, and if the stands did not reach these there had been
+retrogression. Tommy found all well in two quarters, got a nasty shock
+on the brae, but medicine for it in the Roods; on the whole, yelled a
+hundred children, by way of greeting to each other, a better Muckley
+than ever.
+
+From those who loved them best, the more notable Muckleys got
+distinctive names for convenience of reference. As shall be
+ostentatiously shown in its place, there was a Muckley called (and by
+Corp Shiach, too) after Tommy, but this, his first, was dubbed Sewster's
+Muckley, in honor of a seamstress who hanged herself that day in the
+Three-cornered Wood. Poor little sewster, she had known joyous Muckleys
+too, but now she was up in the Three-cornered Wood hanging herself, aged
+nineteen. I know nothing more of her, except that in her maiden days
+when she left the house her mother always came to the door to look
+proudly after her.
+
+How to describe the scene, when owing to the throng a boy could only
+peer at it between legs or through the crook of a woman's arm? Shovel
+would have run up ploughmen to get his bird's-eye view, and he could
+have told Tommy what he saw, and Tommy could have made a picture of it
+in his mind, every figure ten feet high. But perhaps to be lost in it
+was best. You had but to dive and come up anywhere to find something
+amazing; you fell over a box of jumping-jacks into a new world.
+
+Everyone to his taste. If you want Tommy's sentiments, here they are,
+condensed: "The shows surpass everything else on earth. Four streets of
+them in the square! The best is the menagerie, because there is the
+loudest roaring there. Kick the caravans and you increase the roaring.
+Admission, however, prohibitive (threepence). More economical to stand
+outside the show of the 'Mountain Maid and the Shepherd's Bride' and
+watch the merriman saying funny things to the monkey. Take care you
+don't get in front of the steps, else you will be pressed up by those
+behind and have to pay before you have decided that you want to go in.
+When you fling pennies at the Mountain Maid and the Shepherd's Bride
+they stop play-acting and scramble for them. Go in at night when there
+are drunk ploughmen to fling pennies. The Fat Wife with the Golden Locks
+lets you put your fingers in her arms, but that is soon over. 'The
+Slave-driver and his Victims.' Not worth the money; they are not
+blooding. To Jerusalem and Back in a Jiffy. This is a swindle. You just
+keek through holes."
+
+But Elspeth was of a different mind. She liked To Jerusalem and Back
+best, and gave the Slave-driver and his Victims a penny to be
+Christians. The only show she disliked was the wax-work, where was
+performed the "Tragedy of Tiffano and the Haughty Princess." Tiffano
+loved the woodman's daughter, and so he would not have the Haughty
+Princess, and so she got a magician to turn him into a pumpkin, and then
+she ate him. What distressed Elspeth was that Tiffano could never get to
+heaven now, and all the consolation Tommy, doing his best, could give
+her was, "He could go, no doubt he could go, but he would have to take
+the Haughty Princess wi' him, and he would be sweer to do that."
+
+Grizel reflected: "If I had a whip like the one the Slave-driver has
+shouldn't I lash the boys who hoot my mamma! I wish I could turn boys
+into pumpkins. The Mountain Maid wore a beautiful muslin with gold lace,
+but she does not wash her neck."
+
+Lastly, let Corp have his say: "I looked at the outside of the shows,
+but always landed back at Californy's stand. Sucking is better nor near
+anything. The Teuch and Tasty is stickier than ever. I have lost twa
+teeth. The Mountain Maid is biding all night at Tibbie Birse's, and I
+went in to see her. She had a bervie and a boiled egg to her tea. She
+likes her eggs saft wi' a lick of butter in them. The Fat Wife is the
+one I like best. She's biding wi' Shilpit Kaytherine on the Tanage Brae.
+She weighs Jeems and Kaytherine and the sma' black swine. She had an
+ingin to her tea. The Slave-driver's a fushinless body. One o' the
+Victims gives him his licks. They a' bide in the caravan. You can stand
+on the wheel and keek in. They had herrings wi' the rans to their tea. I
+cut a hole in Jerusalem and Back, and there was no Jerusalem there. The
+man as ocht Jerusalem greets because the Fair Circassian winna take him.
+He is biding a' night wi' Blinder. He likes a dram in his tea."
+
+Elspeth's money lasted till four o'clock. For Aaron, almost the only man
+in Thrums who shunned the revels that day, she bought a gingerbread
+house; and the miraculous powder which must be taken on a sixpence was
+to make Blinder see again, but unfortunately he forgot about putting it
+on the sixpence. And of course there was something for a certain boy.
+Grizel had completed her purchases by five o'clock, when Tommy was still
+heavy with threepence halfpenny. They included a fluffy pink shawl, she
+did not say for whom, but the Painted Lady wore it afterwards, and for
+herself another doll.
+
+"But that doll's leg is broken," Tommy pointed out.
+
+"That was why I bought it," she said warmly, "I feel so sorry for it,
+the darling," and she carried it carefully so that the poor thing might
+suffer as little pain as possible.
+
+Twice they rushed home for hasty meals, and were back so quickly that
+Tommy's shadow strained a muscle in turning with him. Night came on,
+and from a hundred strings stretched along stands and shows there now
+hung thousands of long tin things like trumpets. One burning paper could
+set a dozen of these ablaze, and no sooner were they lit than a wind
+that had been biding its time rushed in like the merriman, making the
+lamps swing on their strings, so that the flaring lights embraced, and
+from a distance Thrums seemed to be on fire.
+
+Even Grizel was willing to hold Tommy's hand now, and the three could
+only move this way and that as the roaring crowd carried them. They were
+not looking at the Muckley, they were part of it, and at last Thrums was
+all Tommy's fancy had painted it. This intoxicated him, so that he had
+to scream at intervals, "We're here, Elspeth, I tell you, we're here!"
+and he became pugnacious and asked youths twice his size whether they
+denied that he was here, and if so, would they come on. In this frenzy
+he was seen by Miss Ailie, who had stolen out in a veil to look for
+Gavinia, but just as she was about to reprove him, dreadful men asked
+her was she in search of a lad, whereupon she fled home and barred the
+door, and later in the evening warned Gavinia, through the key-hole,
+taking her for a roystering blade, that there were policemen in the
+house, to which the astounding reply of Gavinia, then aged twelve, was,
+"No sic luck."
+
+With the darkness, too, crept into the Muckley certain devils in the
+color of the night who spoke thickly and rolled braw lads in the mire,
+and egged on friends to fight and cast lewd thoughts into the minds of
+the women. At first the men had been bashful swains. To the women's "Gie
+me my faring, Jock," they had replied, "Wait, Jean, till I'm fee'd," but
+by night most had got their arles, with a dram above it, and he who
+could only guffaw at Jean a few hours ago had her round the waist now,
+and still an arm free for rough play with other kimmers. The Jeans were
+as boisterous as the Jocks, giving them leer for leer, running from them
+with a giggle, waiting to be caught and rudely kissed. Grand, patient,
+long-suffering fellows these men were, up at five, summer and winter,
+foddering their horses, maybe hours before there would be food for
+themselves, miserably paid, housed like cattle, and when the rheumatism
+seized them, liable to be flung aside like a broken graip. As hard was
+the life of the women: coarse food, chaff beds, damp clothes, their
+portion; their sweethearts in the service of masters who were reluctant
+to fee a married man. Is it to be wondered that these lads who could be
+faithful unto death drank soddenly on their one free day, that these
+girls, starved of opportunities for womanliness, of which they could
+make as much as the finest lady, sometimes woke after a Muckley to wish
+that they might wake no more? Our three brushed shoulders with the
+devils that had been let loose, but hardly saw them; they heard them,
+but did not understand their tongue. The eight-o'clock bell had rung
+long since, and though the racket was as great as ever, it was only
+because every reveller left now made the noise of two. Mothers were out
+fishing for their bairns. The Haggerty-Taggertys had straggled home
+hoarse as crows; every one of them went to bed that night with a
+stocking round his throat. Of Monypenny boys, Tommy could find none in
+the square but Corp, who, with another tooth missing, had been going
+about since six o'clock with his pockets hanging out, as a sign that all
+was over. An awkward silence had fallen on the trio; the reason, that
+Tommy had only threepence left and the smallest of them cost threepence.
+The reference of course is to the wondrous gold-paper packets of sweets
+(not unlike crackers in appearance) which are only seen at the Muckley,
+and are what every girl claims of her lad or lads. Now, Tommy had vowed
+to Elspeth--But he had also said to Grizel--In short, how could he buy
+for both with threepence?
+
+Grizel, as the stranger, ought to get--But he knew Elspeth too well to
+believe that she would dry her eyes with that.
+
+Elspeth being his sister--But he had promised Grizel, and she had been
+so ill brought up that she said nasty things when you broke your word.
+
+The gold packet was bought. That is it sticking out of Tommy's inside
+pocket. The girls saw it and knew what was troubling him, but not a
+word was spoken now between the three. They set off for home
+self-consciously, Tommy the least agitated on the whole, because he need
+not make up his mind for another ten minutes. But he wished Grizel would
+not look at him sideways and then rock her arms in irritation. They
+passed many merry-makers homeward bound, many of them following a
+tortuous course, for the Scottish toper gives way first in the legs, the
+Southron in the other extremity, and thus between them could be
+constructed a man wholly sober and another as drunk as Chloe. But though
+the highway clattered with many feet, not a soul was in the double
+dykes, and at the easy end of that formidable path Grizel came to a
+determined stop.
+
+"Good-night," she said, with such a disdainful glance at Tommy.
+
+He had not made up his mind yet, but he saw that it must be done now,
+and to take a decisive step was always agony to him, though once taken
+it ceased to trouble. To dodge it for another moment he said, weakly:
+"Let's--let's sit down a whiley on the dyke."
+
+But Grizel, while coveting the packet, because she had never got a
+present in her life, would not shilly-shally.
+
+"Are you to give it to Elspeth?" she asked, with the horrid directness
+that is so trying to an intellect like Tommy's.
+
+"N-no," he said.
+
+"To Grizel?" cried Elspeth.
+
+"N-no," he said again.
+
+It was an undignified moment for a great boy, but the providence that
+watched over Tommy until it tired of him came to his aid in the nick of
+time. It took the form of the Painted Lady, who appeared suddenly out of
+the gloom of the Double Dykes. Two of the children jumped, and the third
+clenched her little fists to defend her mamma if Tommy cast a word at
+her. But he did not; his mouth remained foolishly open. The Painted Lady
+had been talking cheerfully to herself, but she drew back
+apprehensively, with a look of appeal on her face, and then--and then
+Tommy "saw a way." He handed her the gold packet, "It's to you," he
+said, "it's--it's your Muckley!"
+
+For a moment she was afraid to take it, but when she knew that this
+sweet boy's gift was genuine, she fondled it and was greatly flattered,
+and dropped him the quaintest courtesy and then looked defiantly at
+Grizel. But Grizel did not take it from her. Instead, she flung her arms
+impulsively round Tommy's neck, she was so glad, glad, glad.
+
+As Tommy and Elspeth walked away to their home, Elspeth could hear him
+breathing heavily, and occasionally he gave her a furtive glance.
+
+"Grizel needna have done that," she said, sharply.
+
+"No," replied Tommy.
+
+"But it was noble of you," she continued, squeezing his hand, "to give
+it to the Painted Lady. Did you mean to give it to her a' the time?"
+
+"Oh, Elspeth!"
+
+"But did you?"
+
+"Oh, Elspeth!"
+
+"That's no you greeting, is it?" she asked, softly.
+
+"I'm near the greeting," he said truthfully, "but I'm no sure what
+about." His sympathy was so easily aroused that he sometimes cried
+without exactly knowing why.
+
+"It's because you're so good," Elspeth told him; but presently she said,
+with a complete change of voice, "No, Grizel needna have done that."
+
+"It was a shameful thing to do," Tommy agreed, shaking his head. "But
+she did it!" he added triumphantly; "you saw her do it, Elspeth!"
+
+"But you didna like it?" Elspeth asked, in terror.
+
+"No, of course I didna like it, but--"
+
+"But what, Tommy?"
+
+"But I liked her to like it," he admitted, and by and by he began to
+laugh hysterically. "I'm no sure what I'm laughing at," he said, "but I
+think it's at mysel'." He may have laughed at himself before, but this
+Muckley is memorable as the occasion on which he first caught himself
+doing it. The joke grew with the years, until sometimes he laughed in
+his most emotional moments, suddenly seeing himself in his true light.
+But it had become a bitter laugh by that time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+CORP IS BROUGHT TO HEEL--GRIZEL DEFIANT
+
+
+Corp Shiach was a bare-footed colt of a boy, of ungainly build, with a
+nose so thick and turned up that it was a certificate of character, and
+his hands were covered with warts, which he had a trick of biting till
+they bled. Then he rubbed them on his trousers, which were the
+picturesque part of him, for he was at present "serving" to the masons
+(he had "earned his keep" since long before he could remember), and so
+wore the white or yellow ducks which the dust of the quarry stains a
+rarer orange color than is known elsewhere. The orange of the masons'
+trousers, the blue of the hearthstones, these are the most beautiful
+colors to be seen in Thrums, though of course Corp was unaware of it. He
+was really very good-natured, and only used his fists freely because of
+imagination he had none, and thinking made him sweat, and consequently
+the simplest way of proving his case was to say, "I'll fight you." What
+might have been the issue of a conflict between him and Shovel was a
+problem for Tommy to puzzle over. Shovel was as quick as Corp was
+deliberate, and would have danced round him, putting in unexpected
+ones, but if he had remained just one moment too long within Corp's
+reach--
+
+They nicknamed him Corp because he took fits, when he lay like one dead.
+He was proud of his fits, was Corp, but they were a bother to him, too,
+because he could make so little of them. They interested doctors and
+other carriage folk, who came to his aunt's house to put their fingers
+into him, and gave him sixpence, and would have given him more, but when
+they pressed him to tell them what he remembered about his fits, he
+could only answer dejectedly, "Not a damned thing."
+
+"You might as well no have them ava," his wrathful aunt, with whom he
+lived, would say, and she thrashed him until his size forbade it.
+
+Soon after the Muckley came word that the Lady of the Spittal was to be
+brought to see Corp by Mr. Ogilvy, the school-master of Glen Quharity,
+and at first Corp boasted of it, but as the appointed day drew near he
+became uneasy.
+
+"The worst o't," he said to anyone who would listen, "is that my auntie
+is to be away frae hame, and so they'll put a' their questions to me."
+
+The Haggerty-Taggertys and Birkie were so jealous that they said they
+were glad _they_ never had fits, but Tommy made no such pretence.
+
+"Oh, Corp, if I had thae fits of yours!" he exclaimed greedily.
+
+"If they were mine to give awa'," replied Corp sullenly, "you could
+have them and welcome." Grown meek in his trouble, he invited Tommy to
+speak freely, with the result that his eyes were partially opened to the
+superiority of that boy's attainments. Tommy told him a number of
+interesting things to say to Mr. Ogilvy and the lady about his fits,
+about how queer he felt just before they came on, and the visions he had
+while he was lying stiff. But though the admiring Corp gave attentive
+ear, he said hopelessly next day, "Not a dagont thing do I mind. When
+they question me about my fits I'll just say I'm sometimes in them and
+sometimes out o' them, and if they badger me more, I can aye kick."
+
+Tommy gave him a look that meant, "Fits are just wasted on you," and
+Corp replied with another that meant, "I ken they are." Then they
+parted, one of them to reflect.
+
+"Corp," he said excitedly, when next they met, "has Mr. Ogilvy or the
+lady ever come to see you afore?"
+
+They had not, and Corp was able to swear that they did not even know him
+by sight.
+
+"They dinna ken me either," said Tommy.
+
+"What does that matter?" asked Corp, but Tommy was too full to speak. He
+had "found a way."
+
+The lady and Mr. Ogilvy found Corp such a success that the one gave him
+a shilling and the other took down his reminiscences in a note-book. But
+if you would hear of the rings of blue and white and yellow Corp saw,
+and of the other extraordinary experiences he described himself as
+having when in a fit, you need not search that note-book, for the page
+has been torn out. Instead of making inquiries of Mr. Ogilvy, try any
+other dominie in the district, Mr. Cathro, for instance, who delighted
+to tell the tale. This of course was when it leaked out that Tommy had
+personated Corp, by arrangement with the real Corp, who was listening in
+rapture beneath the bed.
+
+Tommy, who played his part so well that he came out of it in a daze, had
+Corp at heel from that hour. He told him what a rogue he had been in
+London, and Corp cried admiringly, "Oh, you deevil! oh, you queer little
+deevil!" and sometimes it was Elspeth who was narrator, and then Tommy's
+noble acts were the subject; but still Corp's comment was "Oh, the
+deevil! oh, the queer little deevil!" Elspeth was flattered by his
+hero-worship, but his language shocked her, and after consulting Miss
+Ailie she advised him to count twenty when he felt an oath coming, at
+the end of which exercise the desire to swear would have passed away.
+Good-natured Corp willingly promised to try this, but he was never
+hopeful, and as he explained to Tommy, after a failure, "It just made me
+waur than ever, for when I had counted the twenty I said a big Damn,
+thoughtful-like, and syne out jumpit three little damns, like as if the
+first ane had cleckit in my mouth."
+
+It was fortunate that Elspeth liked Corp on the whole, for during the
+three years now to be rapidly passed over, Tommy took delight in his
+society, though he never treated him as an equal; Corp indeed did not
+expect that, and was humbly grateful for what he got. In summer, fishing
+was their great diversion. They would set off as early as four in the
+morning, fishing wands in hand, and scour the world for trout, plodding
+home in the gloaming with stones in their fishing-basket to deceive
+those who felt its weight. In the long winter nights they liked best to
+listen to Blinder's tales of the Thrums Jacobites, tales never put into
+writing, but handed down from father to son, and proved true in the
+oddest of ways, as by Blinder's trick of involuntarily holding out his
+hands to a fire when he found himself near one, though he might be
+sweating to the shirt and the time a July forenoon. "I make no doubt,"
+he told them, "as I do that because my forbear, Buchan Osler (called
+Buchan wi' the Haap after the wars was ower), had to hod so lang frae
+the troopers, and them so greedy for him that he daredna crawl to a fire
+once in an eight days."
+
+The Lord of the Spittal and handsome Captain Body (whose being "out"
+made all the women anxious) marched through the Den, flapping their
+wings at the head of a fearsome retinue, and the Thrums folk looked so
+glum at them that gay Captain Body said he should kiss every lass who
+did not cheer for Charlie, and none cheered, but at the same time none
+ran away. Few in Thrums cared a doit for Charlie, but some hung on
+behind this troop till there was no turning back for them, and one of
+these was Buchan. He forced his wife to give Captain Body a white rose
+from her bush by the door, but a thorn in it pricked the gallant, and
+the blood from his fingers fell on the bush, and from that year it grew
+red roses.
+
+"If you dinna believe me," Blinder said, "look if the roses is no red on
+the bush at Pyotdykes, which was a split frae Buchan's, and speir
+whether they're no named the blood rose."
+
+"I believe you," Tommy would say breathlessly: "go on."
+
+Captain Body was back in the Den by and by, but he had no thought of
+preeing lasses' mouths now. His face was scratched and haggard and his
+gay coat torn, and when he crawled to the Cuttle Well he caught some of
+the water in his bonnet and mixed meal with it, stirring the precious
+compound with his finger and using the loof of his hand as a spoon.
+Every stick of furniture Buchan and the other Thrums rebels possessed
+was seized by the government and rouped in the market-place of Thrums,
+but few would bid against the late owners, for whom the things were
+secretly bought back very cheaply.
+
+To these and many similar stories Tommy listened open-mouthed, seeing
+the scene far more vividly than the narrator, who became alarmed at his
+quick, loud breathing, and advised him to forget them and go back to
+his lessons. But his lessons never interested Tommy, and he would go
+into the Den instead, and repeat Blinder's legends, with embellishments
+which made them so real that Corp and Elspeth and Grizel were afraid to
+look behind them lest the spectre of Captain Body should be standing
+there, leaning on a ghostly sword.
+
+At such times Elspeth kept a firm grip of Tommy's hand, but one evening
+as they all ran panic-stricken from some imaginary alarm, she lost him
+near the Cuttle Well, and then, as it seemed to her, the Den became
+suddenly very dark and lonely. At first she thought she had it to
+herself, but as she stole timidly along the pink path she heard voices,
+and she cried "Tommy!" joyously. But no answer came, so it could not be
+Tommy. Then she thought it must be a pair of lovers, but next moment she
+stood transfixed with fear, for it was the Painted Lady, who was coming
+along the path talking aloud to herself. No, not to herself--to someone
+she evidently thought was by her side; she called him darling and other
+sweet names, and waited for his replies and nodded pleased assent to
+them, or pouted at them, and terrified Elspeth knew that she was talking
+to the man who never came.
+
+When she saw Elspeth she stopped irresolutely, and the two stood looking
+in fear at each other. "You are not my brat, are you?" the Painted Lady
+asked.
+
+"N-no," the child gasped.
+
+"Then why don't you call me nasty names?"
+
+"I dinna never call you names," Elspeth replied, but the woman still
+looked puzzled.
+
+"Perhaps you are naughty also?" she said doubtfully, and then, as if
+making up her mind that it must be so, she came closer and said, with a
+voice full of pity: "I am so sorry."
+
+Elspeth did not understand half of it, but the pitying voice, which was
+of the rarest sweetness, drove away much of her fear, and she said: "Do
+you no mind me? I was wi' Tommy when he gave you the gold packet on
+Muckley night."
+
+Then the Painted Lady remembered. "He took such a fancy to me," she
+said, with a pleased simper, and then she looked serious again.
+
+"Do you love him?" she asked, and Elspeth nodded.
+
+"But is he all the world to you?"
+
+"Yes," Elspeth said.
+
+The Painted Lady took her by the arm and said impressively, "Don't let
+him know."
+
+"But he does know," said Elspeth.
+
+"I am so sorry," the Painted Lady said again. "When they know too well,
+then they have no pity."
+
+"But I want Tommy to know," Elspeth insisted.
+
+"That is the woeful thing," the Painted Lady said, rocking her arms in a
+way that reminded the child of Grizel. "We want them to know, we cannot
+help liking them to know!"
+
+Suddenly she became confidential. "Do you think I showed my love too
+openly?" she asked eagerly. "I tried to hide it, you know. I covered my
+face with my hands, but he pulled them away, and then, of course, he
+knew."
+
+She went on, "I kissed his horse's nose, and he said I did that because
+it was his horse. How could he know? When I asked him how he knew, he
+kissed me, and I pretended to be angry and ran away. But I was not
+angry, and I said to myself, 'I am glad, I am glad, I am glad!'
+
+"I wanted so to be good, but--It is so difficult to refuse when you
+love him very much, don't you think?"
+
+The pathos of that was lost on the girl, and the Painted Lady continued
+sadly: "It would be so nice, would it not, if they liked us to be good?
+I think it would be sweet." She bent forward and whispered emphatically,
+"But they don't, you know--it bores them.
+
+"Never bore them--and they are so easily bored! It bores them if you say
+you want to be married. I think it would be sweet to be married, but you
+should never ask for a wedding. They give you everything else, but if
+you say you want a wedding, they stamp their feet and go away. Why are
+you crying, girl? You should not cry; they don't like it. Put on your
+prettiest gown and laugh and pretend you are happy, and then they will
+tell you naughty stories and give you these." She felt her ears and
+looked at her fingers, on which there may once have been jewels, but
+there were none now.
+
+"If you cry you lose your complexion, and then they don't love you any
+more. I had always such a beautiful skin. Some ladies when they lose
+their complexion paint. Horrid, isn't it? I wonder they can do such a
+thing."
+
+She eyed Elspeth suspiciously. "But of course you might do it just a
+little," she said, pleadingly--"just to make them go on loving you,
+don't you think?
+
+"When they don't want to come any more they write you a letter, and you
+run with it to your room and kiss it, because you don't know what is
+inside. Then you open it, and that breaks your heart, you know." She
+nodded her head sagaciously and smiled with tears in her eyes. "Never,
+never, never open the letter. Keep it unopened on your breast, and then
+you can always think that he may come to-morrow. And if--"
+
+Someone was approaching, and she stopped and listened. "My brat!" she
+cried, furiously, "she is always following me," and she poured forth a
+torrent of filthy abuse of Grizel, in the midst of which Tommy (for it
+was he) appeared and carried Elspeth off hastily. This was the only
+conversation either child ever had with the Painted Lady, and it bore
+bad fruit for Grizel. Elspeth told some of the Monypenny women about it,
+and they thought it their duty to point out to Aaron that the Painted
+Lady and her child were not desirable acquaintances for Tommy and
+Elspeth.
+
+"I dinna ken," he answered sharply, "whether Tommy's a fit acquaintance
+for Grizel, but I'm very sure o' this, that she's more than a fit
+acquaintance for him. And look at what she has done for this house. I
+kenna what we should do if she didna come in nows and nans."
+
+"You ken well, Aaron," they said, "that onything we could do in the way
+o' keeping your house in order we should do gladly."
+
+"Thank you," he replied ungraciously, "but I would rather have her."
+
+Nevertheless he agreed that he ought to forbid any intercourse with the
+Painted Lady, and unfortunately Grizel heard of this. Probably there
+never would have been any such intercourse; Grizel guarded against it
+more than anyone, for reasons she never spoke of, but she resented this
+veto proudly.
+
+"Why must you not speak to my mamma?" she demanded of Tommy and Elspeth.
+
+"Because--because she is a queer one," he said.
+
+"She is not a queer one--she is just sweet."
+
+He tried to evade the question by saying weakly, "We never see her to
+speak to at any rate, so it will make no difference. It's no as if you
+ever asked us to come to Double Dykes."
+
+"But I ask you now," said Grizel, with flashing eyes.
+
+"Oh, I darena!" cried Elspeth.
+
+"Then I won't ever come into your house again," said Grizel, decisively.
+
+"No to redd up?" asked Tommy, incredulously. "No to bake nor to iron?
+You couldna help it."
+
+"Yes I could."
+
+"Think what you'll miss!"
+
+Grizel might have retorted, "Think what you will miss!" but perhaps the
+reply she did make had a sharper sting in it. "I shall never come
+again," she said loftily, "and my reason for not coming is that--that my
+mamma thinks your house is not respectable!" She flung this over her
+shoulder as she stalked away, and it may be that the tears came when
+there were none to see them, but hers was a resolute mind, and though
+she continued to be friendly with Tommy and Elspeth out of doors she
+never again crossed their threshold.
+
+"The house is in a terrible state for want o' you," Tommy would say,
+trying to wheedle her. "We hinna sanded the floor for months, and the
+box-iron has fallen ahint the dresser, and my gray sark is rove up the
+back, and oh, you should just see the holes in Aaron's stockings!"
+
+Then Grizel rocked her arms in agony, but no, she would not go in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE SHADOW OF SIR WALTER
+
+
+Tommy was in Miss Ailie's senior class now, though by no means at the
+top of it, and her mind was often disturbed about his future. On this
+subject Aaron had never spoken to anyone, and the problem gave Tommy
+himself so little trouble that all Elspeth knew was that he was to be
+great and that she was to keep his house. So the school-mistress braved
+an interview with Aaron for the sake of her favorite.
+
+"You know he is a remarkable boy," she said.
+
+"At his lessons, ma'am?" asked Aaron, quietly.
+
+Not exactly at his lessons, she had to admit.
+
+"In what way, then, ma'am?"
+
+Really Miss Ailie could not say. There was something wonderful about
+Tommy, you felt it, but you could not quite give it a name. The warper
+must have noticed it himself.
+
+"I've heard him saying something o' the kind to Elspeth," was Aaron's
+reply.
+
+"But sometimes he is like a boy inspired," said the school-mistress.
+"You must have seen that?"
+
+"When he was thinking o' himsel'," answered Aaron.
+
+"He has such noble sentiments."
+
+"He has."
+
+"And I think, I really think," said Miss Ailie, eagerly, for this was
+what she had come to say, "that he has got great gifts for the
+ministry."
+
+"I'm near sure o't," said Aaron, grimly.
+
+"Ah, I see you don't like him."
+
+"I dinna," the warper acknowledged quietly, "but I've been trying to do
+my duty by him for all that. It's no every laddie that gets three years'
+schooling straight on end."
+
+This was true, but Miss Ailie used it to press her point. "You have done
+so well by him," she said, "that I think you should keep him at school
+for another year or two, and so give him a chance of carrying a bursary.
+If he carries one it will support him at college; if he does not--well,
+then I suppose he must be apprenticed to some trade."
+
+"No," Aaron said, decisively; "if he gets the chance of a college
+education and flings it awa', I'll waste no more siller on his keep.
+I'll send him straight to the herding."
+
+"And I shall not blame you," Miss Ailie declared eagerly.
+
+"Though I would a hantle rather," continued the warper, "waur my money
+on Elspeth."
+
+"What you spend on him," Miss Ailie argued, "you will really be spending
+on her, for if he rises in the world he will not leave Elspeth behind.
+You are prejudiced against him, but you cannot deny that."
+
+"I dinna deny but what he's fond o' her," said Aaron, and after
+considering the matter for some days he decided that Tommy should get
+his chance. The school-mistress had not acted selfishly, for this
+decision, as she knew, meant that the boy must now be placed in the
+hands of Mr. Cathro, who was a Greek and Latin scholar. She taught Latin
+herself, it is true, but as cautiously as she crossed a plank bridge,
+and she was never comfortable in the dominie's company, because even at
+a tea-table he would refer familiarly to the ablative absolute instead
+of letting sleeping dogs lie.
+
+"But Elspeth couldna be happy if we were at different schools," Tommy
+objected instantly.
+
+"Yes, I could," said Elspeth, who had been won over by Miss Ailie; "it
+will be so fine, Tommy, to see you again after I hinna seen you for
+three hours."
+
+Tommy was little known to Mr. Cathro at this time, except as the boy who
+had got the better of a rival teacher in the affair of Corp, which had
+delighted him greatly. "But if the sacket thinks he can play any of his
+tricks on me," he told Aaron, "there is an awakening before him," and he
+began the cramming of Tommy for a bursary with perfect confidence.
+
+But before the end of the month, at the mere mention of Tommy's name,
+Mr. Cathro turned red in the face, and the fingers of his laying-on hand
+would clutch an imaginary pair of tawse. Already Tommy had made him
+self-conscious. He peered covertly at Tommy, and Tommy caught him at it
+every time, and then each quickly looked another way, and Cathro vowed
+never to look again, but did it next minute, and what enraged him most
+was that he knew Tommy noted his attempts at self-restraint as well as
+his covert glances. All the other pupils knew that a change for the
+worse had come over the dominie's temper. They saw him punish Tommy
+frequently without perceptible cause, and that he was still unsatisfied
+when the punishment was over. This apparently was because Tommy gave him
+a look before returning to his seat. When they had been walloped they
+gave Cathro a look also, but it merely meant, "Oh, that this was a dark
+road and I had a divot in my hand!" while his look was unreadable, that
+is unreadable to them, for the dominie understood it and writhed. What
+it said was, "You think me a wonder, and therefore I forgive you."
+
+"And sometimes he fair beats Cathro!" So Tommy's schoolmates reported at
+home, and the dominie had to acknowledge its truth to Aaron. "I wish you
+would give that sacket a thrashing for me," he said, half furiously, yet
+with a grin on his face, one day when he and the warper chanced to meet
+on the Monypenny road.
+
+"I'll no lay a hand on bairn o' Jean Myles," Aaron replied. "Ay, and I
+understood you to say that he should meet his match in you."
+
+"Did I ever say that, man? Well, well, we live and learn."
+
+"What has he been doing now?"
+
+"What has he been doing!" echoed Cathro. "He has been making me look
+foolish in my own class-room. Yes, sir, he has so completely got the
+better of me (and not for the first time) that when I tell the story of
+how he diddled Mr. Ogilvy, Mr. Ogilvy will be able to cap it with the
+story of how the little whelp diddled me. Upon my soul, Aaron, he is
+running away with all my self-respect and destroying my sense of humor."
+
+What had so crushed the dominie was the affair of Francie Crabb. Francie
+was now a pupil, like Gavin Dishart and Tommy, of Mr. Cathro's, who
+detested the boy's golden curls, perhaps because he was bald himself.
+They were also an incentive to evil-doing on the part of other boys, who
+must give them a tug in passing, and on a day the dominie said, in a
+fury, "Give your mother my compliments, Francie, and tell her I'm so
+tired of seeing your curls that I mean to cut them off to-morrow
+morning."
+
+"Say he shall not," whispered Tommy.
+
+"You shanna!" blurted out Francie.
+
+"But I will," said Cathro; "I would do it now if I had the shears."
+
+It was only an empty threat, but an hour afterwards the dominie caught
+Tommy wagering in witchy marbles and other coin that he would not do it,
+and then instead of taking the tawse to him he said, "Keep him to his
+bargains, laddies, for whatever may have been my intention at the time,
+I mean to be as good as my word now."
+
+He looked triumphantly at Tommy, who, however, instead of seeming
+crestfallen, continued to bet, and now the other boys were eager to
+close with him, for great was their faith in Cathro. These transactions
+were carried out on the sly, but the dominie knew what was going on, and
+despite his faith in himself he had his twitches of uneasiness.
+
+"However, the boy can only be trusting to fear of Mrs. Crabb restraining
+me," he decided, and he marched into the school-room next morning,
+ostentatiously displaying his wife's largest scissors. His pupils
+crowded in after him, and though he noticed that all were strangely
+quiet and many wearing scared faces, he put it down to the coming scene.
+He could not resist giving one triumphant glance at Tommy, who, however,
+instead of returning it, looked modestly down. Then--"Is Francie Crabb
+here?" asked Mr. Cathro, firmly.
+
+"He's hodding ahint the press," cried a dozen voices.
+
+"Come forward, Francie," said the dominie, clicking the shears to
+encourage him.
+
+There was a long pause, and then Francie emerged in fear from behind the
+press. Yes, it was Francie, but his curls were gone!
+
+The shears fell to the floor. "Who did this?" roared the terrible
+Cathro.
+
+"It was Tommy Sandys," blurted out Francis, in tears.
+
+The school-master was unable to speak, and, alarmed at the stillness,
+Francie whined, "He said it would be done at ony rate, and he promised
+me half his winnings."
+
+It is still remembered by bearded men and married women who were at
+school that day how Cathro leaped three forms to get at Tommy, and how
+Tommy cried under the tawse and yet laughed ecstatically at the same
+time, and how subsequently he and Francie collected so many dues that
+the pockets of them stood out like brackets from their little persons.
+
+The dominie could not help grinning a little at his own discomfiture as
+he told this story, but Aaron saw nothing amusing in it. "As I telled
+you," he repeated, "I winna touch him, so if you're no content wi' what
+you've done yoursel', you had better put Francie's mither on him."
+
+"I hear she has taken him in hand already," Mr. Cathro replied dryly.
+"But, Aaron, I wish you would at least keep him closer to his lessons at
+night, for it is seldom he comes to the school well prepared."
+
+"I see him sitting lang ower his books," said Aaron.
+
+"Ay, maybe, but is he at them?" responded the dominie with a shake of
+the head that made Aaron say, with his first show of interest in the
+conversation, "You have little faith in his carrying a bursary, I see."
+
+But this Mr. Cathro would not admit, for if he thought Tommy a numskull
+the one day he often saw cause to change his mind the next, so he
+answered guardedly, "It's too soon to say, Aaron, for he has eighteen
+months' stuffing to undergo yet before we send him to Aberdeen to try
+his fortune, and I have filled some gey toom wimes in eighteen months.
+But you must lend me a hand."
+
+The weaver considered, and then replied stubbornly, "No, I give him his
+chance, but I'll have nocht to do wi' his use o't. And, dominie, I want
+you to say not another word to me about him atween this and examination
+time, for my mind's made up no to say a word to him. It's well kent that
+I'm no more fit to bring up bairns than to have them (dinna conter me,
+man, for the thing was proved lang syne at the Cuttle Well), and so till
+that time I'll let him gang his ain gait. But if he doesna carry a
+bursary, to the herding he goes. I've said it and I'll stick to it."
+
+So, as far as Aaron was concerned, Tommy was left in peace to the glory
+of collecting his winnings from those who had sworn by Cathro, and among
+them was Master Gavin Ogilvy Dishart, who now found himself surrounded
+by a debt of sixpence, a degrading position for the son of an Auld Licht
+minister.
+
+Tommy would not give him time, but was willing to take his copy of
+"Waverley" as full payment.
+
+Gavin offered him "Ivanhoe" instead, because his mother had given a
+read of "Waverley" to Gavinia, Miss Ailie's servant, and she read so
+slowly, putting her finger beneath each word, that she had not yet
+reached the middle. Also, she was so enamoured of the work that she
+would fight anyone who tried to take it from her.
+
+Tommy refused "Ivanhoe," as it was not about Jacobites, but suggested
+that Gavinia should be offered it in lieu of "Waverley," and told that
+it was a better story.
+
+The suggestion came too late, as Gavinia had already had a loan of
+"Ivanhoe," and read it with rapture, inch by inch. However, if Tommy
+would wait a month, or--
+
+Tommy was so eager to read more about the Jacobites that he found it
+trying to wait five minutes. He thought Gavin's duty was to get his
+father to compel Gavinia to give the book up.
+
+Was Tommy daft? Mr. Dishart did not know that his son possessed these
+books. He did not approve of story books, and when Mrs. Dishart gave
+them to Gavin on his birthday she--she had told him to keep them out of
+his father's sight. (Mr. and Mrs. Dishart were very fond of each other,
+but there were certain little matters that she thought it unnecessary to
+trouble him about.)
+
+So if Tommy was to get "Waverley" at once, he must discover another way.
+He reflected, and then set off to Miss Ailie's (to whom he still read
+sober works of an evening, but novels never), looking as if he had
+found a way.
+
+For some time Miss Ailie had been anxious about her red-armed maid, who
+had never before given pain unless by excess of willingness, as when she
+offered her garter to tie Miss Ailie's parcels with. Of late, however,
+Gavinia had taken to blurting out disquieting questions, to the
+significance of which she withheld the key, such as--
+
+"Is there ony place nowadays, ma'am, where there's tourniements? And
+could an able-bodied lassie walk to them? and what might be the charge
+to win in?"
+
+Or, "Would you no like to be so michty beautiful, ma'am, that as soon as
+the men saw your bonny face they just up wi' you in their arms and ran?"
+
+Or again, "What's the heaviest weight o' a woman a grand lusty man could
+carry in his arms as if she were an infant?"
+
+This method of conveyance seemed to have a peculiar fascination for
+Gavinia, and she got herself weighed at the flesher's. On another
+occasion she broke a glass candlestick, and all she said to the pieces
+was, "Wha carries me, wears me."
+
+This mystery was troubling the school-mistress sadly when Tommy arrived
+with the key to it. "I'm doubting Gavinia's reading ill books on the
+sly," he said.
+
+"Never!" exclaimed Miss Ailie, "she reads nothing but the _Mentor_."
+
+Tommy shook his head, like one who would fain hope so, but could not
+overlook facts. "I've been hearing," he said, "that she reads books as
+are full o' Strokes and Words We have no Concern with."
+
+Miss Ailie could not believe it, but she was advised to search the
+kitchen, and under Gavinia's mattress was found the dreadful work.
+
+"And you are only fifteen!" said Miss Ailie, eying her little maid
+sorrowfully.
+
+"The easier to carry," replied Gavinia, darkly.
+
+"And you named after a minister!" Miss Ailie continued, for her maid had
+been christened Gavinia because she was the first child baptized in his
+church after the Rev. Gavin Dishart came to Thrums. "Gavinia, I must
+tell him of this. I shall take this book to Mr. Dishart this very day."
+
+"The right man to take it to," replied the maid, sullenly, "for it's his
+ain."
+
+"Gavinia!"
+
+"Well, it was Mrs. Dishart that lended it to me."
+
+"I--I never saw it on the manse shelves."
+
+"I'm thinking," said the brazen Gavinia, "as there's hoddy corners in
+manses as well as in--blue-and-white rooms."
+
+This dark suggestion was as great a shock to the gentle school-mistress
+as if out of a clear sky had come suddenly the word--
+
+_Stroke!_
+
+She tottered with the book that had so demoralized the once meek
+Gavinia into the blue-and-white room, where Tommy was restlessly
+awaiting her, and when she had told him all, he said, with downcast
+eyes:
+
+"I was never sure o' Mrs. Dishart. When I hand her the _Mentor_ she
+looks as if she didna care a stroke for't--"
+
+"Tommy!"
+
+"I'm doubting," he said sadly, "that she's ower fond o' Words We have no
+Concern with."
+
+Miss Ailie would not listen to such talk, but she approved of the
+suggestion that "Waverley" should be returned not to the minister, but
+to his wife, and she accepted gratefully Tommy's kindly offer to act as
+bearer. Only happening to open the book in the middle, she--
+
+"I'm waiting," said Tommy, after ten minutes.
+
+She did not hear him.
+
+"I'm waiting," he said again, but she was now in the next chapter.
+
+"Maybe you would like to read it yoursel'!" he cried, and then she came
+to, and, with a shudder handed him the book. But after he had gone she
+returned to the kitchen to reprove Gavinia at greater length, and in the
+midst of the reproof she said faintly: "You did not happen to look at
+the end, did you?"
+
+"That I did," replied Gavinia.
+
+"And did she--did he--"
+
+"No," said Gavinia, sorrowfully.
+
+Miss Ailie sighed. "That's what I think too," said Gavinia.
+
+"Why didn't they?" asked the school-mistress.
+
+"Because he was just a sumph," answered Gavinia, scornfully. "If he had
+been like Fergus, or like the chield in 'Ivanhoe,' he wouldna have ta'en
+a 'no.' He would just have whipped her up in his arms and away wi' her.
+That's the kind for me, ma'am."
+
+"There is a fascination about them," murmured Miss Ailie.
+
+"A what?"
+
+But again Miss Ailie came to. "For shame, Gavinia, for shame!" she said,
+severely; "these are disgraceful sentiments."
+
+In the meantime Tommy had hurried with the book, not to the manse, but
+to a certain garret, and as he read, his imagination went on fire.
+Blinder's stories had made him half a Jacobite, and now "Waverley"
+revealed to him that he was born neither for the ministry nor the
+herding, but to restore to his country its rightful king. The first to
+whom he confided this was Corp, who immediately exclaimed: "Michty me!
+But what will the police say?"
+
+"I ken a wy," answered Tommy, sternly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE LAST JACOBITE RISING
+
+
+On the evening of the Queen's birthday, bridies were eaten to her honor
+in a hundred Thrums homes, and her health was drunk in toddy, Scotch
+toddy and Highland toddy. Patullo, the writer, gave a men's party, and
+his sole instructions to his maid were "Keep running back and forrit wi'
+the hot water." At the bank there was a ladies' party and ginger wine.
+From Cathro's bedroom-window a flag was displayed with _Vivat Regina_ on
+it, the sentiment composed by Cathro, the words sewn by the girls of his
+McCulloch class. The eight-o'clock bell rang for an hour, and a loyal
+crowd had gathered in the square to shout. To a superficial observer,
+such as the Baron Bailie or Todd, the new policeman, all seemed well and
+fair.
+
+But a very different scene was being enacted at the same time in the
+fastnesses of the Den, where three resolute schemers had met by
+appointment. Their trysting-place was the Cuttle Well, which is most
+easily reached by the pink path made for that purpose; but the better to
+further their dark and sinister design, the plotters arrived by three
+circuitous routes, one descending the Reekie Broth Pot, a low but
+dangerous waterfall, the second daring the perils of the crags, and the
+third walking stealthily up the burn.
+
+"Is that you, Tommy?"
+
+"Whist! Do you mind the password?"
+
+"Stroke!"
+
+"Right. Have you heard Gav Dishart coming?"
+
+"I hinna. I doubt his father had grippit him as he was slinking out o'
+the manse."
+
+"I fear it, Corp. I'm thinking his father is in the Woman's pay."
+
+"What woman?"
+
+"The Woman of Hanover?"
+
+"That's the queen, is it no?"
+
+"She'll never get me to call her queen."
+
+"Nor yet me. I think I hear Gav coming."
+
+Gav Dishart was the one who had come by the burn, and his boots were
+cheeping like a field of mice. He gave the word "Stroke," and the three
+then looked at each other firmly. The lights of the town were not
+visible from the Cuttle Well, owing to an arm of cliff that is
+outstretched between, but the bell could be distinctly heard, and
+occasionally a shout of revelry.
+
+"They little ken!" said Tommy, darkly.
+
+"They hinna a notion," said Corp, but he was looking somewhat perplexed
+himself.
+
+"It's near time I was back for family exercise," said Gav, uneasily,
+"so we had better do it quick, Tommy."
+
+"Did you bring the wineglasses?" Tommy asked him.
+
+"No," Gav said, "the press was lockit, but I've brought egg-cups."
+
+"Stand round then."
+
+The three boys now presented a picturesque appearance, but there was
+none save the man in the moon to see them. They stood round the Cuttle
+Well, each holding an egg-cup, and though the daring nature of their
+undertaking and the romantic surroundings combined to excite them, it
+was not fear but soaring purpose that paled their faces and caused their
+hands to tremble, when Tommy said solemnly, "Afore we do what we've come
+here to do, let's swear."
+
+"Stroke!" he said.
+
+"Stroke!" said Gav.
+
+"Stroke!" said Corp.
+
+They then filled their cups and holding them over the well, so that they
+clinked, they said:
+
+"To the king ower the water!"
+
+"To the king ower the water!"
+
+"To the king ower the water!"
+
+When they had drunk Tommy broke his cup against a rock, for he was
+determined that it should never be used to honor a meaner toast, and the
+others followed his example, Corp briskly, though the act puzzled him,
+and Gav with a gloomy look because he knew that the cups would be
+missed to-morrow.
+
+"Is that a' now?" whispered Corp, wiping his forehead with his sleeve.
+
+"All!" cried Tommy. "Man, we've just begood."
+
+As secretly as they had entered it, they left the Den, and anon three
+figures were standing in a dark trance, cynically watching the revellers
+in the square.
+
+"If they just kent!" muttered the smallest, who was wearing his jacket
+outside in to escape observation.
+
+"But they little ken!" said Gav Dishart.
+
+"They hinna a notion!" said Corp, contemptuously, but still he was a
+little puzzled, and presently he asked softly: "Lads, what just is it
+that they dinna ken?"
+
+Had Gav been ready with an answer he could not have uttered it, for just
+then a terrible little man in black, who had been searching for him in
+likely places, seized him by the cuff of the neck, and, turning his face
+in an easterly direction, ran him to family worship. But there was still
+work to do for the other two. Walking home alone that night from Mr.
+Patullo's party, Mr. Cathro had an uncomfortable feeling that he was
+being dogged. When he stopped to listen, all was at once still, but the
+moment he moved onward he again heard stealthy steps behind. He retired
+to rest as soon as he reached his house, to be wakened presently by a
+slight noise at the window, whence the flag-post protruded. It had been
+but a gust of wind, he decided, and turned round to go to sleep again,
+when crash! the post was plucked from its place and cast to the ground.
+The dominie sprang out of bed, and while feeling for a light, thought he
+heard scurrying feet, but when he looked out at the window no one was to
+be seen; _Vivat Regina_ lay ignobly in the gutters. That it could have
+been the object of an intended theft was not probable, but the open
+window might have tempted thieves, and there was a possible though risky
+way up by the spout. The affair was a good deal talked about at the
+time, but it remained shrouded in a mystery which even we have been
+unable to penetrate.
+
+On the heels of the Queen's birthday came the Muckley, the one that was
+to be known to fame, if fame was willing to listen to Corp, as Tommy's
+Muckley. Unless he had some grand aim in view never was a boy who
+yielded to temptations more blithely than Tommy, but when he had such
+aim never was a boy so firm in withstanding them. At this Muckley he had
+a mighty reason for not spending money, and with ninepence in his pocket
+clamoring to be out he spent not one halfpenny. There was something
+uncanny in the sight of him stalking unscathed between rows of stands
+and shows, everyone of them aiming at his pockets. Corp and Gav, of
+course, were in the secret and did their humble best to act in the same
+unnatural manner, but now and again a show made a successful snap at
+Gav, and Corp had gloomy fears that he would lose his head in presence
+of the Teuch and Tasty, from which humiliation indeed he was only saved
+by the happy idea of requesting Tommy to shout "Deuteronomy!" in a
+warning voice, every time they drew nigh Californy's seductive stand.
+
+Was there nothing for sale, then, that the three thirsted to buy? There
+were many things, among them weapons of war, a pack of cards, more
+properly called Devil's books, blue bonnets suitable for Highland
+gentlemen, feathers for the bonnets, a tin lantern, yards of tartan
+cloth, which the deft fingers of Grizel would convert into warriors'
+sashes. Corp knew that these purchases were in Tommy's far-seeing eye,
+but he thought the only way to get them was to ask the price and then
+offer half. Gav, the scholar, who had already reached daylight through
+the first three books of Euclid, and took a walk every Saturday morning
+with his father and Herodotus, even Gav, the scholar, was as
+thick-witted as Corp.
+
+"We'll let other laddies buy them," Tommy explained in his superior way,
+"and then after the Muckley is past, we'll buy them frae them."
+
+The others understood now. After a Muckley there was always a great
+dearth of pence, and a moneyed man could become owner of Muckley
+purchases at a sixth part of the Muckley price.
+
+"You crittur!" exclaimed Corp, in abject admiration.
+
+But Gav saw an objection. "The feck of them," he pointed out, "will
+waur their siller on shows and things to eat, instead of on what we want
+them to buy."
+
+"So they will, the nasty sackets!" cried Corp.
+
+"You couldna blame a laddie for buying Teuch and Tasty," continued Gav
+with triumph, for he was a little jealous of Tommy.
+
+"You couldna," agreed Corp, "no, I'll be dagont, if you could," and his
+hand pressed his money feverishly.
+
+"Deuteronomy!" roared Tommy, and Corp's hand jumped as if it had been
+caught in some other person's, pocket.
+
+"But how are we to do?" he asked. "If you like, I'll take Birkie and the
+Haggerty-Taggertys round the Muckley and fight ilka ane that doesna
+buy--"
+
+"Corp," said Tommy, calmly, "I wonder at you. Do you no ken yet that the
+best plan is to leave a thing to me?"
+
+"Blethering gowks that we are, of course it is!" cried Corp, and he
+turned almost fiercely upon Gav. "Lippen all to him," he said with grand
+confidence, "he'll find a wy."
+
+And Tommy found a way. Birkie was the boy who bought the pack of cards.
+He saw Tommy looking so-woe-begone that it was necessary to ask the
+reason.
+
+"Oh, Birkie, lend me threepence," sobbed Tommy, "and I'll give you
+sixpence the morn."
+
+"You're daft," said Birkie, "there's no a laddie in Thrums that will
+have one single lonely bawbee the morn."
+
+"Him that buys the cards," moaned Tommy, "will never be without siller,
+for you tell auld folks fortunes on them at a penny every throw. Lend me
+threepence, Birkie. They cost a sic, and I have just--"
+
+"Na, na," said greedy Birkie, "I'm no to be catched wi' chaff. If it's
+true, what you say, I'll buy the cards mysel'."
+
+Having thus got hold of him, Tommy led Birkie to a stand where the King
+of Egypt was telling fortunes with cards, and doing a roaring trade
+among the Jocks and Jennys. He also sold packs at sixpence each, and the
+elated Birkie was an immediate purchaser.
+
+"You're no so clever as you think yoursel'!" he said triumphantly to
+Tommy, who replied with his inscrutable smile. But to his satellites he
+said, "Not a soul will buy a fortune frae Birkie. I'll get thae cards
+for a penny afore next week's out."
+
+Francie Crabb found Tommy sniggering to himself in the back wynd. "What
+are you goucking at?" asked Francie, in surprise, for, as a rule, Tommy
+only laughed behind his face.
+
+"I winna tell you," chuckled Tommy, "but what a bar, oh, what a divert!"
+
+"Come on, tell me."
+
+"Well, it's at the man as is swallowing swords ahint the menagerie."
+
+"I see nothing to laugh at in that."
+
+"I'm no laughing at that. I'm laughing at him for selling the swords for
+ninepence the piece. Oh, what ignorant he is, oh, what a bar!"
+
+"Ninepence is a mislaird price for a soord," said Francie. "I never gave
+ninepence."
+
+Tommy looked at him in the way that always made boys fidget with their
+fists.
+
+"You're near as big a bar as him," he said scornfully. "Did you ever see
+the sword that's hanging on the wall in the backroom at the
+post-office?"
+
+"No, but my father has telled me about it. It has a grand name."
+
+"It's an Andrea Ferrara, that's what it is."
+
+"Ay, I mind the name now; there has been folk killed wi' that soord."
+
+This was true, for the post-office Andrea Ferrara has a stirring
+history, but for the present its price was the important thing. "Dr.
+McQueen offered a pound note for it," said Tommy.
+
+"I ken that, but what has it to do wi' the soord-swallower?"
+
+"Just this; that the swords he is selling for ninepence are Andrea
+Ferraras, the same as the post-office ones, and he could get a pound a
+piece for them if he kent their worth. Oh, what a bar, oh, what--"
+
+Francie's eyes lit up greedily, and he looked at his two
+silver shillings, and took two steps in the direction of the
+sword-swallower's, and faltered and could not make up his agitated mind.
+Tommy set off toward the square at a brisk walk.
+
+"Whaur are you off to?" asked Francie, following him.
+
+"To tell the man what his swords is worth. It would be ill done no to
+tell him." To clinch the matter, off went Tommy at a run, and off went
+Francie after him. As a rule Tommy was the swifter, but on this occasion
+he lagged of fell purpose, and reached the sword-swallower's tent just
+in time to see Francie emerge elated therefrom, carrying two Andrea
+Ferraras. Francie grinned when they met.
+
+"What a bar!" he crowed.
+
+"What a bar!" agreed Tommy, and sufficient has now been told to show
+that he had found a way. Even Gav acknowledged a master, and, when the
+accoutrements of war were bought at second hand as cheaply as Tommy had
+predicted, applauded him with eyes and mouth for a full week, after
+which he saw things in a new light. Gav of course was to enter the
+bursary lists anon, and he had supposed that Cathro would have the last
+year's schooling of him; but no, his father decided to send him for the
+grand final grind to Mr. Ogilvy of Glen Quharity, a famous dominie
+between whom and Mr. Dishart existed a friendship that none had ever got
+at the root of. Mr. Cathro was more annoyed than he cared to show, Gav
+being of all the boys of that time the one likeliest to do his teacher
+honor at the university competitions, but Tommy, though the decision
+cost him an adherent, was not ill-pleased, for he had discovered that
+Gav was one of those irritating boys who like to be leader. Gav, as has
+been said, suddenly saw Tommy's victory over Messrs. Birkie, Francie,
+etc., in a new light; this was because when he wanted back the shilling
+which he had contributed to the funds for buying their purchases, Tommy
+replied firmly:
+
+"I canna give you the shilling, but I'll give you the lantern and the
+tartan cloth we bought wi' it."
+
+"What use could they be to me at Glen Quharity?" Gav protested.
+
+"Oh, if they are no use to you," Tommy said sweetly, "me and Corp is
+willing to buy them off you for threepence."
+
+Then Gav became a scorner of duplicity, but he had to consent to the
+bargain, and again Corp said to Tommy, "Oh, you crittur!" But he was
+sorry to lose a fellow-conspirator. "There's just the twa o' us now," he
+sighed.
+
+"Just twa!" cried Tommy. "What are you havering about, man? There's as
+many as I like to whistle for."
+
+"You mean Grizel and Elspeth, I ken, but--"
+
+"I wasna thinking of the womenfolk," Tommy told him, with a
+contemptuous wave of the hand. He went closer to Corp, and said, in a
+low voice, "The McKenzies are waiting!"
+
+"Are they, though?" said Corp, perplexed, as he had no notion who the
+McKenzies might be.
+
+"And Lochiel has twa hunder spearsmen."
+
+"Do you say so?"
+
+"Young Kinnordy's ettling to come out, and I meet Lord Airlie, when the
+moon rises, at the Loups o' Kenny, and auld Bradwardine's as spunky as
+ever, and there's fifty wild Highlandmen lying ready in the muckle cave
+of Clova."
+
+He spoke so earnestly that Corp could only ejaculate, "Michty me!"
+
+"But of course they winna rise," continued Tommy, darkly, "till he
+lands."
+
+"Of course no," said Corp, "but--wha is he?"
+
+"Himsel'," whispered Tommy, "the Chevalier!"
+
+Corp hesitated. "But, I thought," he said diffidently, "I thought you--"
+
+"So I am," said Tommy.
+
+"But you said he hadna landed yet?"
+
+"Neither he has."
+
+"But you--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"You're here, are you no?"
+
+Tommy stamped his foot in irritation. "You're slow in the uptak," he
+said. "I'm no here. How can I be here when I'm at St. Germains?"
+
+"Dinna be angry wi' me," Corp begged. "I ken you're ower the water, but
+when I see you, I kind of forget; and just for the minute I think you're
+here."
+
+"Well, think afore you speak."
+
+"I'll try, but that's teuch work. When do you come to Scotland?"
+
+"I'm no sure; but as soon as I'm ripe."
+
+At nights Tommy now sometimes lay among the cabbages of the school-house
+watching the shadow of Black Cathro on his sitting-room blind. Cathro
+never knew he was there. The reason Tommy lay among the cabbages was
+that there was a price upon his head.
+
+"But if Black Cathro wanted to get the blood-money," Corp said
+apologetically, "he could nab you any day. He kens you fine."
+
+Tommy smiled meaningly. "Not him," he answered, "I've cheated him bonny,
+he hasna a notion wha I am. Corp, would you like a good laugh?"
+
+"That I would."
+
+"Weel, then, I'll tell you wha he thinks I am. Do you ken a little house
+yont the road a bitty irae Monypenny?"
+
+"I ken no sic house," said Corp, "except Aaron's."
+
+"Aaron's the man as bides in it," Tommy continued hastily, "at least I
+think that's the name. Well, as you ken the house, you've maybe noticed
+a laddie that bides there too?"
+
+"There's no laddie," began Corp, "except--"
+
+"Let me see," interrupted Tommy, "what was his name? Was it Peter? No.
+Was it Willie? Stop, I mind, it was Tommy."
+
+He glared so that Corp dared not utter a word.
+
+"Have you notitched him?"
+
+"I've--I've seen him," Corp gasped.
+
+"Well, this is the joke," said Tommy, trying vainly to restrain his
+mirth, "Cathro thinks I'm that laddie! Ho! ho! ho!"
+
+Corp scratched his head, then he bit his warts, then he spat upon his
+hands, then he said "Damn."
+
+The crisis came when Cathro, still ignorant that the heather was on
+fire, dropped some disparaging remarks about the Stuarts to his history
+class. Tommy said nothing, but--but one of the school-windows was
+without a snib, and next morning when the dominie reached his desk he
+was surprised to find on it a little cotton glove. He raised it on high,
+greatly puzzled, and then, as ever when he suspected knavery, his eyes
+sought Tommy, who was sitting on a form, his arms proudly folded. That
+the whelp had put the glove there, Cathro no longer doubted, and he
+would have liked to know why, but was reluctant to give him the
+satisfaction of asking. So the gauntlet--for gauntlet it was--was laid
+aside, the while Tommy, his head humming like a beeskep, muttered
+triumphantly through his teeth, "But he lifted it, he lifted it!" and at
+closing time it was flung in his face with this fair tribute:
+
+"I'm no a rich man, laddie, but I would give a pound note to know what
+you'll be at ten years from now."
+
+There could be no mistaking the dire meaning of these words, and Tommy
+hurried, pale but determined, to the quarry, where Corp, with a barrow
+in his hands, was learning strange phrases by heart, and finding it a
+help to call his warts after the new swears.
+
+"Corp," cried Tommy, firmly, "I've set sail!"
+
+On the following Saturday evening Charles Edward landed in the Den. In
+his bonnet was the white cockade, and round his waist a tartan sash;
+though he had long passed man's allotted span his face was still full of
+fire, his figure lithe and even boyish. For state reasons he had assumed
+the name of Captain Stroke. As he leapt ashore from the bark, the
+Dancing Shovel, he was received right loyally by Corp and other faithful
+adherents, of whom only two, and these of a sex to which his House was
+ever partial, were visible, owing to the gathering gloom. Corp of that
+Ilk sank on his knees at the water's edge, and kissing his royal
+master's hand said, fervently, "Welcome, my prince, once more to bonny
+Scotland!" Then he rose and whispered, but with scarcely less emotion,
+"There's an egg to your tea."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE SIEGE OF THRUMS
+
+
+The man in the moon is a native of Thrums, who was put up there for
+hacking sticks on the Sabbath, and as he sails over the Den his interest
+in the bit placey is still sufficient to make him bend forward and cry
+"Boo!" at the lovers. When they jump apart you can see the aged
+reprobate grinning. Once out of sight of the den, he cares not a boddle
+how the moon travels, but the masterful crittur enrages him if she is in
+a hurry here, just as he is cleverly making out whose children's
+children are courting now. "Slow, there!" he cries to the moon, but she
+answers placidly that they have the rest of the world to view to-night.
+"The rest of the world be danged!" roars the man, and he cranes his neck
+for a last glimpse of the Cuttle Well, until he nearly falls out of the
+moon.
+
+Never had the man such a trying time as during the year now before him.
+It was the year when so many scientific magnates sat up half the night
+in their shirts, spying at him through telescopes. But every effort to
+discover why he was in such a fidget failed, because the spy-glasses
+were never levelled at the Thrums den. Through the whole of the
+incidents now to tell, you may conceive the man (on whom sympathy would
+be wasted) dagoning horribly, because he was always carried past the den
+before he could make head or tail of the change that had come over it.
+
+The spot chosen by the ill-fated Stuart and his gallant remnant for
+their last desperate enterprise was eminently fitted for their purpose.
+Being round the corner from Thrums, it was commanded by no fortified
+place save the farm of Nether Drumgley, and on a recent goustie night
+nearly all the trees had been blown down, making a hundred hiding-places
+for bold climbers, and transforming the Den into a scene of wild and
+mournful grandeur. In no bay more suitable than the flooded field called
+the Silent Pool could the hunted prince have cast anchor, for the Pool
+is not only sheltered from observation, but so little troubled by gales
+that it had only one drawback: at some seasons of the year it was not
+there. This, however, did not vex Stroke, as it is cannier to call him,
+for he burned his boats on the night he landed (and a dagont, tedious
+job it was too), and pointed out to his followers that the drouth which
+kept him in must also keep the enemy out. Part of the way to the lair
+they usually traversed in the burn, because water leaves no trace, and
+though they carried turnip lanterns and were armed to the teeth, this
+was often a perilous journey owing to the lovers close at hand on the
+pink path, from which the trees had been cleared, for lads and lasses
+must walk whate'er betide. Ronny-On's Jean and Peter Scrymgeour, little
+Lisbeth Doak and long Sam'l from Pyotdykes were pairing that year, and
+never knew how near they were to being dirked by Corp of Corp, who,
+lurking in the burn till there were no tibbits in his toes, muttered
+fiercely, "Cheep one single cheep, and it will be thy hinmost,
+methinks!" under the impression that Methinks was a Jacobite oath.
+
+For this voluntary service, Stroke clapped Corp of Corp on the shoulder
+with a naked sword, and said, "Rise, Sir Joseph!" which made Corp more
+confused than ever, for he was already Corp of Corp, Him of Muckle
+Kenny, Red McNeil, Andrew Ferrara, and the Master of Inverquharity
+(Stroke's names), as well as Stab-in-the-Dark, Grind-them-to-Mullins,
+and Warty Joe (his own), and which he was at any particular moment he
+never knew, till Stroke told him, and even then he forgot and had to be
+put in irons.
+
+The other frequenters of the lair on Saturday nights (when alone the
+rebellion was active) were the proud Lady Grizel and Widow Elspeth. It
+had been thought best to make Elspeth a widow, because she was so
+religious.
+
+The lair was on the right bank of the burn, near the waterfall, and you
+climbed to it by ropes, unless you preferred an easier way. It is now a
+dripping hollow, down which water dribbles from beneath a sluice, but at
+that time it was hidden on all sides by trees and the huge clods of
+sward they had torn from the earth as they fell. Two of these clods were
+the only walls of the lair, which had at times a ceiling not unlike
+Aaron Latta's bed coverlets, and the chief furniture was two barrels,
+marked "Usquebach" and "Powder." When the darkness of Stroke's fortunes
+sat like a pall upon his brow, as happened sometimes, he sought to drive
+it away by playing cards on one of these barrels with Sir Joseph, but
+the approach of the Widow made him pocket them quickly with a warning
+sign to his trusty knight, who did not understand, and asked what had
+become of them, whereupon Elspeth cried, in horror:
+
+"Cards! Oh, Tommy, you promised--"
+
+But Stroke rode her down with, "Cards! Wha has been playing cards? You,
+Muckle Kenny, and you, Sir Joseph, after I forbade it! Hie, there,
+Inverquharity, all of you, seize those men."
+
+Then Corp blinked, came to his senses and marched himself off to the
+prison on the lonely promontory called the Queen's Bower, saying
+ferociously, "Jouk, Sir Joseph, and I'll blaw you into posterity."
+
+It is sable night when Stroke and Sir Joseph reach a point in the Den
+whence the glimmering lights of the town are distinctly visible. Neither
+speaks. Presently the distant eight-o'clock bell rings, and then Sir
+Joseph looks anxiously at his warts, for this is the signal to begin,
+and as usual he has forgotten the words.
+
+"Go on," says someone in a whisper. It cannot be Stroke, for his head
+is brooding on his breast. This mysterious voice haunted all the doings
+in the Den, and had better be confined in brackets.
+
+("Go on.")
+
+"Methinks," says Sir Joseph, "methinks the borers--"
+
+
+("Burghers.")
+
+"Methinks the burghers now cease from their labors."
+
+"Ay," replied Stroke, "'tis so, would that they ceased from them
+forever!"
+
+"Methinks the time is at hand."
+
+"Ha!" exclaims Stroke, looking at his lieutenant curiously, "what makest
+thou say so? For three weeks these fortifications have defied my cannon,
+there is scarce a breach yet in the walls of yonder town."
+
+"Methinks thou wilt find a way."
+
+"It may be so, my good Sir Joseph, it may be so, and yet, even when I am
+most hopeful of success, my schemes go a gley."
+
+"Methinks thy dark--"
+
+("Dinna say Methinks so often.")
+
+("Tommy, I maun. If I dinna get that to start me off, I go through
+other.")
+
+("Go on.")
+
+"Methinks thy dark spirit lies on thee to-night."
+
+"Ay, 'tis too true. But canst thou blame me if I grow sad? The town
+still in the enemy's hands, and so much brave blood already spilt in
+vain. Knowest thou that the brave Kinnordy fell last night? My noble
+Kinnordy!"
+
+Here Stroke covers his face with his hands, weeping silently, and--and
+there is an awkward pause.
+
+("Go on--'Still have me.'")
+
+("So it is.") "Weep not, my royal scone--"
+
+("Scion.")
+
+"Weep not, my royal scion, havest thou not still me?"
+
+"Well said, Sir Joseph," cries Stroke, dashing the sign of weakness from
+his face. "I still have many brave fellows, and with their help I shall
+be master of this proud town."
+
+"And then ghost we to fair Edinburgh?"
+
+"Ay, 'tis so, but, Sir Joseph, thinkest thou these burghers love the
+Stuart not?"
+
+"'_Nay,_ methinks they are true to thee, but their starch
+commander--(give me my time, this is a lang ane,) but their arch
+commander is thy bitterest foe. Vile spoon that he is! (It's no spoon,
+it's spawn.)"
+
+"Thou meanest the craven Cathro?"
+
+"Methinks ay. (I like thae short anes.)"
+
+"'Tis well!" says Stroke, sternly. "That man hath ever slipped between
+me and my right. His time will come."
+
+"He floppeth thee--he flouteth thee from the battlements."
+
+"Ha, 'tis well!"
+
+("You've said that already.")
+
+("I say it twice.")
+
+("That's what aye puts me wrang.) Ghost thou to meet the proud Lady
+Grizel to-night?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+"Ghost thou alone?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+("What easy anes you have!) I fear it is not chancey for thee to go."
+
+"I must dree my dreed."
+
+"These women is kittle cattle."
+
+"The Stuart hath ever a soft side for them. Ah, my trusty
+foster-brother, knowest thou not what it is to love?"
+
+"Alas, I too have had my fling. (Does Grizel kiss your hand yet?)"
+
+"(No, she winna, the limmer.) Sir Joseph, I go to her."
+
+"Methinks she is a haughty onion. I prithee go not to-night."
+
+"I have given my word."
+
+"Thy word is a band."
+
+"Adieu, my friend."
+
+"Methinks thou ghost to thy damn. (Did we no promise Elspeth there
+should be no swearing?)"
+
+The raft Vick Lan Vohr is dragged to the shore, and Stroke steps on
+board, a proud solitary figure. "Farewell!" he cries hoarsely, as he
+seizes the oar.
+
+"Farewell, my leech," answers Corp, and then helps him to disembark.
+Their hands chance to meet, and Stroke's is so hot that Corp quails.
+
+"Tommy," he says, with a shudder, "do you--you dinna think it's a' true,
+do you?" But the ill-fated prince only gives him a warning look and
+plunges into the mazes of the forest. For a long time silence reigns
+over the Den. Lights glint fitfully, a human voice imitates the
+plaintive cry of the peewit, cautious whistling follows, comes next the
+clash of arms, and the scream of one in the death-throes, and again
+silence falls. Stroke emerges near the Reekie Broth Pot, wiping his
+sword and muttering, "Faugh! it drippeth!" At the same moment the air is
+filled with music of more than mortal--well, the air is filled with
+music. It seems to come from but a few yards away, and pressing his hand
+to his throbbing brow the Chevalier presses forward till, pushing aside
+the branches of a fallen fir, he comes suddenly upon a scene of such
+romantic beauty that he stands rooted to the ground. Before him, softly
+lit by a half-moon (the man in it perspiring with curiosity), is a
+miniature dell, behind which rise threatening rocks, overgrown here and
+there by grass, heath, and bracken, while in the centre of the dell is a
+bubbling spring called the Cuttle Well, whose water, as it overflows a
+natural basin, soaks into the surrounding ground and so finds a way into
+the picturesque stream below. But it is not the loveliness of the spot
+which fascinates the prince; rather is it the exquisite creature who
+sits by the bubbling spring, a reed from a hand-loom in her hands, from
+which she strikes mournful sounds, the while she raises her voice in
+song. A pink scarf and a blue ribbon are crossed upon her breast, her
+dark tresses kiss her lovely neck, and as she sits on the only dry
+stone, her face raised as if in wrapt communion with the heavens, and
+her feet tucked beneath her to avoid the mud, she seems not a human
+being, but the very spirit of the place and hour. The royal wanderer
+remains spellbound, while she strikes her lyre and sings (with but one
+trivial alteration) the song of MacMurrough:--
+
+Awake on your hills, on your islands awake,
+Brave sons of the mountains, the frith and the lake!
+'Tis the bugle--but not for the chase is the call;
+'Tis the pibroch's shrill summons--but not to the hall.
+
+'Tis the summons of heroes for conquest or death,
+When the banners are blazing on mountain and heath;
+They call to the dirk, the claymore and the targe,
+To the march and the muster, the line and the charge.
+
+Be the brand of each Chieftain like Stroke's in his ire!
+May the blood through his veins flow like currents of fire!
+Burst the base foreign yoke as your sires did of yore,
+Or die like your sires, and endure it no more.
+
+As the fair singer concluded, Stroke, who had been deeply moved, heaved
+a great sigh, and immediately, as if in echo of it, came a sigh from the
+opposite side of the dell. In a second of time three people had learned
+that a certain lady had two lovers. She starts to her feet, still
+carefully avoiding the puddles, but it is not she who speaks.
+
+("Did you hear me?")
+
+("Ay.")
+
+("You're ready?")
+
+("Ca' awa'.")
+
+Stroke dashes to the girl's side, just in time to pluck her from the
+arms of a masked man. The villain raises his mask and reveals the face
+of--it looks like Corp, but the disguise is thrown away on Stroke.
+
+"Ha, Cathro," he exclaims joyfully, "so at last we meet on equal terms!"
+
+"Back, Stroke, and let me pass."
+
+"Nay, we fight for the wench."
+
+"So be it. The prideful onion is his who wins her."
+
+"Have at thee, caitiff!"
+
+A terrible conflict ensues. Cathro draws first blood. 'Tis but a
+scratch. Ha! well thrust, Stroke. In vain Cathro girns his teeth. Inch
+by inch he is driven back, he slips, he recovers, he pants, he is
+apparently about to fling himself down the steep bank and so find safety
+in flight, but he comes on again.
+
+("What are you doing? You run now.")
+
+("I ken, but I'm sweer!")
+
+("Off you go.")
+
+Even as Stroke is about to press home, the cowardly foe flings himself
+down the steep bank and rolls out of sight. He will give no more trouble
+to-night; and the victor turns to the Lady Grizel, who had been
+repinning the silk scarf across her breast, while the issue of the
+combat was still in doubt.
+
+("Now, then, Grizel, you kiss my hand.")
+
+("I tell you I won't.")
+
+("Well, then, go on your knees to me.")
+
+("You needn't think it.")
+
+("Dagon you! Then ca' awa' standing.")
+
+"My liege, thou hast saved me from the wretch Cathro."
+
+"May I always be near to defend thee in time of danger, my pretty
+chick."
+
+("Tommy, you promised not to call me by those silly names.")
+
+("They slip out, I tell you. That was aye the way wi' the Stuarts.")
+
+("Well, you must say 'Lady Grizel.') Good, my prince, how can I thank
+thee?"
+
+"By being my wife. (Not a word of this to Elspeth.)"
+
+"Nay, I summoned thee here to tell thee that can never be. The Grizels
+of Grizel are of ancient lineage, but they mate not with monarchs. My
+sire, the nunnery gates will soon close on me forever."
+
+"Then at least say thou lovest me."
+
+"Alas, I love thee not."
+
+("What haver is this? I telled you to say 'Charles, would that I loved
+thee less.'")
+
+("And I told you I would not.")
+
+("Well, then, where are we now?")
+
+("We miss out all that about my wearing your portrait next my heart, and
+put in the rich apparel bit, the same as last week.")
+
+("Oh! Then I go on?) Bethink thee, fair jade--"
+
+("Lady.")
+
+"Bethink thee, fair lady, Stuart is not so poor but that, if thou come
+with him to his lowly lair, he can deck thee with rich apparel and
+ribbons rare."
+
+"I spurn thy gifts, unhappy man, but if there are holes in--"
+
+("Miss that common bit out. I canna thole it.")
+
+("I like it.) If there are holes in the garments of thy loyal followers,
+I will come and mend them, and have a needle and thread in my pocket.
+(Tommy, there is another button off your shirt! Have you got the
+button?")
+
+"(It's down my breeks.) So be it, proud girl, come!"
+
+It was Grizel who made masks out of tin rags, picked up where tinkers
+had passed the night, and musical instruments out of broken reeds that
+smelled of caddis and Jacobite head-gear out of weaver's night-caps; and
+she kept the lair so clean and tidy as to raise a fear that intruders
+might mistake its character. Elspeth had to mind the pot, which Aaron
+Latta never missed, and Corp was supposed to light the fire by striking
+sparks from his knife, a trick which Tommy considered so easy that he
+refused to show how it was done. Many strange sauces were boiled in that
+pot, a sort of potato-turnip pudding often coming out even when not
+expected, but there was an occasional rabbit that had been bowled over
+by Corp's unerring hand, and once Tommy shot a--a haunch of venison,
+having first, with Corp's help, howked it out of Ronny-On's swine, then
+suspended head downward, and open like a book at the page of contents,
+steaming, dripping, a tub beneath, boys with bladders in the distance.
+When they had supped they gathered round the fire, Grizel knitting a
+shawl for they knew whom, but the name was never mentioned, and Tommy
+told the story of his life at the French court, and how he fought in the
+'45 and afterward hid in caves, and so did he shudder, as he described
+the cold of his bracken beds, and so glowed his face, for it was all
+real to him, that Grizel let the wool drop on her knee, and Corp
+whispered to Elspeth, "Dinna be fleid for him; I'se uphaud he found a
+wy." Those quiet evenings were not the least pleasant spent in the Den.
+
+But sometimes they were interrupted by a fierce endeavor to carry the
+lair, when boys from Cathro's climbed to it up each other's backs, the
+rope, of course, having been pulled into safety at the first sound, and
+then that end of the Den rang with shouts, and deeds of valor on both
+sides were as common as pine needles, and once Tommy and Corp were only
+saved from captors who had them down, by Grizel rushing into the midst
+of things with two flaring torches, and another time bold Birkie, most
+daring of the storming party, was seized with two others and made to
+walk the plank. The plank had been part of a gate, and was suspended
+over the bank of the Silent Pool, so that, as you approached the farther
+end, down you went. It was not a Jacobite method, but Tommy feared that
+rows of bodies, hanging from the trees still standing in the Den, might
+attract attention.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+GRIZEL PAYS THREE VISITS
+
+
+Less alarming but more irritating was the attempt of the youth of
+Monypenny and the West town end, to establish a rival firm of Jacobites
+(without even being sure of the name). They started business (Francie
+Crabb leader, because he had a kilt) on a flagon of porter and an
+ounce of twist, which they carried on a stick through the Den, saying
+"Bowf!" like dogs, when they met anyone, and then laughing doubtfully.
+The twist and porter were seized by Tommy and his followers, and
+Haggerty-Taggerty, Major, arrived home with his head so firmly secured
+in the flagon that the solder had to be melted before he saw the world
+again. Francie was in still worse plight, for during the remainder of
+the evening he had to hide in shame among the brackens, and Tommy wore a
+kilt.
+
+One cruel revenge the beaten rivals had. They waylaid Grizel, when she
+was alone, and thus assailed her, she answering not a word.
+
+"What's a father?"
+
+"She'll soon no have a mither either!"
+
+"The Painted Lady needs to paint her cheeks no longer!"
+
+"Na, the red spots comes themsels now."
+
+"Have you heard her hoasting?"
+
+"Ay, it's the hoast o' a dying woman."
+
+"The joiner heard it, and gave her a look, measuring her wi' his eye for
+the coffin. 'Five and a half by one and a half would hold her snod,' he
+says to himsel'."
+
+"Ronny-On's auld wife heard it, and says she, 'Dinna think, my leddy, as
+you'll be buried in consecrated ground.'"
+
+"Na, a'body kens she'll just be hauled at the end o' a rope to the hole
+where the witches was shooled in."
+
+"Wi' a paling spar through her, to keep her down on the day o'
+judgment."
+
+Well, well, these children became men and women in time, one of them
+even a bit of a hero, though he never knew it.
+
+Are you angry with them? If so, put the cheap thing aside, or think only
+of Grizel, and perhaps God will turn your anger into love for her.
+
+Great-hearted, solitary child! She walked away from them without
+flinching, but on reaching the Den, where no one could see her--she lay
+down on the ground, and her cheeks were dry, but little wells of water
+stood in her eyes.
+
+She would not be the Lady Grizel that night. She went home instead, but
+there was something she wanted to ask Tommy now, and the next time she
+saw him she began at once. Grizel always began at once, often in the
+middle, she saw what she was making for so clearly.
+
+"Do you know what it means when there are red spots in your cheeks, that
+used not to be there?"
+
+Tommy knew at once to whom she was referring, for he had heard the
+gossip of the youth of Monypenny, and he hesitated to answer.
+
+"And if, when you cough, you bring up a tiny speck of blood?"
+
+"I would get a bottle frae the doctor," said Tommy, evasively.
+
+"She won't have the doctor," answered Grizel, unguardedly, and then with
+a look dared Tommy to say that she spoke of her mother.
+
+"Does it mean you are dying?"
+
+"I--I--oh, no, they soon get better."
+
+He said this because he was so sorry for Grizel. There never was a more
+sympathetic nature than Tommy's. At every time of his life his pity was
+easily roused for persons in distress, and he sought to comfort them by
+shutting their eyes to the truth as long as possible. This sometimes
+brought relief to them, but it was useless to Grizel, who must face her
+troubles.
+
+"Why don't you answer truthfully?" she cried, with vehemence. "It is so
+easy to be truthful!"
+
+"Well, then," said Tommy, reluctantly, "I think they generally die."
+
+Elspeth often carried in her pocket a little Testament, presented to her
+by the Rev. Mr. Dishart for learning by heart one of the noblest of
+books, the Shorter Catechism, as Scottish children do or did, not
+understanding it at the time, but its meaning comes long afterwards and
+suddenly, when you have most need of it. Sometimes Elspeth read aloud
+from her Testament to Grizel, who made no comment, but this same
+evening, when the two were alone, she said abruptly:
+
+"Have you your Testament?"
+
+"Yes," Elspeth said, producing it.
+
+"Which is the page about saving sinners?"
+
+"It's all about that."
+
+"But the page when you are in a hurry?"
+
+Elspeth read aloud the story of the Crucifixion, and Grizel listened
+sharply until she heard what Jesus said to the malefactor: "To-day shalt
+thou be with me in Paradise."
+
+"And was he?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"But he had been wicked all his life, and I believe he was only good,
+just that minute, because they were crucifying him. If they had let him
+come down.--"
+
+"No, he repented, you know. That means he had faith, and if you have
+faith you are saved. It doesna matter how bad you have been. You have
+just to say 'I believe' before you die, and God lets you in. It's so
+easy, Grizel," cried Elspeth, with shining eyes.
+
+Grizel pondered. "I don't believe it is so easy as that," she said,
+decisively.
+
+Nevertheless she asked presently what the Testament cost, and when
+Elspeth answered "Fourpence," offered her the money.
+
+"I don't want to sell it," Elspeth remonstrated.
+
+"If you don't give it to me, I shall take it from you," said Grizel,
+determinedly.
+
+"You can buy one."
+
+"No, the shop people would guess."
+
+"Guess what?"
+
+"I won't tell you."
+
+"I'll lend it to you."
+
+"I won't take it that way." So Elspeth had to part with her Testament,
+saying wonderingly, "Can you read?"
+
+"Yes, and write too. Mamma taught me."
+
+"But I thought she was daft," Elspeth blurted out.
+
+"She is only daft now and then," Grizel replied, without her usual
+spirit. "Generally she is not daft at all, but only timid."
+
+Next morning the Painted Lady's child paid three calls, one in town, two
+in the country. The adorable thing is that, once having made up her
+mind, she never flinched, not even when her hand was on the knocker.
+
+The first gentleman received her in his lobby. For a moment he did not
+remember her; then suddenly the color deepened on his face, and he went
+back and shut the parlor-door.
+
+"Did anybody see you coming here?" he asked, quickly.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"What does she want?"
+
+"She did not send me, I came myself."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"When you come to our house--"
+
+"I never come to your house."
+
+"That is a lie."
+
+"Speak lower!"
+
+"When you come to our house you tell me to go out and play. But I don't.
+I go and cry."
+
+No doubt he was listening, but his eyes were on the parlor-door.
+
+"I don't know why I cry, but you know, you wicked man! Why is it?"
+
+"Why is it?" she demanded again, like a queen-child, but he could only
+fidget with his gold chain and shuffle uneasily in his parnella shoes.
+
+"You are not coming to see my mamma again."
+
+The gentleman gave her an ugly look.
+
+"If you do," she said at once, "I shall come straight here and open that
+door you are looking at, and tell your wife."
+
+He dared not swear. His hand--
+
+"If you offer me money," said Grizel, "I shall tell her now."
+
+He muttered something to himself.
+
+"Is it true?" she asked, "that mamma is dying?"
+
+This was a genuine shock to him, for he had not been at Double Dykes
+since winter, and then the Painted Lady was quite well.
+
+"Nonsense!" he said, and his obvious disbelief brought some comfort to
+the girl. But she asked, "Why are there red spots on her cheeks, then?"
+
+"Paint," he answered.
+
+"No," cried Grizel, rocking her arms, "it is not paint now. I thought it
+might be and I tried to rub it off while she was sleeping, but it will
+not come off. And when she coughs there is blood on her handkerchief."
+
+He looked alarmed now, and Grizel's fears came back. "If mamma dies,"
+she said determinedly, "she must be buried in the cemetery."
+
+"She is not dying, I tell you."
+
+"And you must come to the funeral."
+
+"Are you gyte?"
+
+"With crape on your hat."
+
+His mouth formed an emphatic "No."
+
+"You must," said Grizel, firmly, "you shall! If you don't--" She pointed
+to the parlor-door.
+
+Her remaining two visits were to a similar effect, and one of the
+gentlemen came out of the ordeal somewhat less shamefully than the
+first, the other worse, for he blubbered and wanted to kiss her. It is
+questionable whether many young ladies have made such a profound
+impression in a series of morning calls.
+
+The names of these gentlemen are not known, but you shall be told
+presently where they may be found. Every person in Thrums used to know
+the place, and many itched to get at the names, but as yet no one has
+had the nerve to look for them.
+
+Not at this time did Grizel say a word of these interviews to her
+friends, though Tommy had to be told of them later, and she never again
+referred to her mother at the Saturday evenings in the Den. But the
+others began to know a queer thing, nothing less than this, that in
+their absence the lair was sometimes visited by a person or persons
+unknown, who made use of their stock of firewood. It was a startling
+discovery, but when they discussed it in council, Grizel never
+contributed a word. The affair remained a mystery until one Saturday
+evening, when Tommy and Elspeth, reaching the lair first, found in it a
+delicate white shawl. They both recognized in it the pretty thing the
+Painted Lady had pinned across her shoulders on the night they saw her
+steal out of Double Dykes, to meet the man of long ago.
+
+Even while their eyes were saying this, Grizel climbed in without giving
+the password, and they knew from her quick glance around that she had
+come for the shawl. She snatched it out of Tommy's hand with a look
+that prohibited questions.
+
+"It's the pair o' them," Tommy said to Elspeth at the first opportunity,
+"that sometimes comes here at nights and kindles the fire and warms
+themsels at the gloze. And the last time they came they forgot the
+shawl."
+
+"I dinna like to think the Painted Lady has been up here, Tommy."
+
+"But she has. You ken how, when she has a daft fit, she wanders the Den
+trysting the man that never comes. Has she no been seen at all hours o'
+the night, Grizel following a wee bit ahint, like as if to take tent o
+her?"
+
+"They say that, and that Grizel canna get her to go home till the daft
+fit has passed."
+
+"Well, she has that kechering hoast and spit now, and so Grizel brings
+her up here out o' the blasts."
+
+"But how could she be got to come here, if she winna go home?"
+
+"Because frae here she can watch for the man."
+
+Elspeth shuddered. "Do you think she's here often, Tommy?" she asked.
+
+"Just when she has a daft fit on, and they say she's wise sax days in
+seven."
+
+This made the Jacobite meetings eerie events for Elspeth, but Tommy
+liked them the better; and what were they not to Grizel, who ran to them
+with passionate fondness every Saturday night? Sometimes she even
+outdistanced her haunting dreads, for she knew that her mother did not
+think herself seriously ill; and had not the three gentlemen made light
+of that curious cough? So there were nights when the lair saw Grizel go
+riotous with glee, laughing, dancing, and shouting over-much, like one
+trying to make up for a lost childhood. But it was also noticed that
+when the time came to leave the Den she was very loath, and kissed her
+hands to the places where she had been happiest, saying, wistfully, and
+with pretty gestures that were foreign to Thrums, "Good-night, dear
+Cuttle Well! Good-by, sweet, sweet Lair!" as if she knew it could not
+last. These weekly risings in the Den were most real to Tommy, but it
+was Grizel who loved them best.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+A ROMANCE OF TWO OLD MAIDS AND A STOUT BACHELOR
+
+
+Came Gavinia, a burgess of the besieged city, along the south shore of
+the Silent Pool. She was but a maid seeking to know what love might be,
+and as she wandered on, she nibbled dreamily at a hot sweet-smelling
+bridie, whose gravy oozed deliciously through a bursting paper-bag.
+
+It was a fit night for dark deeds.
+
+"Methinks she cometh to her damn!"
+
+The speaker was a masked man who had followed her--he was sniffing
+ecstatically--since she left the city walls.
+
+She seemed to possess a charmed life. He would have had her in Shovel
+Gorge, but just then Ronny-On's Jean and Peter Scrymgeour turned the
+corner.
+
+Suddenly Gavinia felt an exquisite thrill: a man was pursuing her. She
+slipped the paper-bag out of sight, holding it dexterously against her
+side with her arm, so that the gravy should not spurt out, and ran.
+Lights flashed, a kingly voice cried "Now!" and immediately a petticoat
+was flung over her head. (The Lady Griselda looked thin that evening.)
+
+Gavinia was dragged to the Lair, and though many a time they bumped her,
+she still tenderly nursed the paper-bag with her arm, or fondly thought
+she did so, for when unmuffled she discovered that it had been removed,
+as if by painless surgery. And her captors' tongues were sweeping their
+chins for stray crumbs.
+
+The wench was offered her choice of Stroke's gallant fellows, but "Wha
+carries me wears me," said she, promptly, and not only had he to carry
+her from one end of the Den to the other, but he must do it whistling as
+if barely conscious that she was there. So after many attempts (for she
+was always willing to let them have their try) Corp of Corp, speaking
+for Sir Joseph and the others, announced a general retreat.
+
+Instead of taking this prisoner's life, Stroke made her his tool,
+releasing her on condition that every seventh day she appeared at the
+Lair with information concerning the doings in the town. Also, her name
+was Agnes of Kingoldrum, and, if she said it was not, the plank. Bought
+thus, Agnes proved of service, bringing such bags of news that Stroke
+was often occupied now in drawing diagrams of Thrums and its
+strongholds, including the residence of Cathro, with dotted lines to
+show the direction of proposed underground passages.
+
+And presently came by this messenger disquieting rumors indeed. Another
+letter, being the third in six months, had reached the Dovecot,
+addressed, not to Miss Ailie, but to Miss Kitty. Miss Kitty had been
+dead fully six years, and Archie Piatt, the post, swore that this was
+the eighteenth, if not the nineteenth, letter he had delivered to her
+name since that time. They were all in the same hand, a man's, and there
+had been similar letters while she was alive, but of these he kept no
+record. Miss Ailie always took these letters with a trembling hand, and
+then locked herself in her bedroom, leaving the key in such a position
+in its hole that you might just as well go straight back to the kitchen.
+Within a few hours of the arrival of these ghostly letters, tongues were
+wagging about them, but to the two or three persons who (after passing a
+sleepless night) bluntly asked Miss Ailie from whom they came, she only
+replied by pursing her lips. Nothing could be learned at the post-office
+save that Miss Ailie never posted any letters there, except to two
+Misses and a Mrs., all resident in Redlintie. The mysterious letters
+came from Australy or Manchester, or some such part.
+
+What could Stroke make of this? He expressed no opinion, but oh, his
+face was grim. Orders were immediately given to double the sentinels. A
+barrel was placed in the Queen's Bower. Sawdust was introduced at
+immense risk into the Lair. A paper containing this writing, "248xho317
+Oxh4591AWS314dd5," was passed round and then solemnly burned. Nothing
+was left to chance.
+
+Agnes of Kingoldrum (Stroke told her) did not know Miss Ailie, but she
+was commanded to pay special attention to the gossip of the town
+regarding this new move of the enemy. By next Saturday the plot had
+thickened. Previous letters might have reddened Miss Ailie's eyes for an
+hour or two, but they gladdened her as a whole. Now she sat crying all
+evening with this one on her lap; she gave up her daily walk to the
+Berlin wool shop, with all its romantic possibilities; at the clatter of
+the tea-things she would start apprehensively; she had let a red shawl
+lie for two days in the blue-and-white room.
+
+Stroke never blanched. He called his faithful remnant around him, and
+told them the story of Bell the Cat, with its application in the records
+of his race. Did they take his meaning? This Miss Ailie must be watched
+closely. In short, once more, in Scottish history, someone must bell the
+cat. Who would volunteer?
+
+Corp of Corp and Sir Joseph stepped forward as one man.
+
+"Thou couldst not look like Gavinia," the prince said, shaking his head.
+
+"Wha wants him to look like Gavinia?" cried an indignant voice.
+
+"Peace, Agnes!" said Stroke.
+
+"Agnes, why bletherest thou?" said Sir Joseph.
+
+"If onybody's to watch Miss Ailie," insisted the obstinate woman,
+"surely it should be me!"
+
+"Ha!" Stroke sprang to his feet, for something in her voice, or the
+outline of her figure, or perhaps it was her profile, had given him an
+idea. "A torch!" he cried eagerly and with its aid he scanned her face
+until his own shone triumphant.
+
+"He kens a wy, methinks!" exclaimed one of his men.
+
+Sir Joseph was right. It had been among the prince's exploits to make
+his way into Thrums in disguise, and mix with the people as one of
+themselves, and on several of these occasions he had seen Miss Ailie's
+attendant. Agnes's resemblance to her now struck him for the first time.
+It should be Agnes of Kingoldrum's honorable though dangerous part to
+take this Gavinia's place.
+
+But how to obtain possession of Gavinia's person? Agnes made several
+suggestions, but was told to hold her prating peace. It could only be
+done in one way. They must kidnap her. Sir Joseph was ordered to be
+ready to accompany his liege on this perilous enterprise in ten minutes.
+"And mind," said Stroke, gravely, "we carry our lives in our hands."
+
+"In our hands!" gasped Sir Joseph, greatly puzzled, but he dared ask no
+more, and when the two set forth (leaving Agnes of Kingoldrum looking
+very uncomfortable), he was surprised to see that Stroke was carrying
+nothing. Sir Joseph carried in his hand his red hanky, mysteriously
+knotted.
+
+"Where is yours?" he whispered.
+
+"What meanest thou?"
+
+Sir Joseph replied, "Oh, nothing," and thought it best to slip his
+handkerchief into his trouser-pocket, but the affair bothered him for
+long afterwards.
+
+When they returned through the Den, there still seemed (to the
+unpiercing eye) to be but two of them; nevertheless, Stroke re-entered
+the Lair to announce to Agnes and the others that he had left Gavinia
+below in charge of Sir Joseph. She was to walk the plank anon, but first
+she must be stripped that Agnes might don her garments. Stroke was every
+inch a prince, so he kept Agnes by his side, and sent down the Lady
+Griselda and Widow Elspeth to strip the prisoner, Sir Joseph having
+orders to stand back fifty paces. (It is a pleasure to have to record
+this.)
+
+The signal having been given that this delicate task was accomplished,
+Stroke whistled shrilly, and next moment was heard from far below a
+thud, as of a body falling in water, then an agonizing shriek, and then
+again all was still, save for the heavy breathing of Agnes of
+Kingoldrum.
+
+Sir Joseph (very wet) returned to the Lair, and Agnes was commanded to
+take off her clothes in a retired spot and put on those of the deceased,
+which she should find behind a fallen tree.
+
+"I winna be called the deceased," cried Agnes hotly, but she had to do
+as she was bid, and when she emerged, from behind the tree she was the
+very image of the ill-fated Gavinia. Stroke showed her a plan of Miss
+Ailie's backdoor, and also gave her a kitchen key (when he produced
+this, she felt in her pockets and then snatched it from him), after
+which she set out for the Dovecot in a scare about her own identity.
+
+"And now, what doest thou think about it a'?" inquired Sir Joseph
+eagerly, to which Stroke made answer, looking at him fixedly.
+
+"The wind is in the west!"
+
+Sir Joseph should have kept this a secret, but soon Stroke heard
+Inverquharity prating of it, and he called his lieutenant before him.
+Sir Joseph acknowledged humbly that he had been unable to hide it from
+Inverquharity, but he promised not to tell Muckle Kenny, of whose
+loyalty there were doubts. Henceforth, when the faithful fellow was
+Muckle Kenny, he would say doggedly to himself, "Dinna question me,
+Kenny. I ken nocht about it."
+
+Dark indeed were now the fortunes of the Pretender, but they had one
+bright spot. Miss Ailie had been taken in completely by the trick played
+on her, and thus Stroke now got full information of the enemy's doings.
+Cathro having failed to dislodge the Jacobites, the seat of war had been
+changed by Victoria to the Dovecot, whither her despatches were now
+forwarded. That this last one, of which Agnes of Kingoldrum tried in
+vain to obtain possession, doubled the price on the Pretender's head,
+there could be no doubt; but as Miss Ailie was a notorious Hanoverian,
+only the hunted prince himself knew why this should make her cry.
+
+He hinted with a snigger something about an affair he had once had with
+the lady.
+
+The Widow and Sir Joseph accepted this explanation, but it made Lady
+Griselda rock her arms in irritation.
+
+The reports about Miss Ailie's behavior became more and more alarming.
+She walked up and down her bedroom now in the middle of the night. Every
+time the knocker clanked she held herself together with both hands.
+Agnes had orders not to answer the door until her mistress had keeked
+through the window.
+
+"She's expecting a veesitor, methinks," said Corp. This was his bright
+day.
+
+"Ay," answered Agnes, "but is't a man-body, or just a woman-body?"
+
+Leaving the rebels in the Lair stunned by Victoria's latest move, we now
+return to Thrums, where Miss Ailie's excited state had indeed been the
+talk of many. Even the gossips, however, had underestimated her distress
+of mind, almost as much as they misunderstood its cause. You must listen
+now (will you?) to so mild a thing as the long thin romance of two
+maiden ladies and a stout bachelor, all beginning to be old the day the
+three of them first drank tea together, and that was ten years ago.
+
+Miss Ailie and Miss Kitty, you may remember, were not natives of Thrums.
+They had been born and brought up at Redlintie, and on the death of
+their parents they had remained there, the gauger having left them all
+his money, which was just sufficient to enable them to live like ladies,
+if they took tiny Magenta Cottage, and preferred an inexperienced maid.
+At first their life was very quiet, the walk from eleven to one for the
+good of fragile Miss Kitty's health its outstanding feature. When they
+strolled together on the cliffs, Miss Ailie's short thick figure,
+straight as an elvint, cut the wind in two, but Miss Kitty was swayed
+this way and that, and when she shook her curls at the wind, it blew
+them roguishly in her face, and had another shot at them, as soon as
+they were put to rights. If the two walked by the shore (where the
+younger sometimes bathed her feet, the elder keeping a sharp eye on land
+and water), the sea behaved like the wind, dodging Miss Ailie's ankles
+and snapping playfully at Miss Kitty's. Thus even the elements could
+distinguish between the sisters, who nevertheless had so much in common
+that at times Miss Ailie would look into her mirror and sigh to think
+that some day Miss Kitty might be like this. How Miss Ailie adored Miss
+Kitty! She trembled with pleasure if you said Miss Kitty was pretty, and
+she dreamed dreams in which she herself walked as bridesmaid only. And
+just as Miss Ailie could be romantic, Miss Kitty, the romantic, could be
+prim, and the primness was her own as much as the curls, but Miss Ailie
+usually carried it for her, like a cloak in case of rain.
+
+Not often have two sweeter women grown together on one stem. What were
+the men of Redlintie about? The sisters never asked each other this
+question, but there were times when, apparently without cause, Miss
+Ailie hugged Miss Kitty vehemently, as if challenging the world, and
+perhaps Miss Kitty understood.
+
+Thus a year or more passed uneventfully, until the one romance of their
+lives befell them. It began with the reappearance in Redlintie of
+Magerful Tarn, who had come to torment his father into giving him more
+money, but, finding he had come too late, did not harass the sisters.
+This is perhaps the best thing that can be told of him, and, as if he
+knew this, he had often told it himself to Jean Myles, without however
+telling her what followed. For something to his advantage did follow,
+and it was greatly to the credit of Miss Ailie and Miss Kitty, though
+they went about it as timidly as if they were participating in a crime.
+Ever since they learned of the sin which had brought this man into the
+world their lives had been saddened, for on the same day they realized
+what a secret sorrow had long lain at their mother's heart. Alison
+Sibbald was a very simple, gracious lady, who never recovered from the
+shock of discovering that she had married a libertine; yet she had
+pressed her husband to do something for his son, and been greatly pained
+when he refused with a coarse laugh. The daughters were very like her in
+nature, and though the knowledge of what she had suffered increased many
+fold their love for her, so that in her last days their passionate
+devotion to her was the talk of Redlintie, it did not blind them to what
+seemed to them to be their duty to the man. As their father's son, they
+held, he had a right to a third of the gauger's money, and to withhold
+it from him, now that they knew his whereabouts, would have been a form
+of theft. But how to give T. his third? They called him T. from
+delicacy, and they had never spoken to him. When he passed them in the
+streets, they turned pale, and, thinking of their mother, looked another
+way. But they knew he winked.
+
+At last, looking red in one street, and white in another, but resolute
+in all, they took their business to the office of Mr. John McLean, the
+writer, who had once escorted Miss Kitty home from a party without
+anything coming of it, so that it was quite a psychological novel in
+several volumes. Now Mr. John happened to be away at the fishing, and a
+reckless maid showed them into the presence of a strange man, who was no
+other than his brother Ivie, home for a year's holiday from India, and
+naturally this extraordinary occurrence so agitated them that Miss Ailie
+had told half her story before she realized that Miss Kitty was titting
+at her dress. Then indeed she sought to withdraw, but Ivie, with the
+alarming yet not unpleasing audacity of his sex, said he had heard
+enough to convince him that in this matter he was qualified to take his
+brother's place. But he was not, for he announced, "My advice to you is
+not to give T. a halfpenny," which showed that he did not even
+understand what they had come about.
+
+They begged permission to talk to each other behind the door, and
+presently returned, troubled but brave. Miss Kitty whispered "Courage!"
+and this helped Miss Ailie to the deed.
+
+"We have quite made up our minds to let T. have the money," she said,
+"but--but the difficulty is the taking it to him. Must we take it in
+person?"
+
+"Why not?" asked Ivie, bewildered.
+
+"It would be such a painful meeting to us." said Miss Ailie.
+
+"And to him," added simple Miss Kitty.
+
+"You see we have thought it best not to--not to know him," said Miss
+Ailie, faintly.
+
+"Mother--" faltered Miss Kitty, and at the word the eyes of both ladies
+began to fill.
+
+Then, of course, Mr. McLean discovered the object of their visit, and
+promised that his brother should take this delicate task off their
+hands, and as he bowed them out he said, "Ladies, I think you are doing
+a very foolish thing, and I shall respect you for it all my life." At
+least Miss Kitty insisted that respect was the word, Miss Ailie thought
+he said esteem.
+
+That was how it began, and it progressed for nearly a year at a rate
+that will take away your breath. On the very next day he met Miss Kitty
+in High Street, a most awkward encounter for her ("for, you know, Ailie,
+we were never introduced, so how could I decide all in a moment what to
+do?"), and he raised his hat (the Misses Croall were at their window and
+saw the whole thing). But we must gallop, like the friendship. He bowed
+the first two times, the third time he shook hands (by a sort of
+providence Miss Kitty had put on her new mittens), the fourth, fifth,
+and sixth times he conversed, the seventh time he--they replied that
+they really could not trouble him so much, but he said he was going that
+way at any rate; the eighth time, ninth time, and tenth time the figures
+of two ladies and a gentleman might have been observed, etc., and either
+the eleventh or twelfth time ("Fancy our not being sure, Ailie"--"It has
+all come so quickly, Kitty") he took his first dish of tea at Magenta
+Cottage.
+
+There were many more walks after this, often along the cliffs to a
+little fishing village, over which the greatest of magicians once
+stretched his wand, so that it became famous forever, as all the world
+saw except himself; and tea at the cottage followed, when Ivie asked
+Miss Kitty to sing "The Land o' the Leal," and Miss Ailie sat by the
+window, taking in her merino, that it might fit Miss Kitty, cutting her
+sable muff (once Alison Sibbald's) into wristbands for Miss Kitty's
+astrakhan; they did not go quite all the way round, but men are blind.
+
+Ivie was not altogether blind. The sisters, it is to be feared, called
+him the dashing McLean, but he was at this time nearly forty years old,
+an age when bachelors like to take a long rest from thinking of
+matrimony, before beginning again. Fifteen years earlier he had been in
+love, but the girl had not cared to wait for him, and, though in India
+he had often pictured himself returning to Redlintie to gaze wistfully
+at her old home, when he did come back he never went, because the house
+was a little out of the way. But unknown to him two ladies went, to whom
+he had told this as a rather dreary joke. They were ladies he esteemed
+very much, though having a sense of humor he sometimes chuckled on his
+way home from Magenta Cottage, and he thought out many ways of adding
+little pleasures to their lives. It was like him to ask Miss Kitty to
+sing and play, though he disliked music. He understood that it is a hard
+world for single women, and knew himself for a very ordinary sort of
+man. If it ever crossed his head that Miss Kitty would be willing to
+marry him, he felt genuinely sorry at the same time that she had not
+done better long ago. He never flattered himself that he could be
+accepted now, save for the good home he could provide (he was not the
+man to blame women for being influenced by that), for like most of his
+sex he was unaware that a woman is never too old to love or to be loved;
+if they do know it, the mean ones among them make a jest of it, at which
+(God knows why) their wives laugh. Mr. McLean had been acquainted with
+the sisters for months before he was sure even that Miss Kitty was his
+favorite. He found that out one evening when sitting with an old friend,
+whose wife and children were in the room, gathered round a lamp and
+playing at some child's game. Suddenly Ivie McLean envied his friend,
+and at the same moment he thought tenderly of Miss Kitty. But the
+feeling passed. He experienced it next and as suddenly when arriving at
+Bombay, where some women were waiting to greet their husbands.
+
+Before he went away the two gentlewomen knew that he was not to speak.
+They did not tell each other what was in their minds. Miss Kitty was so
+bright during those last days, that she must have deceived anyone who
+did not love her, and Miss Ailie held her mouth very tight, and if
+possible was straighter than ever, but oh, how gentle she was with Miss
+Kitty! Ivie's last two weeks in the old country were spent in London,
+and during that time Miss Kitty liked to go away by herself, and sit on
+a rock and gaze at the sea. Once Miss Ailie followed her and would have
+called him a--
+
+"Don't, Ailie!" said Miss Kitty, imploringly. But that night, when Miss
+Kitty was brushing her hair, she said, courageously, "Ailie, I don't
+think I should wear curls any longer. You know I--I shall be
+thirty-seven in August." And after the elder sister had become calm
+again. Miss Kitty said timidly, "You don't think I have been unladylike,
+do you, Ailie?"
+
+Such a trifle now remains to tell. Miss Kitty was the better business
+woman of the two, and kept the accounts, and understood, as Miss Ailie
+could not understand, how their little income was invested, and even
+knew what consols were, though never quite certain whether it was their
+fall or rise that is matter for congratulation. And after the ship had
+sailed, she told Miss Ailie that nearly all their money was lost, and
+that she had known it for a month.
+
+"And you kept it from me! Why?"
+
+"I thought, Ailie, that you, knowing I am not strong--that you--would
+perhaps tell him."
+
+"And I would!" cried Miss Ailie.
+
+"And then," said Miss Kitty, "perhaps he, out of pity, you know!"
+
+"Well, even if he had!" said Miss Ailie.
+
+"I could not, oh, I could not," replied Miss Kitty, flushing; "it--it
+would not have been ladylike, Ailie."
+
+Thus forced to support themselves, the sisters decided to keep school
+genteelly, and, hearing that there was an opening in Thrums, they
+settled there, and Miss Kitty brushed her hair out now, and with a twist
+and a twirl ran it up her fingers into a net, whence by noon some of it
+had escaped through the little windows and was curls again. She and Miss
+Ailie were happy in Thrums, for time took the pain out of the affair of
+Mr. McLean, until it became not merely a romantic memory, but, with the
+letters he wrote to Miss Kitty and her answers, the great quiet pleasure
+of their lives. They were friendly letters only, but Miss Kitty wrote
+hers out in pencil first and read them to Miss Ailie, who had been
+taking notes for them.
+
+In the last weeks of Miss Kitty's life Miss Ailie conceived a passionate
+unspoken hatred of Mr. McLean, and her intention was to write and tell
+him that he had killed her darling. But owing to the illness into which
+she was flung by Miss Kitty's death, that unjust letter was never
+written.
+
+But why did Mr. McLean continue to write to Miss Kitty?
+
+Well, have pity or be merciless as you choose. For several years Mr.
+McLean's letters had been the one thing the sisters looked forward to,
+and now, when Miss Ailie was without Miss Kitty, must she lose them
+also? She never doubted, though she may have been wrong, that, if Ivie
+knew of Miss Kitty's death, one letter would come in answer, and that
+the last. She could not tell him. In the meantime he wrote twice asking
+the reason of this long silence, and at last Miss Ailie, whose
+handwriting was very like her sister's, wrote him a letter which was
+posted at Tilliedrum and signed "Katherine Cray." The thing seems
+monstrous, but this gentle lady did it, and it was never so difficult to
+do again. Latterly, it had been easy.
+
+This last letter of Mr. McLean's announced to Miss Kitty that he was
+about to start for home "for good," and he spoke in it of coming to
+Thrums to see the sisters, as soon as he reached Redlintie. Poor Miss
+Ailie! After sleepless nights she trudged to the Tilliedrum post-office
+with a full confession of her crime, which would be her welcome home to
+him when he arrived at his brother's house. Many of the words were
+written on damp blobs. After that she could do nothing but wait for the
+storm, and waiting she became so meek, that Gavinia, who loved her
+because she was "that simple," said sorrowfully:
+
+"How is't you never rage at me now, ma'am? I'm sure it keepit you
+lightsome, and I likit to hear the bum o't."
+
+"And instead o' the raging I was prigging for," the soft-hearted maid
+told her friends, "she gave me a flannel petticoat!" Indeed, Miss Ailie
+had taken to giving away her possessions at this time, like a woman who
+thought she was on her death-bed. There was something for each of her
+pupils, including--but the important thing is that there was a gift for
+Tommy, which had the effect of planting the Hanoverian Woman (to whom he
+must have given many uneasy moments) more securely on the British
+Throne.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+A PENNY PASS-BOOK
+
+
+Elspeth conveyed the gift to Tommy in a brown paper wrapping, and when
+it lay revealed as an aging volume of _Mamma's Boy_, a magazine for the
+Home, nothing could have looked more harmless. But, ah, you never know.
+Hungrily Tommy ran his eye through the bill of fare for something choice
+to begin with, and he found it. "The Boy Pirate" it was called. Never
+could have been fairer promise, and down he sat confidently.
+
+It was a paper on the boys who have been undone by reading pernicious
+fiction. It gave their names, and the number of pistols they had bought,
+and what the judge said when he pronounced sentence. It counted the
+sensational tales found beneath the bed, and described the desolation of
+the mothers and sisters. It told the color of the father's hair before
+and afterwards.
+
+Tommy flung the thing from him, picked it up again, and read on
+uneasily, and when at last he rose he was shrinking from himself. In
+hopes that he might sleep it off he went early to bed, but his
+contrition was still with him in the morning. Then Elspeth was shown the
+article which had saved him, and she, too, shuddered at what she had
+been, though her remorse was but a poor display beside his, he was so
+much better at everything than Elspeth. Tommy's distress of mind was so
+genuine and so keen that it had several hours' start of his admiration
+of it; and it was still sincere, though he himself had become gloomy,
+when he told his followers that they were no more. Grizel heard his tale
+with disdain, and said she hated Miss Ailie for giving him the silly
+book, but he reproved these unchristian sentiments, while admitting that
+Miss Ailie had played on him a scurvy trick.
+
+"But you're glad you've repented, Tommy," Elspeth reminded him,
+anxiously.
+
+"Ay, I'm glad," he answered, without heartiness.
+
+"Well, gin you repent I'll repent too," said Corp, always ready to
+accept Tommy without question.
+
+"You'll be happier," replied Tommy, sourly.
+
+"Ay, to be good's the great thing," Corp growled; "but, Tommy, could we
+no have just one michty blatter, methinks, to end up wi'?"
+
+This, of course, could not be, and Saturday forenoon found Tommy
+wandering the streets listlessly, very happy, you know, but inclined to
+kick at any one who came near, such, for instance, as the stranger who
+asked him in the square if he could point out the abode of Miss Ailie
+Cray.
+
+Tommy led the way, casting some converted looks at the gentleman, and
+judging him to be the mysterious unknown in whom the late Captain Stroke
+had taken such a reprehensible interest. He was a stout, red-faced man,
+stepping firmly into the fifties, with a beard that even the most
+converted must envy, and a frown sat on his brows all the way, proving
+him possibly ill-tempered, but also one of the notable few who can think
+hard about one thing for at least five consecutive minutes. Many took a
+glint at him as he passed, but missed the frown, they were wondering so
+much why the fur of his heavy top-coat was on the inside, where it made
+little show, save at blasty corners.
+
+Miss Ailie was in her parlor, trying to give her mind to a blue and
+white note-book, but when she saw who was coming up the garden she
+dropped the little volume and tottered to her bedroom. She was there
+when Gavinia came up to announce that she had shown a gentleman into the
+blue-and-white room, who gave the name of Ivie McLean. "Tell him--I
+shall come down--presently," gasped Miss Ailie, and then Gavinia was
+sure this was the man who was making her mistress so unhappy.
+
+"She's so easily flichtered now," Gavinia told Tommy in the kitchen,
+"that for fear o' starting her I never whistle at my work without
+telling her I'm to do't, and if I fall on the stair, my first thought is
+to jump up and cry, 'It was just me tum'ling.' And now I believe this
+brute'll be the death o' her."
+
+"But what can he do to her?"
+
+"I dinna ken, but she's greeting sair, and yon can hear how he's
+rampaging up and down the blue-and-white room. Listen to his thrawn
+feet! He's raging because she's so long in coming down, and come she
+daurna. Oh, the poor crittur!"
+
+Now, Tommy was very fond of his old school-mistress, and he began to be
+unhappy with Gavinia.
+
+"She hasna a man-body in the world to take care o' her," sobbed the
+girl.
+
+"Has she no?" cried Tommy, fiercely, and under one of the impulses that
+so easily mastered him he marched into the blue-and-white room.
+
+"Well, my young friend, and what may you want?" asked Mr. McLean,
+impatiently.
+
+Tommy sat down and folded his arms. "I'm going to sit here and see what
+you do to Miss Ailie," he said, determinedly.
+
+Mr. McLean said "Oh!" and then seemed favorably impressed, for he added
+quietly: "She is a friend of yours, is she? Well, I have no intention of
+hurting her."
+
+"You had better no," replied Tommy, stoutly.
+
+"Did she send you here?"
+
+"No; I came mysel'."
+
+"To protect her?"
+
+There was the irony in it that so puts up a boy's dander. "Dinna think,"
+said Tommy, hotly, "that I'm fleid at you, though I have no beard--at
+least, I hinna it wi' me."
+
+At this unexpected conclusion a smile crossed Mr. McLean's face, but was
+gone in an instant. "I wish you had laughed," said Tommy, on the watch;
+"once a body laughs he canna be angry no more," which was pretty good
+even for Tommy. It made Mr. McLean ask him why he was so fond of Miss
+Ailie.
+
+"I'm the only man-body she has," he answered.
+
+"Oh? But why are you her man-body?"
+
+The boy could think of no better reason than this: "Because--because
+she's so sair in need o' are." (There were moments when one liked
+Tommy.)
+
+Mr. McLean turned to the window, and perhaps forgot that he was not
+alone. "Well, what are you thinking about so deeply?" he asked by and
+by.
+
+"I was trying to think o' something that would gar you laugh," answered
+Tommy, very earnestly, and was surprised to see that he had nearly done
+it.
+
+The blue and white note-book was lying on the floor where Miss Ailie had
+dropped it. Often in Tommy's presence she had consulted this work, and
+certainly its effect on her was the reverse of laughter; but once he had
+seen Dr. McQueen pick it up and roar over every page. With an
+inspiration Tommy handed the book to Mr. McLean. "It made the doctor
+laugh," he said persuasively.
+
+"Go away," said Ivie, impatiently; "I am in no mood for laughing."
+
+"I tell you what," answered Tommy, "I'll go, if you promise to look at
+it," and to be rid of him the man agreed. For the next quarter of an
+hour Tommy and Gavinia were very near the door of the blue-and-white
+room, Tommy whispering dejectedly, "I hear no laughing," and Gavinia
+replying, "But he has quieted down."
+
+Mr. McLean had a right to be very angry, but God only can say whether he
+had a right to be as angry as he was. The book had been handed to him
+open, and he was laying it down unread when a word underlined caught his
+eye. It was his own name. Nothing in all literature arrests our
+attention quite so much as that. He sat down to the book. It was just
+about this time that Miss Ailie went on her knees to pray.
+
+It was only a penny pass-book. On its blue cover had been pasted a slip
+of white paper, and on the paper was written, in blue ink, "Alison
+Cray," with a date nearly nine years old. The contents were in Miss
+Ailie's prim handwriting; jottings for her own use begun about the time
+when the sisters, trembling at their audacity, had opened school, and
+consulted and added to fitfully ever since. Hours must have been spent
+in erasing the blots and other blemishes so carefully. The tiny volume
+was not yet full, and between its two last written pages lay a piece of
+blue blotting-paper neatly cut to the size of the leaf.
+
+Some of these notes were transcripts from books, some contained the
+advice of friends, others were doubtless the result of talks with Miss
+Kitty (from whom there were signs that the work had been kept a secret),
+many were Miss Ailie's own. An entry of this kind was frequent: "If you
+are uncertain of the answer to a question in arithmetic, it is advisable
+to leave the room on some pretext and work out the sum swiftly in the
+passage." Various pretexts were suggested, and this one (which had an
+insufficient line through it) had been inserted by Dr. McQueen on that
+day when Tommy saw him chuckling, "You pretend that your nose is
+bleeding and putting your handkerchief to it, retire hastily, the
+supposition being that you have gone to put the key of the
+blue-and-white room down your back." Evidently these small deceptions
+troubled Miss Ailie, for she had written, "Such subterfuge is, I hope,
+pardonable, the object being the maintenance of scholastic discipline."
+On another page, where the arithmetic was again troubling her, this
+appeared: "If Kitty were aware that the squealing of the slate-pencils
+gave me such headaches, she would insist on again taking the arithmetic
+class, though it always makes her ill. Surely, then, I am justified in
+saying that the sound does not distress me." To this the doctor had
+added, "You are a brick."
+
+There were two pages headed NEVER, which mentioned ten things that Miss
+Ailie must never do; among them, "_Never_ let the big boys know you are
+afraid of them. To awe them, stamp with the foot, speak in a loud
+ferocious voice, and look them unflinchingly in the face."
+
+"Punishments" was another heading, but she had written it small, as if
+to prevent herself seeing it each time she opened the book. Obviously
+her hope had been to dispose of Punishment in a few lines, but it would
+have none of that, and Mr. McLean found it stalking from page to page.
+Miss Ailie favored the cane in preference to tawse, which, "often flap
+round your neck as yon are about to bring them down." Except in
+desperate cases "it will probably be found sufficient to order the
+offender to bring the cane to you." Then followed a note about rubbing
+the culprit's hand "with sweet butter or dripping" should you have
+struck too hard.
+
+Dispiriting item, that on resuming his seat the chastised one is a hero
+to his fellows for the rest of the day. Item, that Master John James
+Rattray knows she hurts her own hand more than his. Item, that John
+James promised to be good throughout the session if she would let him
+thrash the bad ones. Item, that Master T. Sandys, himself under
+correction, explained to her (the artistic instinct again) how to give
+the cane a waggle when descending, which would double its nip. Item,
+that Elsie Dundas offered to receive Francie Crabb's punishment for two
+snaps. Item, that Master Gavin Dishart, for what he considered the honor
+of his school, though aware he was imperilling his soul, fought Hendry
+Dickie of Cathro's for saying Miss Ailie could not draw blood with one
+stroke.
+
+The effect on Miss Ailie of these mortifying discoveries could be read
+in the paragraph headed A MOTHER'S METHOD, which was copied from a
+newspaper. Mrs. E----, it seems, was the mother of four boys (residing
+at D----), and she subjected them frequently to corporal chastisement
+without permanent spiritual result. Mrs. E----, by the advice of another
+lady, Mrs. K---- (mother of six), then had recourse to the following
+interesting experiment. Instead of punishing her children physically
+when they misbehaved, she now in their presence wounded herself by
+striking her left hand severely with a ruler held in the right. Soon
+their better natures were touched, and the four implored her to desist,
+promising with tears never to offend again. From that hour Mrs.
+E---- had little trouble with her boys.
+
+It was recorded in the blue and white book how Miss Ailie gave this plan
+a fair trial, but her boys must have been darker characters than Mrs.
+E----'s, for it merely set them to watching each other, so that they
+might cry out, "Pandy yourself quick, Miss Ailie; Gavin Dishart's
+drawing the devil on his slate." Nevertheless, when Miss Ailie announced
+a return to more conventional methods, Francie was put up (with threats)
+to say that he suffered agonies of remorse every time she pandied
+herself for him, but the thing had been organized in a hurry and Francie
+was insufficiently primed, and on cross-examination he let out that he
+thought remorse was a swelling of the hands.
+
+Miss Ailie was very humble-minded, and her entries under THE TEACHER
+TAUGHT were all admonitions for herself. Thus she chided herself for
+cowardice because "Delicate private reasons have made me avoid all
+mention of India in the geography classes. Kitty says quite calmly
+that this is fair neither to our pupils nor to I---- M----. The
+courage of Kitty in this matter is a constant rebuke to me." Except
+on a few occasions Mr. McLean found that he was always referred to as
+I---- M----.
+
+Quite early in the volume Miss Ailie knew that her sister's hold on life
+was loosening. "How bright the world suddenly seems," Mr. McLean read,
+"when there is the tiniest improvement in the health of an invalid one
+loves." Is it laughable that such a note as this is appended to a recipe
+for beef-tea? "It is surely not very wicked to pretend to Kitty that I
+keep some of it for myself; she would not take it all if she knew I
+dined on the beef it was made from." Other entries showed too plainly
+that Miss Ailie stinted herself of food to provide delicacies for Miss
+Kitty. No doubt her expenses were alarming her when she wrote this: "An
+interesting article in the _Mentor_ says that nearly all of us eat and
+drink too much. Were we to mortify our stomachs we should be healthier
+animals and more capable of sustained thought. The word animal in this
+connection is coarse, but the article is most impressive, and a
+crushing reply to Dr. McQueen's assertion that the editor drinks. In the
+school-room I have frequently found my thoughts of late wandering from
+classwork, and I hastily ascribed it to sitting up during the night with
+Kitty or to my habit of listening lest she should be calling for me.
+Probably I had over-eaten, and I must mortify the stomach. A glass of
+hot water with half a spoonful of sugar in it is highly recommended as a
+light supper."
+
+"How long ago it may seem since yesterday!" Do you need to be told on
+what dark day Miss Ailie discovered that? "I used to pray that I should
+be taken first, but I was both impious and selfish, for how could
+fragile Kitty have fought on alone?"
+
+In time happiness again returned to Miss Ailie; of all our friends it is
+the one most reluctant to leave us on this side of the grave. It came at
+first disguised, in the form of duties, old and new; and stealthily,
+when Miss Ailie was not looking, it mixed with the small worries and
+joys that had been events while Miss Kitty lived, and these it converted
+once more into events, where Miss Ailie found it lurking, and at first
+she would not take it back to her heart, but it crept in without her
+knowing. And still there were I---- M----'s letters. "They are all I
+have to look forward to," she wrote in self-defence. "I shall never
+write to I---- M---- again," was another entry, but Mr. McLean found on
+the same page, "I have written to I---- M----, but do not intend
+posting it," and beneath that was, "God forgive me, I have posted it."
+
+The troubles with arithmetic were becoming more terrible. "I am never
+_really_ sure about the decimals," she wrote.
+
+A Professor of Memory had appeared at the Muckley, and Miss Ailie admits
+having given him half-a-crown to explain his system to her. But when he
+was gone she could not remember whether you multiplied everything by ten
+before dividing by five and subtracting a hundred, or began by dividing
+and doing something underhand with the cube root. Then Mr. Dishart, who
+had a microscope, wanted his boy to be taught science, and several
+experiments were described at length in the book, one of them dealing
+with a penny, _H_, and a piston, _X Y_, and you do things to the piston
+"and then the penny comes to the surface." "But it never does," Miss
+Ailie wrote sorrowfully; perhaps she was glad when Master Dishart was
+sent to another school.
+
+"Though I teach the girls the pianoforte I find that I cannot stretch my
+fingers as I used to do. Kitty used to take the music, and I often
+remember this suddenly when superintending a lesson. It is a pain to me
+that so many wish to acquire 'The Land o' the Leal,' which Kitty sang so
+often to I---- M---- at Magenta Cottage."
+
+Even the French, of which Miss Ailie had once been very proud, was
+slipping from her. "Kitty and I kept up our French by translating
+I---- M----'s letters and comparing our versions, but now that this
+stimulus is taken away I find that I am forgetting my French. Or is it
+only that I am growing old? too old to keep school?" This dread was
+beginning to haunt Miss Ailie, and the pages between which the
+blotting-paper lay revealed that she had written to the editor of the
+_Mentor_ asking up to what age he thought a needy gentlewoman had a
+right to teach. The answer was not given, but her comment on it told
+everything. "I asked him to be severely truthful, so that I cannot
+resent his reply. But if I take his advice, how am I to live? And if
+I do not take it, I fear I am but a stumbling-block in the way of true
+education."
+
+That is a summary of what Mr. McLean read in the blue and white book;
+remember, you were warned not to expect much. And Tommy and Gavinia
+listened, and Tommy said, "I hear no laughing," and Gavinia answered,
+"But he has quieted down," and upstairs Miss Ailie was on her knees. A
+time came when Mr. McLean could find something to laugh at in that
+little pass-book, but it was not then, not even when he reached the end.
+He left something on the last page instead. At least I think it must
+have been he: Miss Ailie's tears could not have been so long a-drying.
+
+You may rise, now, Miss Ailie; your prayer is granted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+TOMMY REPENTS, AND IS NONE THE WORSE FOR IT
+
+
+Mr. McLean wrote a few reassuring words to Miss Ailie, and having told
+Gavinia to give the note to her walked quietly out of the house; he was
+coming back after he had visited Miss Kitty's grave. Gavinia, however,
+did not knew this, and having delivered the note she returned dolefully
+to the kitchen to say to Tommy, "His letter maun have been as thraun as
+himsel', for as soon as she read it, down she plumped on her knees
+again."
+
+But Tommy was not in the kitchen; he was on the garden-wall watching
+Miss Ailie's persecutor.
+
+"Would it no be easier to watch him frae the gate?" suggested Gavinia,
+who had not the true detective instinct.
+
+Tommy disregarded her womanlike question; a great change had come over
+him since she went upstairs; his bead now wobbled on his shoulders like
+a little balloon that wanted to cut its connection with earth and soar.
+
+"What makes you look so queer?" cried the startled maid. "I thought you
+was converted."
+
+"So I am," he shouted, "I'm more converted than ever, and yet I can do
+it just the same! Gavinia, I've found a wy!"
+
+He was hurrying off on Mr. McLean's trail, but turned to say, "Gavinia,
+do you ken wha that man is?"
+
+"Ower weel I ken," she answered, "it's Mr. McLean."
+
+"McLean!" he echoed scornfully, "ay, I've heard that's one of the names
+he goes by, but hearken, and I'll tell you wha he really is. That's the
+scoundrel Stroke!"
+
+No wonder Gavinia was flabbergasted. "Wha are you then?" she cried.
+
+"I'm the Champion of Dames," he replied loftily, and before she had
+recovered from this he was stalking Mr. McLean in the cemetery.
+
+Miss Kitty sleeps in a beautiful hollow called the Basin, but the stone
+put up to her memory hardly marks the spot now, for with a score of
+others it was blown on its face by the wind that uprooted so many trees
+in the Den, and as it fell it lies. From the Basin to the rough road
+that clings like a belt to the round cemetery dyke is little more than a
+jump, and shortly after Miss Kitty's grave had been pointed out to him.
+Mr. McLean was seen standing there hat in hand by a man on the road.
+This man was Dr. McQueen hobbling home from the Forest Muir; he did not
+hobble as a rule, but hobble everyone must on that misshapen brae,
+except Murdoch Gelatley, who, being short in one leg elsewhere, is here
+the only straight man. McQueen's sharp eyes, however, picked out not
+only the stranger but Tommy crouching behind Haggart's stone, and him
+did the doctor's famous crook staff catch in the neck and whisk across
+the dyke.
+
+"What man is that you're watching, you mysterious loon?" McQueen
+demanded, curiously; but of course Tommy would not divulge so big a
+secret. Now the one weakness of this large-hearted old bachelor (perhaps
+it is a professional virtue) was a devouring inquisitiveness, and he
+would be troubled until he discovered who was the stranger standing in
+such obvious emotion by the side of an old grave. "Well, you must come
+back with me to the surgery, for I want you to run an errand for me," he
+said testily, hoping to pump the boy by the way, but Tommy dived beneath
+his stick and escaped. This rasped the doctor's temper, which was
+unfortunate for Grizel, whom he caught presently peeping in at his
+surgery window. A dozen times of late she had wondered whether she
+should ask him to visit her mamma, and though the Painted Lady had
+screamed in terror at the proposal, being afraid of doctors, Grizel
+would have ventured ere now, had it not been for her mistaken conviction
+that he was a hard man, who would only flout her. It had once come to
+her ears that he had said a woman like her mamma could demoralize a
+whole town, with other harsh remarks, doubtless exaggerated in the
+repetition, and so he was the last man she dared think of going to for
+help, when he should have been the first. Nevertheless she had come now,
+and a soft word from him, such as he gave most readily to all who were
+in distress, would have drawn her pitiful tale from her, but he was in a
+grumpy mood, and had heard none of the rumors about her mother's being
+ill, which indeed were only common among the Monypenny children, and his
+first words checked her confidences. "What are you hanging about my open
+window for?" he cried sharply.
+
+"Did you think I wanted to steal anything?" replied the indignant child.
+
+"I won't say but what I had some such thait."
+
+She turned to leave him, but he hooked her with his staff. "As you're
+here," he said, "will you go an errand for me?"
+
+"No," she told him promptly; "I don't like you."
+
+"There's no love lost between us," he replied, "for I think you're the
+dourest lassie I ever clapped eyes on, but there's no other litlin
+handy, so you must do as you are bid, and take this bottle to
+Ballingall's."
+
+"Is it a medicine bottle?" she asked, with sudden interest.
+
+"Yes, it's medicine. Do you know Ballingall's house in the West town
+end?"
+
+"Ballingall who has the little school?"
+
+"The same, but I doubt he'll keep school no longer."
+
+"Is he dying?"
+
+"I'm afraid there's no doubt of it. Will you go?"
+
+"I should love to go," she cried.
+
+"Love!" he echoed, looking at her with displeasure. "You can't love to
+go, so talk no more nonsense, but go, and I'll give you a bawbee."
+
+"I don't want a bawbee," she said. "Do you think they will let me go in
+to see Ballingall?"
+
+The doctor frowned. "What makes you want to see a dying man?" he
+demanded.
+
+"I should just love to see him!" she exclaimed, and she added
+determinedly, "I won't give up the bottle until they let me in."
+
+He thought her an unpleasant, morbid girl, but "that is no affair of
+mine," he said shrugging his shoulders, and he gave her the bottle to
+deliver. Before taking it to Ballingall's, however, she committed a
+little crime. She bought an empty bottle at the 'Sosh, and poured into
+it some of the contents of the medicine bottle, which she then filled up
+with water. She dared try no other way now of getting medicine for her
+mother, and was too ignorant to know that there are different drugs for
+different ailments.
+
+Grizel not only contrived to get in to see Ballingan but stayed by his
+side for several hours, and when she came out it was night-time. On her
+way home she saw a light moving in the Den, where she had expected to
+play no more, and she could not prevent her legs from running joyously
+toward it. So when Corp, rising out of the darkness, deftly cut her
+throat, she was not so angry as she should have been.
+
+"I'm so glad we are to play again, after all, Corp," she said; but he
+replied grandly, "Thou little kennest wha you're speaking to, my gentle
+jade."
+
+He gave a curious hitch to his breeches, but it only puzzled her. "I
+wear gallowses no more," he explained, lifting his waistcoat to show
+that his braces now encircled him as a belt, but even then she did not
+understand. "Know, then," said Corp, sternly, "I am Ben the Boatswain."
+
+"And am I not the Lady Griselda any more?" she asked.
+
+"I'm no sure," he confessed; "but if you are, there's a price on your
+head."
+
+"What is Tommy?"
+
+"I dinna ken yet, but Gavinia says he telled her he's Champion of Damns.
+I kenna what Elspeth'll say to that."
+
+Grizel was starting for the Lair, but he caught her by the skirt.
+
+"Is he not at the Lair?" she inquired.
+
+"We knowest it not," he answered gravely. "We're looking for't," he
+added with some awe; "we've been looking for't this three year." Then,
+in a louder voice, "If you can guide us to it, my pretty trifle, you'll
+be richly rewarded."
+
+"But where is he? Don't you know?"
+
+"Fine I knowest, but it wouldna be mous to tell you, for I kenna whether
+you be friend or foe. What's that you're carrying?"
+
+"It is a--a medicine bottle."
+
+"Gie me a sook!"
+
+"No."
+
+"Just one," begged Corp, "and I'll tell you where he is."
+
+He got his way, and smacked his lips unctuously.
+
+"Now, where is Tommy?"
+
+"Put your face close to mine," said Corp, and then he whispered
+hoarsely, "He's in a spleet new Lair, writing out bills wi' a' his
+might, offering five hunder crowns reward for Stroke's head, dead or
+alive!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The new haunt was a deserted house, that stood, very damp, near a little
+waterfall to the east of the Den. Bits of it well planted in the marsh
+adhere doggedly together to this day, but even then the roof was off and
+the chimney lay in a heap on the ground, like blankets that have slipped
+off a bed.
+
+This was the good ship Ailie, lying at anchor, man-of-war, thirty guns,
+a cart-wheel to steer it by, T. Sandys, commander.
+
+On the following Saturday, Ben the Boatswain piped all hands, and Mr.
+Sandys delivered a speech, of the bluff, straightforward kind that
+sailors love. Here, unfortunately, it must be condensed. He reminded
+them that three years had passed since their gracious queen (cheers)
+sent them into these seas to hunt down the Pretender (hisses). Their
+ship had been christened the Ailie, because its object was to avenge the
+insults offered by the Pretender to a lady of that name for whom
+everyone of them would willingly die. Like all his race the Pretender,
+or Stroke, as he called himself, was a torment to single women; he had
+not only stolen all this lady's wealth, but now he wanted to make her
+walk the plank, a way of getting rid of enemies the mere mention of
+which set the blood of all honest men boiling (cheers). As yet they had
+not succeeded in finding Stroke's Lair, though they knew it to be in one
+of the adjoining islands, but they had suffered many privations, twice
+their gallant vessel had been burned to the water's edge, once she had
+been sunk, once blown into the air, but had that dismayed them?
+
+Here the Boatswain sent round a whisper, and they all cried loyally,
+"Ay, ay, sir."
+
+He had now news for them that would warm their hearts like grog. He had
+not discovered the Lair, but he had seen Stroke, he had spoken to him!
+Disguised as a boy he had tracked the Jacobite and found him skulking in
+the house of the unhappy Ailie. After blustering for a little Stroke had
+gone on his knees and offered not only to cease persecuting this lady
+but to return to France. Mr. Sandys had kicked him into a standing
+posture and then left him. But this clemency had been ill repaid. Stroke
+had not returned to France. He was staying at the Quharity Arms, a
+Thrums inn, where he called himself McLean. It had gone through the town
+like wildfire that he had written to someone in Redlintie to send him on
+another suit of clothes and four dickies. No one suspected his real
+character, but all noted that he went to the unhappy Ailie's house
+daily, and there was a town about it. Ailie was but a woman, and women
+could not defend themselves "(Boatswain, put Grizel in irons if she
+opens her mouth)," and so the poor thing had been forced to speak to
+him, and even to go walks with him. Her life was in danger, and before
+now Mr. Sandys would have taken him prisoner, but the queen had said
+these words, "Noble Sandys, destroy the Lair," and the best way to
+discover this horrid spot was to follow Stroke night and day until he
+went to it. Then they would burn it to the ground, put him on board the
+Ailie, up with the jib-boom sail, and away to the Tower of London.
+
+At the words "Tower of London," Ben cried "Tumble up there!" which was
+the signal for three such ringing cheers as only British tars are
+capable of. Three? To be exact only two and a half, for the third
+stopped in the middle, as if the lid had suddenly been put on.
+
+What so startled them was the unexpected appearance in their midst of
+the very man Tommy had been talking of. Taking a stroll through the Den,
+Mr. McLean had been drawn toward the ruin by the first cheers, and had
+arrived in time to learn who and what he really was.
+
+"Stroke!" gasped one small voice.
+
+The presumptuous man folded his arms. "So, Sandys," he said, in hollow
+tones, "we meet again!"
+
+Even Grizel got behind Tommy, and perhaps it was this that gave him
+spunk to say tremulously, "Wh-what are you doing her?"
+
+"I have come," replied the ruddy Pretender, "to defy you, ay, proud
+Sandys, to challenge thee to the deed thou pratest of. I go from here to
+my Lair. Follow me, if thou darest!"
+
+He brought his hand down with a bang upon the barrel, laughed
+disdainfully, and springing over the vessel's side was at once lost in
+the darkness. Instead of following, all stood transfixed, gazing at the
+barrel, on which lay five shillings.
+
+"He put them there when he slammed it!"
+
+"Losh behears! there's a shilling to ilka ane o' us."
+
+"I winna touch the siller," said Sandys, moodily.
+
+"What?" cried Gavinia.
+
+"I tell you it's a bribe."
+
+"Do you hear him?" screamed Gavinia. "He says we're no to lay hands
+on't! Corp, where's your tongue?"
+
+But even in that trying moment Corp's trust in Tommy shone out
+beautiful and strong. "Dinna be feared, Gavinia," he whispered, "he'll
+find a wy."
+
+"Lights out and follow Stroke!" was the order, and the crew at once
+scattered in pursuit, Mr. Sandys remaining behind a moment to--to put
+something in his pocket.
+
+Mr. McLean gave them a long chase, walking demurely when lovers were in
+sight, but at other times doubling, jumping, even standing on eminences
+and crowing insultingly, like a cock, and not until he had only breath
+left to chuckle did the stout man vanish from the Den. Elspeth, now a
+cabin-boy, was so shaken by the realism of the night's adventures that
+Gavinia (able seaman) took her home, and when Mr. Sandys and his
+Boatswain met at the Cuttle Well neither could tell where Grizel was.
+
+"She had no business to munt without my leave," Tommy said sulkily.
+
+"No, she hadna. Is she the Lady Griselda yet?"
+
+"Not her, she's the Commander's wife."
+
+Ben shook his head, for this, he felt, was the one thing Tommy could not
+do. "Well, then," growled Tommy, "if she winna be that, she'll have to
+serve before the mast, for I tell you plain I'll have no single women on
+board."
+
+"And what am I, forby Ben the Boatswain?"
+
+"Nothing. Honest men has just one name."
+
+"What! I'm just one single man?" Corp was a little crestfallen. "It's a
+come down," he said, with a sigh, "mind, I dinna grumble, but it's a
+come down."
+
+"And you dinna have 'Methinks' now either," Tommy announced pitilessly.
+
+Corp had dreaded this. "I'll be gey an' lonely without it," he said,
+with some dignity, "and it was the usefulest swear I kent o'.
+'Methinks!' I used to roar at Mason Malcolm's collie, and the crittur
+came in ahint in a swite o' fear. Losh, Tommy, is that you blooding?"
+
+There was indeed an ugly gash on Tommy's hand. "You've been hacking at
+yoursel' again," said the distressed Corp, who knew that in his
+enthusiasm Tommy had more than once drawn blood from himself. "When you
+take it a' so real as that," he said, uncomfortably "I near think we
+should give it up."
+
+Tommy stamped his foot. "Take tent o' yoursel'!" he cried threateningly.
+"When I was tracking Stroke I fell in with one of his men, and we had a
+tussle. He pinked me in the hand, but 'tis only a scratch, bah! He was
+carrying treasure, and I took it from him."
+
+Ben whistled. "Five shillings?" he asked, slapping his knee.
+
+"How did you know?" demanded Tommy, frowning, and then they tried to
+stare each other down.
+
+"I thought I saw you pouching it," Corp ventured to say.
+
+"Boatswain!"
+
+"I mean," explained Corp hurriedly, "I mean that I kent you would find a
+wy. Didest thou kill the Jacobite rebel?"
+
+"He lies but a few paces off," replied Tommy, "and already the vultures
+are picking his bones."
+
+"So perish all Victoria's enemies," said Ben the Boatswain, loyally, but
+a sudden fear made him add, with a complete change of voice, "You dinna
+chance to ken his name?"
+
+"Ay, I had marked him before," answered Tommy, "he was called Corp of
+Corp."
+
+Ben the Boatswain rose, sat down, rose again, "Tommy," he said, wiping
+his brow with his sleeve, "come awa' hame!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE LONGER CATECHISM
+
+
+In the meantime Mr. McLean was walking slowly to the Quharity Arms,
+fanning his face with his hat, and in the West town end he came upon
+some boys who had gathered with offensive cries round a girl in a lustre
+jacket. A wave of his stick put them to flight, but the girl only
+thanked him with a look, and entered a little house the window of which
+showed a brighter light than its neighbors. Dr. McQueen came out of this
+house a moment afterwards, and as the two men now knew each other
+slightly, they walked home together, McLean relating humorously how he
+had spent the evening. "And though Commander Sandys means to incarcerate
+me in the Tower of London," he said, "he did me a good service the other
+day, and I feel an interest in him."
+
+"What did the inventive sacket do?" the doctor asked inquisitively; but
+McLean, who had referred to the incident of the pass-book, affected not
+to hear. "Miss Ailie has told me his history," he said, "and that he
+goes to the University next year."
+
+"Or to the herding," put in McQueen, dryly.
+
+"Yes, I heard that was the alternative, but he should easily carry a
+bursary; he is a remarkable boy."
+
+"Ay, but I'm no sure that it's the remarkable boys who carry the
+bursaries. However, if you have taken a fancy to him you should hear
+what Mr. Cathro has to say on the subject; for my own part I have been
+more taken up with one of his band lately than with himself--a lassie,
+too."
+
+"She who went into that house just before you came out?"
+
+"The same, and she is the most puzzling bit of womankind I ever fell in
+with."
+
+"She looked an ordinary girl enough," said Mr. McLean.
+
+The doctor chuckled. "Man," he said, "in my time I have met all kinds of
+women except ordinary ones. What would you think if I told you that this
+ordinary girl had been spending three or four hours daily in that house
+entirely because there was a man dying in it?"
+
+"Some one she had an affection for?"
+
+"My certie, no! I'm afraid it is long since anybody had an affection for
+shilpit, hirpling, old Ballingall, and as for this lassie Grizel, she
+had never spoken to him until I sent her on an errand to his house a
+week ago. He was a single man (like you and me), without womenfolk, a
+school-master of his own making, and in the smallest way, and his one
+attraction to her was that he was on his death-bed. Most lassies of her
+age skirl to get away from the presence of death, but she prigged, sir,
+fairly prigged, to get into it!"
+
+"Ah, I prefer less uncommon girls," McLean said. "They should not have
+let her have her wish; it can only do her harm."
+
+"That is another curious thing," replied the doctor. "It does not seem
+to have done her harm; rather it has turned her from being a dour,
+silent crittur into a talkative one, and that, I take it, is a sign of
+grace."
+
+He sighed, and added: "Not that I can get her to talk of herself and her
+mother. (There is a mystery about them, you understand.) No, the
+obstinate brat will tell me nothing on that subject; instead of
+answering my questions she asks questions of me--an endless rush of
+questions, and all about Ballingall. How did I know he was dying? When
+you put your fingers on their wrist, what is it you count? which is the
+place where the lungs are? when you tap their chest what do you listen
+for? are they not dying as long as they can rise now and then, and dress
+and go out? when they are really dying do they always know it
+themselves? If they don't know it, is that a sign that they are not so
+ill as you think them? When they don't know they are dying, is it best
+to keep it from them in case they should scream with terror? and so on
+in a spate of questions, till I called her the Longer Catechism."
+
+"And only morbid curiosity prompted her?"
+
+"Nothing else," said the confident doctor; "if there had been anything
+else I should have found it out, you may be sure. However, unhealthily
+minded though she be, the women who took their turn at Ballingall's
+bedside were glad of her help."
+
+"The more shame to them," McLean remarked warmly; but the doctor would
+let no one, save himself, miscall the women of Thrums.
+
+"Ca' canny," he retorted. "The women of this place are as overdriven as
+the men, from the day they have the strength to turn a pirn-wheel to the
+day they crawl over their bed-board for the last time, but never yet
+have I said, 'I need one of you to sit up all night wi' an unweel body,'
+but what there were half a dozen willing to do it. They are a grand
+race, sir, and will remain so till they find it out themselves."
+
+"But of what use could a girl of twelve or fourteen be to them?"
+
+"Use!" McQueen cried. "Man, she has been simply a treasure, and but for
+one thing I would believe it was less a morbid mind than a sort of
+divine instinct for nursing that took her to Ballingall's bedside. The
+women do their best in a rough and ready way; but, sir, it cowed to see
+that lassie easying a pillow for Ballingall's head, or changing a sheet
+without letting in the air, or getting a poultice on his back without
+disturbing the one on his chest. I had just to let her see how to do
+these things once, and after that Ballingall complained if any other
+soul touched him."
+
+"Ah," said McLean, "then perhaps I was uncharitable, and the nurse's
+instinct is the true explanation."
+
+"No, you're wrong again, though I might have been taken in as well as
+you but for the one thing I spoke of. Three days ago Ballingall had a
+ghost of a chance of pulling through, I thought, and I told the lassie
+that if he did, the credit would be mainly hers. You'll scarcely believe
+it, but, upon my word, she looked disappointed rather than pleased, and
+she said to me, quite reproachfully, 'You told me he was sure to die!'
+What do you make of that?"
+
+"It sounds unnatural."
+
+"It does, and so does what followed. Do you know what straiking is?"
+
+"Arraying the corpse for the coffin, laying it out, in short, is it
+not?"
+
+"Ay, ay. Well, it appears that Grizel had prigged with the women to let
+her be present at Ballingall's straiking, and they had refused."
+
+"I should think so," exclaimed McQueen, with a shudder.
+
+"But that's not all. She came to me in her difficulty, and said that if
+I didna promise her this privilege she would nurse Ballingall no more."
+
+"Ugh! That shows at least that pity for him had not influenced her."
+
+"No, she cared not a doit for him. I question if she's the kind that
+could care for anyone. It's plain by her thrawn look when you speak to
+her about her mother that she has no affection even for her. However,
+there she was, prepared to leave Ballingall to his fate if I did not
+grant her request, and I had to yield to her."
+
+"You promised?"
+
+"I did, sore against the grain, but I accept the responsibility. You are
+pained, but you don't know what a good nurse means to a doctor."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, he died after all, and the straiking is going on now. You saw her
+go in."
+
+"I think you could have been excused for breaking your word and turning
+her out."
+
+"To tell the truth," said the doctor, "I had the same idea when I saw
+her enter, and I tried to shoo her to the door, but she cried, 'You
+promised, you _can't_ break a promise!' and the morbid brat that she is
+looked so horrified at the very notion of anybody's breaking a promise
+that I slunk away as if she had right on her side."
+
+"No wonder the little monster is unpopular," was McLean's comment. "The
+children hereabout seem to take to her as little as I do, for I had to
+drive away some who were molesting her. I am sorry I interfered now."
+
+"I can tell you why they t'nead her," replied the doctor, and he
+repeated the little that was known in Thrums of the Painted Lady, "And
+you see the womenfolk are mad because they can find out so little about
+her, where she got her money, for instance, and who are the 'gentlemen'
+that are said to visit her at Double Dykes. They have tried many ways of
+drawing Grizel, from heckle biscuits and parlies to a slap in the face,
+but neither by coaxing nor squeezing will you get an egg out of a sweer
+hen, and so they found. 'The dour little limmer,' they say, 'stalking
+about wi' all her blinds down,' and they are slow to interfere when
+their laddies call her names. It's a pity for herself that she's not
+more communicative, for if she would just satisfy the women's curiosity
+she would find them full of kindness. A terrible thing, Mr. McLean, is
+curiosity. The Bible says that the love of money is the root of all
+evil, but we must ask Mr. Dishart if love of money is not a misprint for
+curiosity. And you won't find men boring their way into other folk's
+concerns; it is a woman's failing, essentially a woman's." This was the
+doctor's pet topic, and he pursued it until they had to part. He had
+opened his door and was about to enter when he saw Gavinia passing on
+her way home from the Den.
+
+"Come here, my lass," he called to her, and then said inquisitively,
+"I'm told Mr. McLean is at his tea with Miss Ailie every day?"
+
+"And it's true," replied Gavinia, in huge delight, "and what's more, she
+has given him some presents."
+
+"You say so, lassie! What were they now?"
+
+"I dinna ken," Gavinia had to admit, dejectedly. "She took them out o'
+the ottoman, and it has aye been kept looked."
+
+McQueen looked very knowingly at her. "Will he, think you?" he asked
+mysteriously.
+
+The maid seemed to understand, for she replied, promptly, "I hope he
+will."
+
+"But he hasna spiered her as yet, you think?"
+
+"No," she said, "no, but he calls her Ailie, and wi' the gentry it's but
+one loup frae that to spiering."
+
+"Maybe," answered the doctor, "but it's a loup they often bogle at. I'se
+uphaud he's close on fifty, Gavinia?"
+
+"There's no denying he is by his best," she said regretfully, and then
+added, with spirit, "but Miss Ailie's no heavy, and in thae grite arms
+o' his he could daidle her as if she were an infant."
+
+This bewildered McQueen, and he asked, "What are you blethering about,
+Gavinia?" to which she replied, regally, "Wha carries me, wears me!" The
+doctor concluded that it must be Den language.
+
+"And I hope he's good enough for her," continued Miss Ailie's
+warm-hearted maid, "for she deserves a good ane."
+
+"She does," McQueen agreed heartily; "ay, and I believe he is, for he
+breathes through his nose instead of through his mouth; and let me tell
+you, Gavinia, that's the one thing to be sure of in a man before you
+take him for better or worse."
+
+The astounded maid replied, "I'll ken better things than that about my
+lad afore I take him," but the doctor assured her that it was the box
+which held them all, "though you maun tell no one, lassie, for it's my
+one discovery in five and thirty years of practice."
+
+Seeing that, despite his bantering tone, he was speaking seriously, she
+pressed him for his meaning, but he only replied sadly, "You're like the
+rest, Gavinia, I see it breaking out on you in spots."
+
+"An illness!" she cried, in alarm.
+
+"Ay, lassie, an illness called curiosity. I had just been telling Mr.
+McLean that curiosity is essentially a woman's ailment, and up you come
+ahint to prove it." He shook a finger at her reprovingly, and was
+probably still reflecting on woman's ways when Grizel walked home at
+midnight breathing through her nose, and Tommy fell asleep with his
+mouth open. For Tommy could never have stood the doctor's test of a man.
+In the painting of him, aged twenty-four, which was exhibited in the
+Royal Academy, his lips meet firmly, but no one knew save himself how he
+gasped after each sitting.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+BUT IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN MISS KITTY
+
+
+The ottoman whence, as Gavinia said, Miss Ailie produced the presents
+she gave to Mr. McLean, stood near the door of the blue-and-white room,
+with a reel of thread between, to keep them apart forever. Except on
+washing days it was of a genteel appearance, for though but a wooden
+kist, it had a gay outer garment with frills, which Gavinia starched,
+and beneath this was apparel of a private character that tied with
+tapes. When Miss Ailie, pins in her mouth, was on her knees arraying the
+ottoman, it might almost have been mistaken for a female child.
+
+The contents of the ottoman were a few trivial articles sewn or knitted
+by Miss Kitty during her last illness, "just to keep me out of languor,"
+she would explain wistfully to her sister. She never told Miss Ailie
+that they were intended for any special person; on the contrary, she
+said, "Perhaps you may find someone they will be useful to," but almost
+without her knowing it they always grew into something that would be
+useful to Ivie McLean.
+
+"The remarkable thing is that they are an exact fit," the man said
+about the slippers, and Miss Ailie nodded, but she did not think it
+remarkable.
+
+There were also two fluffy little bags, and Miss Ailie had to explain
+their use. "If you put your feet into them in bed," she faltered,
+"they--they keep you warm."
+
+McLean turned hastily to something else, a smoking-cap. "I scarcely
+think this can have been meant for me," he said; "you have forgotten how
+she used to chide me for smoking."
+
+Miss Ailie had not forgotten. "But in a way," she replied, flushing a
+little, "we--that is, Kitty--could not help admiring you for smoking.
+There is something so--so dashing about it."
+
+"I was little worthy all the friendship you two gave me, Ailie," he told
+her humbly, and he was nearly saying something to her then that he had
+made up his mind to say. The time came a few days later. They had been
+walking together on the hill, and on their return to the Dovecot he had
+insisted, "in his old imperious way," on coming in to tea. Hearing
+talking in the kitchen Miss Ailie went along the passage to discover
+what company her maid kept; but before she reached the door, which was
+ajar, she turned as if she had heard something dreadful and hurried
+upstairs, signing to Mr. McLean, with imploring eyes, to follow her.
+This at once sent him to the kitchen door.
+
+Gavinia was alone. She was standing in the middle of the floor, with
+one arm crooked as if making believe that another's arm rested on it,
+and over her head was a little muslin window-blind, representing a
+bride's veil. Thus she was two persons, but she was also a third, who
+addressed them in clerical tones.
+
+"Ivie McLean," she said as solemnly as tho' she were the Rev. Mr.
+Dishart, "do you take this woman to be thy lawful wedded wife?" With
+almost indecent haste she answered herself, "I do."
+
+"Alison Cray," she said next, "do you take this man to be thy lawful
+wedded husband?" "I do."
+
+Just then the door shut softly; and Gavinia ran to see who had been
+listening, with the result that she hid herself in the coal-cellar.
+
+While she was there, Miss Ailie and Mr. McLean were sitting in the
+blue-and-white room very self-conscious, and Miss Ailie was speaking
+confusedly of anything and everything, saying more in five minutes than
+had served for the previous hour, and always as she slackened she read
+an intention in his face that started her tongue upon another journey.
+But, "Timid Ailie," he said at last, "do you think you can talk me
+down?" and then she gave him a look of reproach that turned
+treacherously into one of appeal, but he had the hardihood to continue;
+"Ailie, do you need to be told what I want to say?"
+
+Miss Ailie stood quite still now, a stiff, thick figure, with a soft,
+plain face and nervous hands. "Before you speak," she said, nervously,
+"I have something to tell you that--perhaps then you will not say it.
+
+"I have always led you to believe," she began, trembling, "that I am
+forty-nine. I am fifty-one."
+
+He would have spoken, but the look of appeal came back to her face,
+asking him to make it easier for her by saying nothing. She took a pair
+of spectacles from her pocket, and he divined what this meant before she
+spoke. "I have avoided letting you see that I need them," she said.
+"You--men don't like--" She tried to say it all in a rush, but the words
+would not come.
+
+"I am beginning to be a little deaf," she went on. "To deceive you about
+that, I have sometimes answered you without really knowing what you
+said."
+
+"Anything more, Ailie?"
+
+"My accomplishments--they were never great, but Kitty and I thought my
+playing of classical pieces--my fingers are not sufficiently pliable
+now. And I--I forget so many things."
+
+"But, Ailie--"
+
+"Please let me tell you. I was reading a book, a story, last winter, and
+one of the characters, an old maid, was held up to ridicule in it for
+many little peculiarities that--that I recognized as my own. They had
+grown upon me without my knowing that they made me ridiculous, and now
+I--I have tried, but I cannot alter them."
+
+"Is that all, Ailie?"
+
+"No."
+
+The last seemed to be the hardest to say. Dusk had come on, and they
+could not see each other well. She asked him to light the lamp, and his
+back was toward her while he did it, wondering a little at her request.
+When he turned, her hands rose like cowards to hide her head, but she
+pulled them down. "Do you not see?" she said.
+
+"I see that you have done something to your hair," he answered, "I liked
+it best the other way."
+
+Most people would have liked it best the other way. There was still a
+good deal of it, but the "bun" in which it ended had gone strangely
+small. "The rest was false," said Miss Ailie, with a painful effort; "at
+least, it is my own, but it came out when--when Kitty died."
+
+She stopped, but he was silent. "That is all now," she said, softly; and
+she waited for him to speak if he chose. He turned his head away
+sharply, and Miss Ailie mistook his meaning. If she gave one little
+sob--Well, it was but one, and then all the glory of womanhood came
+rushing to her aid, and it unfurled its flag over her, whispering, "Now,
+sweet daughter, now, strike for me," and she raised her head gallantly,
+and for a moment in her life the old school-mistress was a queen. "I
+shall ring for tea," she said, quietly and without a tremor; "do you
+think there is anything so refreshing after a walk as a dish of tea?"
+
+She rang the bell, but its tinkle only made Gavinia secede farther into
+the cellar, and that summons has not been answered to this day, and no
+one seems to care, for while the wires were still vibrating Mr. McLean
+had asked Miss Ailie to forgive him and marry him.
+
+Miss Ailie said she would, but, "Oh," she cried, "ten years ago it might
+have been my Kitty. I would that it had been Kitty!"
+
+Miss Ailie was dear to him now, and ten years is a long time, and men
+are vain. Mr. McLean replied, quite honestly, "I am not sure that I did
+not always like you best," but that hurt her, and he had to unsay the
+words.
+
+"I was a thoughtless fool ten years ago," he said, bitterly, and Miss
+Ailie's answer came strangely from such timid lips. "Yes, you were!" she
+exclaimed, passionately, and all the wrath, long pent up, with very
+different feelings, in her gentle bosom, against the man who should have
+adored her Kitty, leapt at that reproachful cry to her mouth and eyes,
+and so passed out of her forever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+TOMMY THE SCHOLAR
+
+
+So Miss Ailie could be brave, but what a poltroon she was also! Three
+calls did she make on dear friends, ostensibly to ask how a cold was or
+to instruct them in a new device in Shetland wool, but really to
+announce that she did not propose keeping school after the end of the
+term--because--in short, Mr. Ivie McLean and she--that is he--and so on.
+But though she had planned it all out so carefully, with at least three
+capital ways of leading up to it, and knew precisely what they would
+say, and pined to hear them say it, on each occasion shyness conquered
+and she came away with the words unspoken. How she despised herself, and
+how Mr. McLean laughed! He wanted to take the job off her hands by
+telling the news to Dr. McQueen, who could be depended on to spread it
+through the town, and Miss Ailie discovered with horror that his simple
+plan was to say, "How are you, doctor? I just looked in to tell you that
+Miss Ailie and I are to be married. Good afternoon." The audacity of
+this captivated Miss Ailie even while it outraged her sense of decency.
+To Redlintie went Mr. McLean, and returning next day drew from his
+pocket something which he put on Miss Ailie's finger, and then she had
+the idea of taking off her left glove in church, which would have
+announced her engagement as loudly as though Mr. Dishart had included it
+in his pulpit intimations. Religion, however, stopped her when she had
+got the little finger out, and the Misses Finlayson, who sat behind and
+knew she had an itchy something inside her glove, concluded that it was
+her threepenny for the plate. As for Gavinia, like others of her class
+in those days, she had never heard of engagement rings, and so it really
+seemed as if Mr. McLean must call on the doctor after all. But "No,"
+said he, "I hit upon a better notion to-day in the Den," and to explain
+this notion he produced from his pocket a large, vulgar bottle, which
+shocked Miss Ailie, and indeed that bottle had not passed through the
+streets uncommented on.
+
+Mr. McLean having observed this bottle afloat on the Silent Pool, had
+fished it out with his stick, and its contents set him chuckling. They
+consisted of a sheet of paper which stated that the bottle was being
+flung into the sea in lat. 20, long. 40, by T. Sandys, Commander of the
+Ailie, then among the breakers. Sandys had little hope of weathering the
+gale, but he was indifferent to his own fate so long as his enemy did
+not escape, and he called upon whatsoever loyal subjects of the Queen
+should find this document to sail at once to lat. 20, long. 40, and
+there cruise till they had captured the Pretender, _alias_ Stroke, and
+destroyed his Lair. A somewhat unfavorable personal description of
+Stroke was appended, with a map of the coast, and a stern warning to all
+loyal subjects not to delay as one Ailie was in the villain's hands and
+he might kill her any day. Victoria Regina would give five hundred
+pounds for his head. The letter ended in manly style with the writer's
+sending an affecting farewell message to his wife and little children.
+
+"And so while we are playing ourselves," said Mr. McLean to Miss Ailie,
+"your favorite is seeking my blood."
+
+"Our favorite," interposed the school-mistress, and he accepted the
+correction, for neither of them could forget that their present
+relations might have been very different had it not been for Tommy's
+faith in the pass-book. The boy had shown a knowledge of the human
+heart, in Miss Ailie's opinion, that was simply wonderful; inspiration
+she called it, and though Ivie thought it a happy accident, he did not
+call it so to her. Tommy's father had been the instrument in bringing
+these two together originally, and now Tommy had brought them together
+again; there was fate in it, and if the boy was of the right stuff
+McLean meant to reward him.
+
+"I see now," he said to Miss Ailie, "a way of getting rid of our
+fearsome secret and making my peace with Sandys at one fell blow." He
+declined to tell her more, but presently he sought Gavinia, who dreaded
+him nowadays because of his disconcerting way of looking at her
+inquiringly and saying "I do!"
+
+"You don't happen to know, Gavinia," he asked, "whether the good ship
+Ailie weathered the gale of the 15th instant? If it did," he went on,
+"Commander Sandys will learn something to his advantage from a bottle
+that is to be cast into the ocean this evening."
+
+Gavinia thought she heard the chink of another five shillings, and her
+mouth opened so wide that a chaffinch could have built therein. "Is he
+to look for a bottle in the pond?" she asked, eagerly.
+
+"I do," replied McLean with such solemnity that she again retired to the
+coal-cellar.
+
+That evening Mr. McLean cast a bottle into the Silent Pool, and
+subsequently called on Mr. Cathro, to whom he introduced himself as one
+interested in Master Thomas Sandys. He was heartily received, but at the
+name of Tommy, Cathro heaved a sigh that could not pass unnoticed. "I
+see you don't find him an angel," said Mr. McLean, politely.
+
+"'Deed, sir, there are times when I wish he was an angel," the dominie
+replied so viciously that McLean laughed. "And I grudge you that laugh,"
+continued Cathro, "for your Tommy Sandys has taken from me the most
+precious possession a teacher can have--my sense of humor."
+
+"He strikes me as having a considerable sense of humor himself."
+
+"Well he may, Mr. McLean, for he has gone off with all mine. But bide a
+wee till I get in the tumblers, and. I'll tell you the latest about
+him--if what you want to hear is just the plain exasperating truth.
+
+"His humor that you spoke of," resumed the school-master presently,
+addressing his words to the visitor, and his mind to a toddy ladle of
+horn, "is ill to endure in a school where the understanding is that the
+dominie makes all the jokes (except on examination-day, when the
+ministers get their yearly fling), but I think I like your young friend
+worst when he is deadly serious. He is constantly playing some new
+part--playing is hardly the word though, for into each part he puts an
+earnestness that cheats even himself, until he takes to another. I
+suppose you want me to give you some idea of his character, and I could
+tell you what it is at any particular moment; but it changes, sir, I do
+assure you, almost as quickly as the circus-rider flings off his layers
+of waistcoats. A single puff of wind blows him from one character to
+another, and he may be noble and vicious, and a tyrant and a slave, and
+hard as granite and melting as butter in the sun, all in one forenoon.
+All you can be sure of is that whatever he is he will be it in excess."
+
+"But I understood," said McLean, "that at present he is solely engaged
+on a war of extermination in the Den."
+
+"Ah, those exploits, I fancy, are confined to Saturday nights, and
+unfortunately his Saturday debauch does not keep him sober for the rest
+of the week, which we demand of respectable characters in these parts.
+For the last day or two, for instance, he has been in mourning."
+
+"I had not heard of that."
+
+"No, I daresay not, and I'll give you the facts, if you'll fill your
+glass first. But perhaps--" here the dominie's eyes twinkled as if a
+gleam of humor had been left him after all--"perhaps you have been more
+used of late to ginger wine?"
+
+The visitor received the shock impassively as if he did not know he had
+been hit, and Cathro proceeded with his narrative. "Well, for a day or
+two Tommy Sandys has been coming to the school in a black jacket with
+crape on the cuffs, and not only so, he has sat quiet and forlorn-like
+at his desk as if he had lost some near and dear relative. Now I knew
+that he had not, for his only relative is a sister whom you may have
+seen at the Hanky School, and both she and Aaron Latta are hearty. Yet,
+sir (and this shows the effect he has on me), though I was puzzled and
+curious I dared not ask for an explanation."
+
+"But why not?" was the visitor's natural question.
+
+"Because, sir, he is such a mysterious little sacket," replied Cathro,
+testily, "and so clever at leading you into a hole, that it's not
+chancey to meddle with him, and I could see through the corner of my eye
+that, for all this woeful face, he was proud of it, and hoped I was
+taking note. For though sometimes his emotion masters him completely, at
+other times he can step aside as it were, and take an approving look at
+it. That is a characteristic of him, and not the least maddening one."
+
+"But you solved the mystery somehow, I suppose?"
+
+"I got at the truth to-day by an accident, or rather my wife discovered
+it for me. She happened to call in at the school on a domestic matter I
+need not trouble you with (sal, she needna have troubled me with it
+either!), and on her way up the yard she noticed a laddie called Lewis
+Doig playing with other ungodly youths at the game of kickbonnety.
+Lewis's father, a gentleman farmer, was buried jimply a fortnight since,
+and such want of respect for his memory made my wife give the loon a
+dunt on the head with a pound of sugar, which she had just bought at the
+'Sosh. He turned on her, ready to scart or spit or run, as seemed
+wisest, and in a klink her woman's eye saw what mine had overlooked,
+that he was not even wearing a black jacket. Well, she told him what the
+slap was for, and his little countenance cleared at once. 'Oh' says he,
+'that's all right, Tommy and me has arranged it,' and he pointed
+blithely to a corner of the yard where Tommy was hunkering by himself in
+Lewis's jacket, and wiping his mournful eyes with Lewis's hanky. I
+daresay you can jalouse the rest, but I kept Lewis behind after the
+school skailed, and got a full confession out of him. He had tried hard,
+he gave me to understand, to mourn fittingly for his father, but the
+kickbonnety season being on, it was up-hill work, and he was relieved
+when Tommy volunteered to take it off his hands. Tommy's offer was to
+swop jackets every morning for a week or two, and thus properly attired
+to do the mourning for him."
+
+The dominie paused, and regarded his guest quizzically. "Sir," he said
+at length, "laddies are a queer growth; I assure you there was no
+persuading Lewis that it was not a right and honorable compact."
+
+"And what payment," asked McLean, laughing, "did Tommy demand from Lewis
+for this service?"
+
+"Not a farthing, sir--which gives another uncanny glint into his
+character. When he wants money there's none so crafty at getting it, but
+he did this for the pleasure of the thing, or, as he said to Lewis, 'to
+feel what it would be like.' That, I tell you, is the nature of the
+sacket, he has a devouring desire to try on other folk's feelings, as if
+they were so many suits of clothes."
+
+"And from your account he makes them fit him too."
+
+"My certie, he does, and a lippie in the bonnet more than that."
+
+So far the school-master had spoken frankly, even with an occasional grin
+at his own expense, but his words came reluctantly when he had to speak
+of Tommy's prospects at the bursary examinations. "I would rather say
+nothing on that head," he said, almost coaxingly, "for the laddie has a
+year to reform in yet, and it's never safe to prophesy."
+
+"Still I should have thought that you could guess pretty accurately how
+the boys you mean to send up in a year's time are likely to do? You have
+had a long experience, and, I am told, a glorious one."
+
+"'Deed, there's no denying it," answered the dominie, with a pride he
+had won the right to wear. "If all the ministers, for instance, I have
+turned out in this bit school were to come back together, they could
+hold the General Assembly in the square."
+
+He lay back in his big chair, a complacent dominie again. "Guess the
+chances of my laddies!" he cried, forgetting what he had just said, and
+that there was a Tommy to bother him. "I tell you, sir, that's a matter
+on which I'm never deceived, I can tell the results so accurately that a
+wise Senatus would give my lot the bursaries I say they'll carry,
+without setting them down to examination-papers at all." And for the
+next half-hour he was reciting cases in proof of his sagacity.
+
+"Wonderful!" chimed in McLean. "I see it is evident you can tell me how
+Tommy Sandys will do," but at that Cathro's rush of words again subsided
+into a dribble.
+
+"He's the worst Latinist that ever had the impudence to think of
+bursaries," he groaned.
+
+"And his Greek--" asked McLean, helping on the conversation as far as
+possible.
+
+"His Greek, sir, could be packed in a pill-box."
+
+"That does not sound promising. But the best mathematicians are
+sometimes the worst linguists."
+
+"His Greek is better than his mathematics," said Cathro, and he fell
+into lamentation. "I have had no luck lately," he sighed. "The laddies I
+have to prepare for college are second-raters, and the vexing thing is,
+that when a real scholar is reared in Thrums, instead of his being
+handed over to me for the finishing, they send him to Mr. Ogilvy in
+Glenquharity. Did Miss Ailie ever mention Gavin Dishart to you--the
+minister's son? I just craved to get the teaching of that laddie, he was
+the kind you can cram with learning till there's no room left for
+another spoonful, and they bude send him to Mr. Ogilvy, and you'll see
+he'll stand high above my loons in the bursary list. And then Ogilvy
+will put on sic airs that there will be no enduring him. Ogilvy and I,
+sir, we are engaged in an everlasting duel; when we send students to the
+examinations, it is we two who are the real competitors, but what chance
+have I, when he is represented by a Gavin Dishart and my man is Tommy
+Sandys?"
+
+McLean was greatly disappointed. "Why send Tommy up at all if he is so
+backward?" he said. "You are sure you have not exaggerated his
+deficiencies?"
+
+"Well, not much at any rate. But he baffles me; one day I think him a
+perfect numskull, and the next he makes such a show of the small drop
+of scholarship he has that I'm not sure but what he may be a genius."
+
+"That sounds better. Does he study hard?"
+
+"Study! He is the most careless whelp that ever--"
+
+"But if I were to give him an inducement to study?"
+
+"Such as?" asked Cathro, who could at times be as inquisitive as the
+doctor.
+
+"We need not go into that. But suppose it appealed to him?"
+
+Cathro considered. "To be candid," he said, "I don't think he could
+study, in the big meaning of the word. I daresay I'm wrong, but I have a
+feeling that whatever knowledge that boy acquires he will dig out of
+himself. There is something inside him, or so I think at times, that is
+his master, and rebels against book-learning. No, I can't tell what it
+is; when we know that we shall know the real Tommy."
+
+"And yet," said McLean, curiously, "you advise his being allowed to
+compete for a bursary. That, if you will excuse my saying so, sounds
+foolish to me."
+
+"It can't seem so foolish to you," replied Cathro, scratching his head,
+"as it seems to me six days in seven."
+
+"And you know that Aaron Latta has sworn to send him to the herding if
+he does not carry a bursary. Surely the wisest course would be to
+apprentice him now to some trade--"
+
+"What trade would not be the worse of him? He would cut off his fingers
+with a joiner's saw, and smash them with a mason's mell; put him in a
+brot behind a counter, and in some grand, magnanimous mood he would sell
+off his master's things for nothing; make a clerk of him, and he would
+only ravel the figures; send him to the soldiering, and he would have a
+sudden impulse to fight on the wrong side. No, no, Miss Ailie says he
+has a gift for the ministry, and we must cling to that."
+
+In thus sheltering himself behind Miss Ailie, where he had never skulked
+before, the dominie showed how weak he thought his position, and he
+added, with a brazen laugh, "Then if he does distinguish himself at the
+examinations I can take the credit for it, and if he comes back in
+disgrace I shall call you to witness that I only sent him to them at her
+instigation."
+
+"All which," maintained McLean, as he put on his top-coat, "means that
+somehow, against your better judgment, you think he may distinguish
+himself after all."
+
+"You've found me out," answered Cathro, half relieved, half sorry. "I
+had no intention of telling you so much, but as you have found me out
+I'll make a clean breast of it. Unless something unexpected happens to
+the laddie--unless he take to playing at scholarship as if it were a
+Jacobite rebellion, for instance--he shouldna have the ghost of a chance
+of a bursary, and if he were any other boy as ill-prepared I should be
+ashamed to send him up, but he is Tommy Sandys, you see, and--it is a
+terrible thing to say, but it's Gospel truth, it's Gospel truth--I'm
+trusting to the possibility of his diddling the examiners!"
+
+It was a startling confession for a conscientious dominie, and Cathro
+flung out his hands as if to withdraw the words, but his visitor would
+have no tampering with them. "So that sums up Tommy, so far as you know
+him," he said as he bade his host good-night.
+
+"It does," Cathro admitted, grimly, "but if what you wanted was a
+written certificate of character I should like to add this, that never
+did any boy sit on my forms whom I had such a pleasure in thrashing."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+END OF THE JACOBITE RISING
+
+
+In the small hours of the following night the pulse of Thrums stopped
+for a moment, and then went on again, but the only watcher remained
+silent, and the people rose in the morning without knowing that they had
+lost one of their number while they slept. In the same ignorance they
+toiled through a long day.
+
+It was a close October day in the end of a summer that had lingered to
+give the countryside nothing better than a second crop of haws. Beneath
+the beeches leaves lay in yellow heaps like sliced turnip, and over all
+the strath was a pink haze; the fields were singed brown, except where a
+recent ploughing gave them a mourning border. From early morn men, women
+and children (Tommy among them) were in the fields taking up their
+potatoes, half-a-dozen gatherers at first to every drill, and by noon it
+seemed a dozen, though the new-comers were but stout sacks, now able to
+stand alone. By and by heavy-laden carts were trailing into Thrums,
+dog-tired toilers hanging on behind, not to be dragged, but for an
+incentive to keep them trudging, boys and girls falling asleep on top
+of the load, and so neglecting to enjoy the ride which was their
+recompense for lifting. A growing mist mixed with the daylight, and
+still there were a few people out, falling over their feet with fatigue;
+it took silent possession, and then the shadowy forms left in the fields
+were motionless and would remain there until carted to garrets and
+kitchen corners and other winter quarters on Monday morning. There were
+few gad-abouts that Saturday night. Washings were not brought in, though
+Mr. Dishart had preached against the unseemly sight of linen hanging on
+the line on the Sabbath-day. Innes, stravaiging the square and wynds in
+his apple-cart, jingled his weights in vain, unable to shake even
+moneyed children off their stools, and when at last he told his beast to
+go home they took with them all the stir of the town. Family exercise
+came on early in many houses, and as the gude wife handed her man the
+Bible she said entreatingly, "A short ane." After that one might have
+said that no earthly knock could bring them to their doors, yet within
+an hour the town was in a ferment.
+
+When Tommy and Elspeth reached the Den the mist lay so thick that they
+had to feel their way through it to the _Ailie_, where they found
+Gavinia alone and scared. "Was you peeping in, trying to fleg me twa
+three minutes syne?" she asked, eagerly, and when they shook their
+heads, she looked cold with fear.
+
+"As sure as death," she said, "there was some living thing standing
+there; I couldna see it for the rime, but I heard it breathing hard."
+
+Tommy felt Elspeth's hand begin to tremble, and he said "McLean!"
+hastily, though he knew that McLean had not yet left the Quharity Arms.
+Next moment Corp arrived with another story as unnerving.
+
+"Has Grizel no come yet?" he asked, in a troubled voice. "Tommy, hearken
+to this, a light has been burning in Double Dykes and the door swinging
+open a' day! I saw it mysel', and so did Willum Dods."
+
+"Did you go close?"
+
+"Na faags! Willum was hol'ing and I was lifting, so we hadna time in the
+daylight, and wha would venture near the Painted Lady's house on sic a
+night?"
+
+Even Tommy felt uneasy, but when Gavinia cried, "There's something
+uncanny in being out the night; tell us what was in Mr. McLean's bottle,
+Tommy, and syne we'll run hame," he became Commander Sandys again, and
+replied, blankly, "What bottle?"
+
+"The ane I warned you he was to fling into the water; dinna dare tell me
+you hinna got it."
+
+"I know not what thou art speaking about," said Tommy; "but it's a queer
+thing, it's a queer thing, Gavinia"--here he fixed her with his
+terrifying eye--"I happen to have found a--another bottle," and still
+glaring at her he explained that he had found his bottle floating on
+the horizon. It contained a letter to him, which he now read aloud. It
+was signed "The Villain Stroke, his mark," and announced that the
+writer, "tired of this relentless persecution," had determined to reform
+rather than be killed. "Meet me at the Cuttle Well, on Saturday, when
+the eight-o'clock bell is ringing," he wrote, "and I shall there make
+you an offer for my freedom."
+
+The crew received this communication with shouts, Gavinia's cry of "Five
+shillings, if no ten!" expressing the general sentiment, but it would
+not have been like Tommy to think with them. "You poor things," he said,
+"you just believe everything you're telled! How do I know that this is
+not a trick of Stroke's to bring me here when he is some other gait
+working mischief?"
+
+Corp was impressed, but Gavinia said, short-sightedly, "There's no sign
+o't."
+
+"There's ower much sign o't," retorted Tommy. "What's this story about
+Double Dykes? And how do we ken that there hasna been foul work there,
+and this man at the bottom o't? I tell you, before the world's half an
+hour older, I'll find out," and he looked significantly at Corp, who
+answered, quaking, "I winna gang by mysel', no, Tommy, I winna!"
+
+So Tommy had to accompany him, saying, valiantly, "I'm no feared, and
+this rime is fine for hodding in," to which Corp replied, as firmly,
+"Neither am I, and we can aye keep touching cauld iron." Before they
+were half way down the Double Dykes they got a thrill, for they
+realized, simultaneously, that they were being followed. They stopped
+and gripped each other hard, but now they could hear nothing.
+
+"The Painted Lady!" Corp whispered.
+
+"Stroke!" Tommy replied, as cautiously. He was excited rather than
+afraid, and had the pluck to cry, "Wha's that? I see you!"--but no
+answer came back through the mist, and now the boys had a double reason
+for pressing forward.
+
+"Can you see the house, Corp?"
+
+"It should be here about, but it's smored in rime."
+
+"I'm touching the paling. I ken the road to the window now."
+
+"Hark! What's that?"
+
+It sounded like devil's music in front of them, and they fell back until
+Corp remembered, "It maun be the door swinging open, and squealing and
+moaning on its hinges. Tommy, I take ill wi' that. What can it mean?"
+
+"I'm here to find out." They reached the window where Tommy had watched
+once before, and looking in together saw the room plainly by the light
+of a lamp which stood on the spinet. There was no one inside, but
+otherwise Tommy noticed little change. The fire was out, having
+evidently burned itself done, the bed-clothes were in some disorder. To
+avoid the creaking door, the boys passed round the back of the house to
+the window of the other room. This room was without a light, but its
+door stood open and sufficient light came from the kitchen to show that
+it also was untenanted. It seemed to have been used as a lumber-room.
+
+The boys turned to go, passing near the front of the empty house, where
+they shivered and stopped, mastered by a feeling they could not have
+explained. The helpless door, like the staring eyes of a dead person,
+seemed to be calling to them to shut it, and Tommy was about to steal
+forward for this purpose when Corp gripped him and whispered that the
+light had gone out. It was true, though Tommy disbelieved until they had
+returned to the east window to make sure.
+
+"There maun be folk in the hoose, Tommy!"
+
+"You saw it was toom. The lamp had gone out itself, or else--what's
+that?"
+
+It was the unmistakable closing of a door, softly but firmly. "The wind
+has blown it to," they tried to persuade themselves, though aware that
+there was not sufficient wind for this. After a long period of stillness
+they gathered courage to go to the door and shake it. It was not only
+shut, but locked.
+
+On their way back through the Double Dykes they were silent, listening
+painfully but hearing nothing. But when they reached the Coffin Brig
+Tommy said, "Dinna say nothing about this to Elspeth, it would terrify
+her;" he was always so thoughtful for Elspeth.
+
+"But what do you think o't a'?" Corp said, imploringly.
+
+"I winna tell you yet," replied Tommy, cautiously.
+
+When they boarded the _Ailie_, where the two girls were very glad to see
+them again, the eight-o'clock bell had begun to ring, and thus Tommy had
+a reasonable excuse for hurrying his crew to the Cuttle Well without
+saying anything of his expedition to Double Dykes, save that he had not
+seen Grizel. At the Well they had not long to wait before Mr. McLean
+suddenly appeared out of the mist, and to their astonishment Miss Ailie
+was leaning on his arm. She was blushing and smiling too, in a way
+pretty to see, though it spoilt the effect of Stroke's statement.
+
+The first thing Stroke did was to give up his sword to Tommy and to
+apologize for its being an umbrella on account of the unsettled state of
+the weather, and then Corp led three cheers, the captain alone declining
+to join in, for he had an uneasy feeling that he was being ridiculed.
+
+"But I thought there were five of you," Mr. McLean said; "where is the
+fifth?"
+
+"You ken best," replied Tommy, sulkily, and sulky he remained throughout
+the scene, because he knew he was not the chief figure in it. Having
+this knowledge to depress him, it is to his credit that he bore himself
+with dignity throughout, keeping his crew so well in hand that they
+dared not give expression to their natural emotions.
+
+"As you are aware, Mr. Sandys," McLean began solemnly, "I have come
+here to sue for pardon. It is not yours to give, you reply, the Queen
+alone can pardon, and I grant it; but, sir, is it not well known to all
+of us that you can get anything out of her you like?"
+
+Tommy's eyes roved suspiciously, but the suppliant proceeded in the same
+tone. "What are my offences? The first is that I have been bearing arms
+(unwittingly) against the Throne; the second, that I have brought
+trouble to the lady by my side, who has the proud privilege of calling
+you her friend. But, Sandys, such amends as can come from an erring man
+I now offer to make most contritely. Intercede with Her Majesty on my
+behalf, and on my part I promise to war against her no more. I am
+willing to settle down in the neighboring town as a law-abiding citizen,
+whom you can watch with eagle eye. Say, what more wouldst thou of the
+unhappy Stuart?"
+
+But Tommy would say nothing, he only looked doubtfully at Miss Ailie,
+and that set McLean off again. "You ask what reparation I shall make to
+this lady? Sandys, I tell thee that here also thou hast proved too
+strong for me. In the hope that she would plead for me with you, I have
+been driven to offer her my hand in marriage, and she is willing to take
+me if thou grantest thy consent."
+
+At this Gavinia jumped with joy, and then cried, "Up wi' her!" words
+whose bearing the school-mistress fortunately did not understand. All
+save Tommy looked at Miss Ailie, and she put her arm on Mr. McLean's,
+and, yes, it was obvious, Miss Ailie was a lover at the Cuttle Well at
+last, like so many others. She had often said that the Den parade was
+vulgar, but she never said it again.
+
+It was unexpected news to Tommy, but that was not what lowered his head
+in humiliation now. In the general rejoicing he had been nigh forgotten;
+even Elspeth was hanging on Miss Ailie's skirts, Gavinia had eyes for
+none but lovers, Corp was rapturously examining five half-crowns that
+had been dropped into his hands for distribution. Had Tommy given an
+order now, who would have obeyed it? His power was gone, his crew would
+not listen to another word against Mr. McLean.
+
+"Tommy thought Mr. McLean hated you!" said Elspeth to Miss Ailie.
+
+"It was queer you made sic a mistake!" said Corp to Tommy.
+
+"Oh, the tattie-doolie!" cried Gavinia.
+
+So they knew that Mr. McLean had only been speaking sarcastically; of a
+sudden they saw through and despised their captain. Tears of
+mortification rose in Tommy's eyes, and kind-hearted Miss Ailie saw
+them, and she thought it was her lover's irony that made him smart. She
+had said little hitherto, but now she put her hand on his shoulder, and
+told them all that she did indeed owe the supreme joy that had come to
+her to him. "No, Gavinia," she said, blushing, "I will not give you the
+particulars, but I assure you that had it not been for Tommy, Mr. McLean
+would never have asked me to marry him."
+
+Elspeth crossed proudly to the side of her noble brother (who could
+scarcely trust his ears), and Gavinia cried, in wonder, "What did he
+do?"
+
+Now McLean had seen Tommy's tears also, and being a kindly man he
+dropped the satirist and chimed in warmly, "And if I had not asked Miss
+Ailie to marry me I should have lost the great happiness of my life, so
+you may all imagine how beholden I feel to Tommy."
+
+Again Tommy was the centre-piece, and though these words were as
+puzzling to him as to his crew, their sincerity was unmistakable, and
+once more his head began to waggle complacently.
+
+"And to show how grateful we are," said Miss Ailie, "we are to give him
+a--a sort of marriage present. We are to double the value of the bursary
+he wins at the university--" She could get no farther, for now Elspeth
+was hugging her, and Corp cheering frantically, and Mr. McLean thought
+it necessary to add the warning, "If he does carry a bursary, you
+understand, for should he fail I give him nothing."
+
+"Him fail!" exclaimed Corp, with whom Miss Ailie of course agreed. "And
+he can spend the money in whatever way he chooses," she said, "what will
+you do with it, Tommy?"
+
+The lucky boy answered, instantly, "I'll take Elspeth to Aberdeen to
+bide with me," and then Elspeth hugged him, and Miss Ailie said, in a
+delighted aside to Mr. McLean, "I told you so," and he, too, was well
+pleased.
+
+"It was the one thing needed to make him work," the school-mistress
+whispered. "Is not his love for his sister beautiful?"
+
+McLean admitted that it was, but half-banteringly he said to Elspeth:
+"What could you do in lodgings, you excited mite?"
+
+"I can sit and look at Tommy," she answered, quickly.
+
+"But he will be away for hours at his classes."
+
+"I'll sit at the window waiting for him," said she.
+
+"And I'll run back quick," said Tommy.
+
+All this time another problem had been bewildering Gavinia, and now she
+broke in, eagerly: "But what was it he did? I thought he was agin Mr.
+McLean."
+
+"And so did I," said Corp.
+
+"I cheated you grandly," replied Tommy with the audacity he found so
+useful.
+
+"And a' the time you was pretending to be agin him," screamed Gavinia,
+"was you--was you bringing this about on the sly?"
+
+Tommy looked up into Mr. McLean's face, but could get no guidance from
+it, so he said nothing; he only held his head higher than ever. "Oh, the
+clever little curse!" cried Corp, and Elspeth's delight was as ecstatic,
+though differently worded. Yet Gavinia stuck to her problem, "How did
+you do it, what was it you did?" and the cruel McLean said: "You may
+tell her, Tommy; you have my permission."
+
+It would have been an awkward position for most boys, and even
+Tommy--but next moment he said, quite coolly: "I think you and me and
+Miss Ailie should keep it to oursels, Gavinia's sic a gossip."
+
+"Oh, how thoughtful of him!" cried Miss Ailie, the deceived, and McLean
+said: "How very thoughtful!" but now he saw in a flash why Mr. Cathro
+still had hopes that Tommy might carry a bursary.
+
+Thus was the repentant McLean pardoned, and nothing remained for him to
+do save to show the crew his Lair, which they had sworn to destroy. He
+had behaved so splendidly that they had forgotten almost that they were
+the emissaries of justice, but not to destroy the Lair seemed a pity, it
+would be such a striking way of bringing their adventures in the Den to
+a close. The degenerate Stuart read this feeling in their faces, and he
+was ready, he said, to show them his Lair if they would first point it
+out to him; but here was a difficulty, for how could they do that? For a
+moment it seemed as if the negotiations must fall through; but Sandys,
+that captain of resource, invited McLean to step aside for a private
+conference, and when they rejoined the others McLean said, gravely, that
+he now remembered where the Lair was and would guide them to it.
+
+They had only to cross a plank, invisible in the mist until they were
+close to it, and climb a slippery bank strewn with fallen trees. McLean,
+with a mock serious air, led the way, Miss Ailie on his arm. Corp and
+Gavinia followed, weighted and hampered by their new half-crowns, and
+Tommy and Elspeth, in the rear, whispered joyously of the coming life.
+And so, very unprepared for it, they moved toward the tragedy of the
+night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+A LETTER TO GOD
+
+
+"Do you keep a light burning in the Lair?" McLean turned to ask,
+forgetting for the moment that it was not their domicile, but his.
+
+"No, there's no light," replied Corp, equally forgetful, but even as he
+spoke he stopped so suddenly that Elspeth struck against him. For he had
+seen a light. "This is queer!" he cried, and both he and Gavinia fell
+back in consternation. McLean pushed forward alone, and was back in a
+trice, with a new expression on his face. "Are you playing some trick on
+me?" he demanded suspiciously of Tommy. "There is some one there; I
+almost ran against a pair of blazing eyes."
+
+"But there's nobody; there can be nobody there," answered Tommy, in a
+bewilderment that was obviously unfeigned, "unless--unless--" He looked
+at Corp, and the eyes of both finished the sentence. The desolate scene
+at Double Dykes, which the meeting with McLean and Miss Ailie had driven
+from their minds, again confronted them, and they seemed once more to
+hear the whimpering of the Painted Lady's door.
+
+"Unless what?" asked the man, impatiently, but still the two boys only
+stared at each other. "The Den's no mous the night," said Corp at last,
+in a low voice, and his unspoken fears spread to the womankind, so that
+Miss Ailie shuddered and Elspeth gripped Tommy with both hands and
+Gavinia whispered, "Let's away hame, we can come back in the daylight."
+
+But McLean chafed and pressed upward, and next moment a girl's voice was
+heard, crying: "It is no business of yours; I won't let you touch her."
+
+"Grizel!" exclaimed Tommy and his crew, simultaneously, and they had no
+more fear until they were inside the Lair. What they saw had best be
+described very briefly. A fire was burning in a corner of the Lair, and
+in front of it, partly covered with a sheet, lay the Painted Lady, dead.
+Grizel stood beside the body guarding it, her hands clenched, her eyes
+very strange. "You sha'n't touch her!" she cried, passionately, and
+repeated it many times, as if she had lost the power to leave off, but
+Corp crept past her and raised the coverlet.
+
+"She's straikit!" he shouted. "Did you do it yoursel', Grizel? God
+behears, she did it hersel'!"
+
+A very long silence it seemed to be after that.
+
+Miss Ailie would have taken the motherless girl to her arms, but first,
+at Corp's discovery, she had drawn back in uncontrollable repulsion, and
+Grizel, about to go to her, saw it, and turned from her to Tommy. Her
+eyes rested on him beseechingly, with a look he saw only once again in
+them until she was a woman, but his first thought was not for Grizel.
+Elspeth was clinging to him, terrified and sobbing, and he cried to her,
+"Shut your een," and then led her tenderly away. He was always good to
+Elspeth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was no lack of sympathy with Grizel when the news spread through
+the town, and unshod men with their gallowses hanging down, and women
+buttoning as they ran, hurried to the Den. But to all the questions put
+to her and to all the kindly offers made, as the body was carried to
+Double Dykes, she only rocked her arms, crying, "I don't want anything
+to eat. I shall stay all night beside her. I am not frightened at my
+mamma. I won't tell you why she was in the Den. I am not sure how long
+she has been dead. Oh, what do these little things matter?"
+
+The great thing was that her mamma should be buried in the cemetery, and
+not in unconsecrated ground with a stake through her as the boys had
+predicted, and it was only after she was promised this that Grizel told
+her little tale. She had feared for a long time that her mamma was dying
+of consumption, but she told no one, because everybody was against her
+and her mamma. Her mamma never knew that she was dying, and sometimes
+she used to get so much better that Grizel hoped she would live a long
+time, but that hope never lasted long. The reason she sat so much with
+Ballingall was just to find out what doctors did to dying people to make
+them live a little longer, and she watched his straiking to be able to
+do it to her mamma when the time came. She was sure none of the women
+would consent to straik her mamma. On the previous night, she could not
+say at what hour, she had been awakened by a cold wind, and so she knew
+that the door was open. She put out her hand in the darkness and found
+that her mamma was not beside her. It had happened before, and she was
+not frightened. She had hidden the key of the door that night and nailed
+down the window, but her mamma had found the key. Grizel rose, lit the
+lamp, and, having dressed hurriedly, set off with wraps to the Den. Her
+mamma was generally as sensible as anybody in Thrums, but sometimes she
+had shaking fits, and after them she thought it was the time of long
+ago. Then she went to the Den to meet a man who had promised, she said,
+to be there, but he never came, and before daybreak Grizel could usually
+induce her to return home. Latterly she had persuaded her mamma to wait
+for him in the old Lair, because it was less cold there, and she had got
+her to do this last night. Her mamma did not seem very unwell, but she
+fell asleep, and she died sleeping, and then Grizel went back to Double
+Dykes for linen and straiked her.
+
+Some say in Thrums that a spade was found in the Lair, but that is only
+the growth of later years. Grizel had done all she could do, and
+through the long Saturday she sat by the side of the body, helpless and
+unable to cry. She knew that it could not remain there much longer, but
+every time she rose to go and confess, fear of the indignities to which
+the body of her darling mamma might be subjected pulled her back. The
+boys had spoken idly, but hunted Grizel, who knew so much less and so
+much more than any of them, believed it all.
+
+It was she who had stood so near Gavinia in the ruined house. She had
+only gone there to listen to human voices. When she discovered from the
+talk of her friends that she had left a light burning at Double Dykes
+and the door open, fear of the suspicions this might give rise to had
+sent her to the house on the heels of the two boys, and it was she who
+had stolen past them in the mist to put out the light and lock the door.
+Then she had returned to her mamma's side.
+
+The doctor was among the listeners, almost the only dry-eyed one, but he
+was not dry-eyed because he felt the artless story least. Again and
+again he rose from his chair restlessly, and Grizel thought he scowled
+at her when he was really scowling at himself; as soon as she had
+finished he cleared the room brusquely of all intruders, and then he
+turned on her passionately.
+
+"Think shame of yoursel'," he thundered, "for keeping me in the dark,"
+and of course she took his words literally, though their full meaning
+was, "I shall scorn myself from this hour for not having won the poor
+child's confidence."
+
+Oh, he was a hard man, Grizel thought, the hardest of them all. But she
+was used to standing up to hard men, and she answered, defiantly: "I did
+mean to tell you, that day you sent me with the bottle to Ballingall, I
+was waiting at the surgery door to tell you, but you were cruel, you
+said I was a thief, and then how could I tell you?"
+
+This, too, struck home, and the doctor winced, but what he said was,
+"You fooled me for a whole week, and the town knows it; do you think I
+can forgive you for that?"
+
+"I don't care whether you forgive me," replied Grizel at once.
+
+"Nor do I care whether you care," he rapped out, all the time wishing he
+could strike himself; "but I'm the doctor of this place, and when your
+mother was ill you should have come straight to me. What had I done that
+you should be afraid of me?"
+
+"I am not afraid of you," she replied, "I am not afraid of anyone, but
+mamma was afraid of you because she knew you had said cruel things about
+her, and I thought--I won't tell you what I thought." But with a little
+pressing she changed her mind and told him. "I was not sure whether you
+would come to see her, though I asked you, and if you came I knew you
+would tell her she was dying, and that would have made her scream. And
+that is not all, I thought you might tell her that she would be buried
+with a stake through her--"
+
+"Oh, these blackguard laddies!" cried McQueen, clenching his fists.
+
+"And so I dared not tell you," Grizel concluded calmly; "I am not
+frightened at you, but I was frightened you would hurt my dear darling
+mamma," and she went and stood defiantly between him and her mother.
+
+The doctor moved up and down the room, crying, "How did I not know of
+this, why was I not told?" and he knew that the fault had been his own,
+and so was furious when Grizel told him so.
+
+"Yes, it is," she insisted, "you knew mamma was an unhappy lady, and
+that the people shouted things against her and terrified her; and you
+must have known, for everybody knew, that she was sometimes silly and
+wandered about all night, and you are a big strong man, and so you
+should have been sorry for her; and if you had been sorry you would have
+come to see her and been kind to her, and then you would have found it
+all out."
+
+"Have done, lassie!" he said, half angrily, half beseechingly, but she
+did not understand that he was suffering, and she went on, relentlessly:
+"And you knew that bad men used to come to see her at night--they have
+not come for a long time--but you never tried to stop their coming, and
+I could have stopped it if I had known they were bad; but I did not know
+at first, and I was only a little girl, and you should have told me."
+
+"Have done!" It was all that he could say, for like many he had heard of
+men visiting the Painted Lady by stealth, and he had only wondered, with
+other gossips, who they were.
+
+He crossed again to the side of the dead woman, "And Ballingall's was
+the only corpse you ever saw straiked?" he said in wonder, she had done
+her work so well. But he was not doubting her; he knew already that this
+girl was clothed in truthfulness.
+
+"Was it you that kept this house so clean?" he asked, almost irritably,
+for he himself was the one undusted, neglected-looking thing in it, and
+he was suddenly conscious of his frayed wristband and of buttons hanging
+by a thread.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What age are you?"
+
+"I think I am thirteen."
+
+He looked long at her, vindictively she thought, but he was only
+picturing the probable future of a painted lady's child, and he said
+mournfully to himself, "Ay, it does not even end here; and that's the
+crowning pity of it." But Grizel only heard him say, "Poor thing!" and
+she bridled immediately.
+
+"I won't let you pity me," she cried.
+
+"You dour brat!" he retorted. "But you need not think you are to have
+everything your own way still. I must get some Monypenny woman to take
+you till the funeral is over, and after that--"
+
+"I won't go," said Grizel, determinedly, "I shall stay with mamma till
+she is buried."
+
+He was not accustomed to contradiction, and he stamped his foot. "You
+shall do as you are told," he said.
+
+"I won't!" replied Grizel, and she also stamped her foot.
+
+"Very well, then, you thrawn tid, but at any rate I'll send in a woman
+to sleep with you."
+
+"I want no one. Do you think I am afraid?"
+
+"I think you will be afraid when you wake up in the darkness, and find
+yourself alone with--with it."
+
+"I sha'n't, I shall remember at once that she is to be buried nicely in
+the cemetery, and that will make me happy."
+
+"You unnatural--"
+
+"Besides, I sha'n't sleep, I have something to do."
+
+His curiosity again got the better of the doctor. "What can you have to
+do at such a time?" he demanded, and her reply surprised him:
+
+"I am to make a dress."
+
+"You!"
+
+"I have made them before now," she said indignantly.
+
+"But at such a time!"
+
+"It is a black dress," she cried, "I don't have one, I am to make it
+out of mamma's."
+
+He said nothing for some time, then "When did you think of this?"
+
+"I thought of it weeks ago, I bought crape at the corner shop to be
+ready, and--"
+
+She thought he was looking at her in horror, and stopped abruptly. "I
+don't care what you think," she said.
+
+"What I do think," he retorted, taking up his hat, "is, that you are a
+most exasperating lassie. If I bide here another minute I believe you'll
+get round me."
+
+"I don't want to get round you."
+
+"Then what makes you say such things? I question if I'll get an hour's
+sleep to-night for thinking of you!"
+
+"I don't want you to think of me!"
+
+He groaned. "What could an untidy, hardened old single man like me do
+with you in his house?" he said. "Oh, you little limmer, to put such a
+thought into my head."
+
+"I never did!" she exclaimed, indignantly.
+
+"It began, I do believe it began," he sighed, "the first time I saw you
+easying Ballingall's pillows."
+
+"What began?"
+
+"You brat, you wilful brat, don't pretend ignorance. You set a trap to
+catch me, and--"
+
+"Oh!" cried Grizel, and she opened the door quickly. "Go away, you
+horrid man," she said.
+
+He liked her the more for this regal action, and therefore it enraged
+him. Sheer anxiety lest he should succumb to her on the spot was what
+made him bluster as he strode off, and "That brat of a Grizel," or "The
+Painted Lady's most unbearable lassie," or "The dour little besom" was
+his way of referring to her in company for days, but if any one agreed
+with him he roared "Don't be a fool, man, she's a wonder, she's a
+delight," or "You have a dozen yourself, Janet, but I wouldna neifer
+Grizel for the lot of them." And it was he, still denouncing her so long
+as he was contradicted, who persuaded the Auld Licht Minister to
+officiate at the funeral. Then he said to himself, "And now I wash my
+hands of her, I have done all that can be expected of me." He told
+himself this a great many times as if it were a medicine that must be
+taken frequently, and Grizel heard from Tommy, with whom she had some
+strange conversations, that he was going about denouncing her "up hill
+and down dale." But she did not care, she was so--so happy. For a hole
+was dug for the Painted Lady in the cemetery, just as if she had been a
+good woman, and Mr. Dishart conducted the service in Double Dykes before
+the removal of the body, nor did he say one word that could hurt Grizel,
+perhaps because his wife had drawn a promise from him. A large gathering
+of men followed the coffin, three of them because, as yon may remember,
+Grizel had dared them to stay away, but all the others out of sympathy
+with a motherless child who, as the procession started, rocked her arms
+in delight because her mamma was being buried respectably.
+
+Being a woman, she could not attend the funeral, and so the chief
+mourner was Tommy, as you could see by the position he took at the
+grave, and by the white bands Grizel had sewn on his sleeves. He was
+looking very important, as if he had something remarkable in prospect,
+but little attention was given him until the cords were dropped into the
+grave, and a prayer offered up, when he pulled Mr. Dishart's coat and
+muttered something about a paper. Those who had been making ready to
+depart swung round again, and the minister told him if he had anything
+to say to speak out.
+
+"It's a paper," Tommy said, nervous yet elated, and addressing all,
+"that Grizel put in the coffin. She told me to tell you about it when
+the cords fell on the lid."
+
+"What sort of a paper?" asked Mr. Dishart, frowning.
+
+"It's--it's a letter to God," Tommy gasped.
+
+Nothing was to be heard except the shovelling of earth into the grave.
+"Hold your spade, John," the minister said to the gravedigger, and then
+even that sound stopped. "Go on," Mr. Dishart signed to the boy.
+
+"Grizel doesna believe her mother has much chance of getting to heaven,"
+Tommy said, "and she wrote the letter to God, so that when he opens the
+coffins on the last day he will find it and read about them."
+
+"About whom?" asked the stern minister.
+
+"About Grizel's father, for one. She doesna know his name, but the
+Painted Lady wore a locket wi' a picture of him on her breast, and it's
+buried wi' her, and Grizel told God to look at it so as to know him. She
+thinks her mother will be damned for having her, and that it winna be
+fair unless God damns her father too."
+
+"Go on," said Mr. Dishart.
+
+"There was three Thrums men--I think they were gentlemen--" Tommy
+continued, almost blithely, "that used to visit the Painted Lady in the
+night time afore she took ill. They wanted Grizel to promise no to tell
+about their going to Double Dykes, and she promised because she was ower
+innocent to know what they went for--but their names are in the letter."
+
+A movement in the crowd was checked by the minister's uplifted arm. "Go
+on," he cried.
+
+"She wouldna tell me who they were, because it would have been
+breaking her promise," said Tommy, "but"--he looked around him
+inquisitively--"but they're here at the funeral."
+
+The mourners were looking sideways at each other, some breathing hard,
+but none dared to speak before the minister. He stood for a long time in
+doubt, but at last he signed to John to proceed with the filling in of
+the grave. Contrary to custom all remained. Not until the grave was
+again level with the sward did Mr. Dishart speak, and then it was with a
+gesture that appalled his hearers. "This grave," he said, raising his
+arm, "is locked till the day of judgment."
+
+Leaving him standing there, a threatening figure, they broke into groups
+and dispersed, walking slowly at first, and then fast, to tell their
+wives.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+AN ELOPEMENT
+
+
+The solitary child remained at Double Dykes, awaiting the arrival of her
+father, for the Painted Lady's manner of leaving the world had made such
+a stir that the neighbors said he must have heard of it, even though he
+were in London, and if he had the heart of a stone he could not desert
+his bairn. They argued thus among themselves, less as people who were
+sure of it than to escape the perplexing question, what to do with
+Grizel if the man never claimed her? and before her they spoke of his
+coming as a certainty, because it would be so obviously the best thing
+for her. In the meantime they overwhelmed her with offers of everything
+she could need, which was kindly but not essential, for after the
+funeral expenses had been paid (Grizel insisted on paying them herself)
+she had still several gold pieces, found in her mamma's beautiful
+tortoise-shell purse, and there were nearly twenty pounds in the bank.
+
+But day after day passed, and the man had not come. Perhaps he resented
+the Painted Lady's ostentatious death; which, if he was nicely strung,
+must have jarred upon his nerves. He could hardly have acknowledged
+Grizel now without publicity being given to his private concerns. Or he
+may never have heard of the Painted Lady's death, or if he read of it,
+he may not have known which painted lady in particular she was. Or he
+may have married, and told his wife all and she had forgiven him, which
+somehow, according to the plays and the novels, cuts the past adrift
+from a man and enables him to begin again at yesterday. Whatever the
+reason, Grizel's father was in no hurry to reveal himself, and though
+not to her, among themselves the people talked of the probability of his
+not coming at all. She could not remain alone at Double Dykes, they all
+admitted, but where, then, should she go? No fine lady in need of a
+handmaid seemed to think a painted lady's child would suit; indeed,
+Grizel at first sight had not the manner that attracts philanthropists.
+Once only did the problem approach solution; a woman in the Den-head was
+willing to take the child because (she expressed it) as she had seven
+she might as well have eight, but her man said no, he would not have his
+bairns fil't. Others would have taken her cordially for a few weeks or
+months, had they not known that at the end of this time they would be
+blamed, even by themselves, if they let her go. All, in short, were
+eager to show her kindness if one would give her a home, but where was
+that one to be found?
+
+Much of this talk came to Grizel through Tommy, and she told him in the
+house of Double Dykes that people need not trouble themselves about her,
+for she had no wish to stay with them. It was only charity they brought
+her; no one wanted her for herself. "It is because I am a child of
+shame," she told him, dry-eyed.
+
+He fidgeted on his chair, and asked, "What's that?" not very honestly.
+
+"I don't know," she said, "no one will tell me, but it is something you
+can't love."
+
+"You have a terrible wish to be loved," he said in wonder, and she
+nodded her head wistfully. "That is not what I wish for most of all,
+though," she told him, and when he asked what she wished for most of
+all, she said, "To love somebody; oh, it would be sweet!"
+
+To Tommy, most sympathetic of mortals, she seemed a very pathetic little
+figure, and tears came to his eyes as he surveyed her; he could always
+cry very easily.
+
+"If it wasna for Elspeth," he began, stammering, "I could love you, but
+you winna let a body do onything on the sly."
+
+It was a vague offer, but she understood, and became the old Grizel at
+once. "I don't want you to love me," she said indignantly; "I don't
+think you know how to love."
+
+"Neither can you know, then," retorted Tommy, huffily, "for there's
+nobody for you to love."
+
+"Yes, there is," she said, "and I do love her and she loves me."
+
+"But wha is she?"
+
+"That girl." To his amazement she pointed to her own reflection in the
+famous mirror the size of which had scandalized Thrums. Tommy thought
+this affection for herself barely respectable, but he dared not say so
+lest he should be put to the door. "I love her ever so much," Grizel
+went on, "and she is so fond of me, she hates to see me unhappy. Don't
+look so sad, dearest, darlingest," she cried vehemently; "I love you,
+you know, oh, you sweet!" and with each epithet she kissed her
+reflection and looked defiantly at the boy.
+
+"But you canna put your arms round her and hug her," he pointed out
+triumphantly, and so he had the last word after all. Unfortunately
+Grizel kept this side of her, new even to Tommy, hidden from all others,
+and her unresponsiveness lost her many possible friends. Even Miss
+Ailie, who now had a dressmaker in the blue-and-white room, sitting on a
+bedroom chair and sewing for her life (oh, the agony--or is it the
+rapture?--of having to decide whether to marry in gray with beads or
+brown plain to the throat), even sympathetic Miss Ailie, having met with
+several rebuffs, said that Grizel had a most unaffectionate nature, and,
+"Ay, she's hardy," agreed the town, "but it's better, maybe, for
+hersel'." There are none so unpopular as the silent ones.
+
+If only Miss Ailie, or others like her, could have slipped noiselessly
+into Double Dykes at night, they would have found Grizel's pillow wet.
+But she would have heard them long before they reached the door, and
+jumped to the floor in terror, thinking it was her father's step at
+last. For, unknown to anyone, his coming, which the town so anxiously
+desired, was her one dread. She had told Tommy what she should say to
+him if he came, and Tommy had been awed and delighted, they were such
+scathing things; probably, had the necessity arisen, she would have
+found courage to say them, but they were made up in the daytime, and at
+night they brought less comfort. Then she listened fearfully and longed
+for the morning, wild ideas coursing through her head of flying before
+he could seize her; but when morning came it brought other thoughts, as
+of the strange remarks she had heard about her mamma and herself during
+the past few days. To brood over these was the most unhealthy occupation
+she could find, but it was her only birthright. Many of the remarks came
+unguardedly from lips that had no desire to pain her, others fell in a
+rage because she would not tell what were the names in her letter to
+God. The words that troubled her most, perhaps, were the doctor's, "She
+is a brave lass, but it must be in her blood." They were not intended
+for her ears, but she heard. "What did he mean?" she asked Miss Ailie,
+Mrs. Dishart, and others who came to see her, and they replied
+awkwardly, that it had only been a doctor's remark, of no importance to
+people who were well. "Then why are you crying?" she demanded, looking
+them full in the face with eyes there was no deceiving.
+
+"Oh, why is everyone afraid to tell me the truth!" she would cry,
+beating her palms in anguish.
+
+She walked into McQueen's surgery and said, "Could you not cut it out?"
+so abruptly that he wondered what she was speaking about.
+
+"The bad thing that is in my blood," she explained. "Do cut it out, I
+sha'n't scream. I promise not to scream."
+
+He sighed and answered, "If it could be cut out, lassie, I would try to
+do it, though it was the most dangerous of operations."
+
+She looked in anguish at him. "There are cleverer doctors than you,
+aren't there?" she asked, and he was not offended.
+
+"Ay, a hantle cleverer," he told her, "but none so clever as that. God
+help you, bairn, if you have to do it yourself some day."
+
+"Can I do it myself?" she cried, brightening. "I shall do it now. Is it
+done with a knife?"
+
+"With a sharper knife than a surgeon's," he answered, and then,
+regretting he had said so much, he tried to cheer her. But that he could
+not do. "You are afraid to tell me the truth too," she said, and when
+she went away he was very sorry for her, but not so sorry as she was
+for herself. "When I am grown up," she announced dolefully, to Tommy, "I
+shall be a bad woman, just like mamma."
+
+"Not if you try to be good," he said.
+
+"Yes, I shall. There is something in my blood that will make me bad, and
+I so wanted to be good. Oh! oh! oh!"
+
+She told him of the things she had heard people say, but though they
+perplexed him almost as much as her, he was not so hopeless of learning
+their meaning, for here was just the kind of difficulty he liked to
+overcome. "I'll get it out o' Blinder," he said, with confidence in his
+ingenuity, "and then I'll tell you what he says." But however much he
+might strive to do so, Tommy could never repeat anything without giving
+it frills and other adornment of his own making, and Grizel knew this.
+"I must hear what he says myself," she insisted.
+
+"But he winna speak plain afore you."
+
+"Yes, he will, if he does not know I am there."
+
+The plot succeeded, though only partially, for so quick was the blind
+man's sense of hearing that in the middle of the conversation he said,
+sharply, "Somebody's ahint the dyke!" and he caught Grizel by the
+shoulder. "It's the Painted Lady's lassie," he said when she screamed,
+and he stormed against Tommy for taking such advantage of his blindness.
+But to her he said, gently, "I daresay you egged him on to this,
+meaning well, but you maun forget most of what I've said, especially
+about being in the blood. I spoke in haste, it doesna apply to the like
+of you."
+
+"Yes, it does," replied Grizel, and all that had been revealed to her
+she carried hot to the surgery, Tommy stopping at the door in as great
+perturbation as herself. "I know what being in the blood is now," she
+said, tragically, to McQueen, "there is something about it in the Bible.
+I am the child of evil passions, and that means that I was born with
+wickedness in my blood. It is lying sleeping in me just now because I am
+only thirteen, and if I can prevent its waking when I am grown up I
+shall always be good, but a very little thing will waken it; it wants so
+much to be wakened, and if it is once wakened it will run all through
+me, and soon I shall be like mamma."
+
+It was all horribly clear to her, and she would not wait for words of
+comfort that could only obscure the truth. Accompanied by Tommy, who
+said nothing, but often glanced at her fascinated yet alarmed, as if
+expecting to see the ghastly change come over her at any moment--for he
+was as convinced as she, and had the livelier imagination--she returned
+to Monypenny to beg of Blinder to tell her one thing more. And he told
+her, not speaking lightly, but because his words contained a solemn
+warning to a girl who, he thought, might need it.
+
+"What sort of thing would be likeliest to waken the wickedness?" she
+asked, holding her breath for the answer.
+
+"Keeping company wi' ill men," said Blinder, gravely.
+
+"Like the man who made mamma wicked, like my father?"
+
+"Ay," Blinder replied, "fly from the like of him, my lass, though it
+should be to the other end of the world."
+
+She stood quite still, with a most sorrowful face, and then ran away,
+ran so swiftly that when Tommy, who had lingered for a moment, came to
+the door she was already out of sight. Scarcely less excited than she,
+he set off for Double Dykes, his imagination in such a blaze that he
+looked fearfully in the pools of the burn for a black frock. But Grizel
+had not drowned herself; she was standing erect in her home, like one at
+bay, her arms rigid, her hands clenched, and when he pushed open the
+door she screamed.
+
+"Grizel," said the distressed boy, "did you think I was him come for
+you?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Maybe he'll no come. The folk think he winna come."
+
+"But if he does, if he does!"
+
+"Maybe you needna go wi' him unless you're willing?"
+
+"I must, he can compel me, because he is my father. Oh! oh! oh!" She
+lay down on the bed, and on her eyes there slowly formed the little
+wells of water Tommy was to know so well in time. He stood by her side
+in anguish; for though his own tears came at the first call, he could
+never face them in others.
+
+"Grizel," he said impulsively, "there's just one thing for you to do.
+You have money, and you maun run away afore he comes!"
+
+She jumped up at that. "I have thought of it," she answered "I am always
+thinking about it, but how can I, oh, now can I? It would not be
+respectable."
+
+"To run away?"
+
+"To go by myself," said the poor girl, "and I do want to be respectable,
+it would be sweet."
+
+In some ways Tommy was as innocent as she, and her reasoning seemed to
+him to be sound. She was looking at him woefully, and entreaty was on
+her face; all at once he felt what a lonely little crittur she was, and,
+in a burst of manhood,--
+
+"But, dinna prig wi' me to go with you," he said, struggling.
+
+"I have not!" she answered, panting, and she had not in words, but the
+mute appeal was still on her face.
+
+"Grizel," he cried, "I'll come!"
+
+Then she seized his hand and pressed it to her breast, saying, "Oh,
+Tommy, I am so fond of you!"
+
+It was the first time she had admitted it, and his head wagged well
+content, as if saying for him, "I knew you would understand me some
+day." But next moment the haunting shadow that so often overtook him in
+the act of soaring fell cold upon his mind, and "I maun take Elspeth!"
+he announced, as if Elspeth had him by the leg.
+
+"You sha'n't!" said Grizel's face.
+
+"She winna let go," said Tommy's.
+
+Grizel quivered from top to toe. "I hate Elspeth!" she cried, with
+curious passion, and the more moral Tommy was ashamed of her.
+
+"You dinna ken how fond o' her I am," he said.
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"Then you shouldna want me to leave her and go wi' you."
+
+"That is why I want it," Grizel blurted out, and now we are all ashamed
+of her. But fortunately Tommy did not see how much she had admitted in
+that hasty cry, and as neither would give way to the other they parted
+stiffly, his last words being "Mind, it wouldna be respectable to go by
+yoursel'," and hers "I don't care, I'm going." Nevertheless it was she
+who slept easily that night, and he who tossed about almost until
+cockcrow. She had only one ugly dream, of herself wandering from door to
+door in a strange town, asking for lodgings, but the woman who answered
+her weary knocks--there were many doors but it was invariably the same
+woman--always asked, suspiciously, "Is Tommy with you?" and Grizel shook
+her head, and then the woman drove her away, perceiving that she was
+not respectable. This woke her, and she feared the dream would come
+true, but she clenched her fists in the darkness, saying, "I can't help
+it, I am going, and I won't have Elspeth," and after that she slept in
+peace. In the meantime Tommy the imaginative--but that night he was not
+Tommy, rather was he Grizel, for he saw her as we can only see
+ourselves. Now she--or he, if you will--had been caught by her father
+and brought back, and she turned into a painted thing like her mother.
+She brandished a brandy bottle and a stream of foul words ran lightly
+from her mouth and suddenly stopped, because she was wailing "I wanted
+so to be good, it is sweet to be good!" Now a man with a beard was
+whipping her, and Tommy felt each lash on his own body, so that he had
+to strike out, and he started up in bed, and the horrible thing was that
+he had never been asleep. Thus it went on until early morning, when his
+eyes were red and his body was damp with sweat.
+
+But now again he was Tommy, and at first even to think of leaving
+Elspeth was absurd. Yet it would be pleasant to leave Aaron, who
+disliked him so much. To disappear without a word would be a fine
+revenge, for the people would say that Aaron must have ill-treated him,
+and while they searched the pools of the burn for his body, Aaron would
+be looking on trembling, perhaps with a policeman's hand on his
+shoulder. Tommy saw the commotion as vividly as if the searchers were
+already out and he in a tree looking down at them; but in a second he
+also heard Elspeth skirling, and down he flung himself from the tree,
+crying, "I'm here, Elspeth, dinna greet; oh, what a brute I've been!"
+No, he could not leave Elspeth, how wicked of Grizel to expect it of
+him; she was a bad one, Grizel.
+
+But having now decided not to go, his sympathy with the girl who was to
+lose him returned in a rush, and before he went to school he besought
+her to--it amounted to this, to be more like himself; that is, he begged
+her to postpone her departure indefinitely, not to make up her mind
+until to-morrow--or the day after--or the day after that. He produced
+reasons, as that she had only four pounds and some shillings now, while
+by and by she might get the Painted Lady's money, at present in the
+bank; also she ought to wait for the money that would come to her from
+the roup of the furniture. But Grizel waived all argument aside; secure
+in her four pounds and shillings she was determined to go to-night, for
+her father might be here to-morrow; she was going to London because it
+was so big that no one could ever find her there, and she would never,
+never write to Tommy to tell him how she fared, lest the letter put her
+father on her track. He implored her to write once, so that the money
+owing her might be forwarded, but even this bribe did not move her, and
+he set off for school most gloomily.
+
+Cathro was specially aggravating that day, nagged him, said before the
+whole school that he was a numskull, even fell upon him with the tawse,
+and for no earthly reason except that Tommy would not bother his head
+with the _oratio obliqua_. If there is any kind of dominie more
+maddening than another, it is the one who will not leave you alone (ask
+any thoughtful boy). How wretched the lot of him whose life is cast
+among fools not capable of understanding him; what was that saying about
+entertaining angels unawares? London! Grizel had more than sufficient
+money to take two there, and once in London, a wonder such as himself
+was bound to do wondrous things. Now that he thought of it, to become a
+minister was abhorrent to him; to preach would be rather nice, oh, what
+things he should say (he began to make them up, and they were so grand
+that he almost wept), but to be good after the sermon was over, always
+to be good (even when Elspeth was out of the way), never to think queer
+unsayable things, never to say Stroke, never, in short, to "find a
+way"--he was appalled. If it had not been for Elspeth--
+
+So even Elspeth did not need him. When he went home from school,
+thinking only of her, he found that she had gone to the Auld Licht manse
+to play with little Margaret. Very well, if such was her wish, he would
+go. Nobody wanted him except Grizel. Perhaps when news came from London
+of his greatness, they would think more of him. He would send a letter
+to Thrums, asking Mr. McLean to transfer his kindness to Elspeth. That
+would show them what a noble fellow he was. Elspeth would really benefit
+by his disappearance; he was running away for Elspeth's sake. And when
+he was great, which would be in a few years, he would come back for her.
+
+But no, he--. The dash represents Tommy swithering once more, and he was
+at one or other end of the swither all day. When he acted sharply it was
+always on impulse, and as soon as the die was cast he was a philosopher
+with no regrets. But when he had time to reflect, he jumped miserably
+back and forward. So when Grizel was ready to start, he did not know in
+the least what he meant to do.
+
+She was to pass by the Cuttle Well, on her way to Tilliedrum, where she
+would get the London train, he had been told coldly, and he could be
+there at the time--if he liked. The time was seven o'clock in the
+evening on a week-day, when the lovers are not in the Den, and Tommy
+arrived first. When he stole through the small field that separates
+Monypenny from the Den, his decision was--but on reaching the Cuttle
+Well, its nearness to the uncanny Lair chilled his courage, and now he
+had only come to bid her good-by. She was very late, and it suddenly
+struck him that she had already set off. "After getting me to promise to
+go wi' her!" he said to himself at once.
+
+But Grizel came; she was only late because it had taken her such a long
+time to say good-by to the girl in the glass. She was wearing her black
+dress and lustre jacket, and carried in a bundle the few treasures she
+was taking with her, and though she did not ask Tommy if he was coming,
+she cast a quick look round to see if he had a bundle anywhere, and he
+had none. That told her his decision, and she would have liked to sit
+down for a minute and cry, but of course she had too much pride, and she
+bade him farewell so promptly that he thought he had a grievance. "I'm
+coming as far as the toll-house wi' you," he said, sulkily, and so they
+started together.
+
+At the toll-house Grizel stopped. "It's a fine night," said Tommy,
+almost apologetically, "I'll go as far as the quarry o' Benshee."
+
+When they came to the quarry he said, "We're no half-roads yet, I'll go
+wi' you as far as Padanarum." Now she began to wonder and to glance at
+him sideways, which made him more uncomfortable than ever. To prevent
+her asking him a question for which he had no answer, he said, "What
+makes you look so little the day?"
+
+"I am not looking little," she replied, greatly annoyed, "I am looking
+taller than usual. I have let down my frock three inches so as to look
+taller--and older."
+
+"You look younger than ever," he said cruelly.
+
+"I don't! I look fifteen, and when you are fifteen you grow up very
+quickly. Do say I look older!" she entreated anxiously. "It would make
+me feel more respectable."
+
+But he shook his head with surprising obstinacy, and then she began to
+remark on his clothes, which had been exercising her curiosity ever
+since they left the Den.
+
+"How is it that you are looking so stout?" she asked.
+
+"I feel cold, but you are wiping the sweat off your face every minute."
+
+It was true, but he would have preferred not to answer. Grizel's
+questions, however, were all so straight in the face, that there was no
+dodging them. "I have on twa suits o' clothes, and a' my sarks," he had
+to admit, sticky and sullen.
+
+She stopped, but he trudged on doggedly. She ran after him and gave his
+arm an impulsive squeeze with both hands, "Oh, you sweet!" she said.
+
+"No, I'm not," he answered in alarm.
+
+"Yes you are! You are coming with me."
+
+"I'm not!"
+
+"Then why did you put on so many clothes?"
+
+Tommy swithered wretchedly on one foot. "I didna put them on to come wi'
+you," he explained, "I just put them on in case I should come wi' you."
+
+"And are you not coming?"
+
+"How can I ken?"
+
+"But you must decide," Grizel almost screamed.
+
+"I needna," he stammered, "till we're at Tilliedrum. Let's speak about
+some other thing."
+
+She rocked her arms, crying, "It is so easy to make up one's mind."
+
+"It's easy to you that has just one mind," he retorted with spirit, "but
+if you had as many minds as I have--!"
+
+On they went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+THERE IS SOME ONE TO LOVE GRIZEL AT LAST
+
+
+Corp was sitting on the Monypenny dyke, spitting on a candlestick and
+then rubbing it briskly against his orange-colored trousers. The doctor
+passing in his gig, both of them streaked, till they blended, with the
+mud of Look-about-you road (through which you should drive winking
+rapidly all the way), saw him and drew up.
+
+"Well, how is Grizel?" he asked. He had avoided Double Dykes since the
+funeral, but vain had been his attempts to turn its little inmate out of
+his mind; there she was, against his will, and there, he now admitted to
+himself angrily or with a rueful sigh, she seemed likely to remain until
+someone gave her a home. It was an almost ludicrous distrust of himself
+that kept him away from her; he feared that if he went to Double Dykes
+her lonely face would complete his conquest. For oh, he was reluctant to
+be got the better of, as he expressed it to himself. Maggy Ann, his
+maid, was the ideal woman for a bachelor's house. When she saw him
+coming she fled, guiltily concealing the hated duster; when he roared
+at her for announcing that dinner was ready, she left him to eat it half
+cold; when he spilled matches on the floor and then stepped upon them
+and set the rug on fire, she let him tell her that she should be more
+careful; she did not carry off his favorite boots to the cobbler because
+they were down at heel; she did not fling up her arms in horror and cry
+that she had brushed that coat just five minutes ago; nor did she count
+the treasured "dottels" on the mantelpiece to discover how many pipes he
+had smoked since morning; nor point out that he had stepped over the
+door-mat; nor line her shelves with the new _Mentor_; nor give him up
+his foot for sitting half the night with patients who could not pay--in
+short, he knew the ways of the limmers, and Maggy Ann was a jewel. But
+it had taken him a dozen years to bring her to this perfection, and well
+he knew that the curse of Eve, as he called the rage for the duster,
+slumbered in her rather than was extinguished. With the volcanic Grizel
+in the house, Maggy Ann would once more burst into flame, and the
+horrified doctor looked to right of him, to left of him, before him and
+behind him, and everywhere he seemed to see two new brooms bearing down.
+No, the brat, he would not have her; the besom, why did she bother him;
+the witches take her, for putting the idea into his head, nailing it
+into his head indeed. But nevertheless he was forever urging other
+people to adopt her, assuring them that they would find her a treasure,
+and even shaking his staff at them when they refused; and he was so
+uneasy if he did not hear of her several times a day that he made
+Monypenny the way to and from everywhere, so that he might drop into
+artful talk with those who had seen her last. Corp, accordingly, was not
+surprised at his "How is Grizel?" now, and he answered, between two
+spits, "She's fine; she gave me this."
+
+It was one of the Painted Lady's silver candlesticks, and the doctor
+asked sharply why Grizel had given it to him.
+
+"She said because she liked me," Corp replied, wonderingly. "She brought
+it to my auntie's door soon after I loused, and put it into my hand: ay,
+and she had a blue shawl, and she telled me to give it to Gavinia,
+because she liked her too."
+
+"What else did she say?"
+
+Corp tried to think. "I said, 'This cows, Grizel, but thank you
+kindly,'" he answered, much pleased with his effort of memory, but the
+doctor interrupted him rudely. "Nobody wants to hear what you said, you
+dottrel; what more did she say?" And thus encouraged Corp remembered
+that she had said she hoped he would not forget her. "What for should I
+forget her when I see her ilka day?" he asked, and was probably about to
+divulge that this was his reply to her, but without waiting for more,
+McQueen turned his beast's head and drove to the entrance to the Double
+Dykes. Here he alighted and hastened up the path on foot, but before he
+reached the house he met Dite Deuchars taking his ease beneath a tree,
+and Dite could tell him that Grizel was not at home. "But there's
+somebody in Double Dykes," he said, "though I kenna wha could be there
+unless it's the ghost of the Painted Lady hersel'. About an hour syne I
+saw Grizel come out o' the house, carrying a bundle, but she hadna gone
+many yards when she turned round and waved her hand to the east window.
+I couldna see wha was at it, but there maun have been somebody, for
+first the crittur waved to the window and next she kissed her hand to
+it, and syne she went on a bit, and syne she ran back close to the
+window and nodded and flung more kisses, and back and forrit she went a
+curran times as if she could hardly tear hersel' awa'. 'Wha's that
+you're so chief wi'?' I speired when she came by me at last, but she
+just said, 'I won't tell you,' in her dour wy, and she hasna come back
+yet."
+
+Whom could she have been saying good-by to so demonstratively, and
+whither had she gone? With a curiosity that for the moment took the
+place of his uneasiness, McQueen proceeded to the house, the door of
+which was shut but not locked. Two glances convinced him that there was
+no one here, the kitchen was as he had seen it last, except that the
+long mirror had been placed on a chair close to the east window. The
+doctor went to the outside of the window, and looked in, he could see
+nothing but his own reflection in the mirror, and was completely
+puzzled. But it was no time, he felt, for standing there scratching his
+head, when there was reason to fear that the girl had gone. Gone where?
+He saw his selfishness now, in a glaring light, and it fled out of him
+pursued by curses.
+
+He stopped at Aaron's door and called for Tommy, but Tommy had left the
+house an hour ago. "Gone with her, the sacket; he very likely put her up
+to this," the doctor muttered, and the surmise seemed justified when he
+heard that Grizel and Tommy had been seen passing the Fens. That they
+were running away had never struck those who saw them, and McQueen said
+nothing of his suspicions, but off he went in his gig on their track and
+ran them down within a mile of Tilliedrum. Grizel scurried on, thinking
+it was undoubtedly her father, but in a few minutes the three were
+conversing almost amicably, the doctor's first words had been so
+"sweet."
+
+Tommy explained that they were out for a walk, but Grizel could not lie,
+and in a few passionate sentences she told McQueen the truth. He had
+guessed the greater part of it, and while she spoke he looked so sorry
+for her, such a sweet change had come over his manner, that she held his
+hand.
+
+"But you must go no farther," he told her, "I am to take you back with
+me," and that alarmed her. "I won't go back," she said, determinedly,
+"he might come."
+
+"There's little fear of his coming," McQueen assured her, gently, "but
+if he does come I give you my solemn word that I won't let him take you
+away unless you want to go."
+
+Even then she only wavered, but he got her altogether with this: "And
+should he come, just think what a piece of your mind you could give him,
+with me standing by holding your hand."
+
+"Oh, would you do that?" she asked, brightening.
+
+"I would do a good deal to get the chance," he said.
+
+"I should just love it!" she cried. "I shall come now," and she stepped
+light-heartedly into the gig, where the doctor joined her. Tommy, who
+had been in the background all this time, was about to jump up beside
+them, but McQueen waved him back, saying maliciously, "There's just room
+for two, my man, so I won't interfere with your walk."
+
+Tommy, in danger of being left, very hot and stout and sulky, whimpered,
+"What have I done to anger you?"
+
+"You were going with her, you blackguard," replied McQueen, not yet in
+full possession of the facts, for whether Tommy was or was not going
+with her no one can ever know.
+
+"If I was," cried the injured boy, "it wasna because I wanted to go, it
+was because it wouldna have been respectable for her to go by hersel'."
+
+The doctor had already started his shalt, but at these astonishing
+words he drew up sharply. "Say that again," ha said, as if thinking that
+his ears must have deceived him, and Tommy repeated his remark,
+wondering at its effect.
+
+"And you tell me that you were going with her," the doctor repeated, "to
+make her enterprise more respectable?" and he looked from one to the
+other.
+
+"Of course I was," replied Tommy, resenting his surprise at a thing so
+obvious; and "That's why I wanted him to come," chimed in Grizel.
+
+Still McQueen's glance wandered from the boy to the girl and from the
+girl to the boy. "You are a pair!" he said at last, and he signed in
+silence to Tommy to mount the gig. But his manner had alarmed Grizel,
+ever watching herself lest she should stray into the ways of bad ones,
+and she asked anxiously, "There was nothing wrong in it, was there?"
+
+"No," the doctor answered gravely, laying his hand on hers, "no, it was
+just sweet."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What McQueen had to say to her was not for Tommy's ears, and the
+conversation was but a makeshift until they reached Thrums, where he
+sent the boy home, recommending him to hold his tongue about the
+escapade (and Tommy of course saw the advisability of keeping it from
+Elspeth); but he took Grizel into his parlor and set her down on the
+buffet stool by the fire, where he surveyed her in silence at his
+leisure. Then he tried her in his old armchair, then on his sofa; then
+he put the _Mentor_ into her hand and told her to hold it as if it were
+a duster, then he sent her into the passage, with instructions to open
+the door presently and announce "Dinner is ready;" then he told her to
+put some coals on the fire; then he told her to sit at the window, first
+with an open book in her hand, secondly as if she was busy knitting; and
+all these things she did wondering exceedingly, for he gave no
+explanation except the incomprehensible one, "I want to see what it
+would be like."
+
+She had told him in the gig why she had changed the position of the
+mirror at Double Dykes, it was to let "that darling" wave good-by to her
+from the window; and now having experimented with her in his parlor he
+drew her toward his chair, so that she stood between his knees. And he
+asked her if she understood why he had gone to Double Dykes.
+
+"Was it to get me to tell you what were the names in the letter?" she
+said, wistfully. "That is what everyone asks me, but I won't tell, no, I
+won't;" and she closed her mouth hard.
+
+He, too, would have liked to hear the names, and he sighed, it must be
+admitted, at sight of that determined mouth, but he could say
+truthfully, "Your refusal to break your promise is one of the things
+that I admire in you."
+
+Admire! Grizel could scarce believe that this gift was for her. "You
+don't mean that you really like me?" she faltered, but she felt sure all
+the time that he did, and she cried, "Oh, but why, oh, how can you!"
+
+"For one reason," he said, "because you are so good."
+
+"Good! Oh! oh! oh!" She clapped her hands joyously.
+
+"And for another--because you are so brave."
+
+"But I am not really brave," she said anxiously, yet resolved to hide
+nothing, "I only pretend to be brave, I am often frightened, but I just
+don't let on."
+
+That, he told her, is the highest form of bravery, but Grizel was very,
+very tired of being brave, and she insisted impetuously, "I don't want
+to be brave, I want to be afraid, like other girls."
+
+"Ay, it's your right, you little woman," he answered, tenderly, and then
+again he became mysterious. He kicked off his shoes to show her that he
+was wearing socks that did not match. "I just pull on the first that
+come to hand," he said recklessly.
+
+"Oh!" cried Grizel.
+
+On his dusty book-shelves he wrote, with his finger, "Not dusted since
+the year One."
+
+"Oh! oh!" she cried.
+
+He put his fingers through his gray, untidy hair. "That's the only comb
+I have that is at hand when I want it," he went on, regardless of her
+agony.
+
+"All the stud-holes in my shirts," he said, "are now so frayed and
+large that the studs fall out, and I find them in my socks at night."
+
+Oh! oh! he was killing her, he was, but what cared he? "Look at my
+clothes," said the cruel man, "I read when I'm eating, and I spill so
+much gravy that--that we boil my waistcoat once a month, and make soup
+of it!"
+
+To Grizel this was the most tragic picture ever drawn by man, and he saw
+that it was time to desist. "And it's all," he said, looking at her
+sadly, "it's all because I am a lonely old bachelor with no womankind to
+look after him, no little girl to brighten him when he comes home
+dog-tired, no one to care whether his socks are in holes and his comb
+behind the wash-stand, no soft hand to soothe his brow when it aches, no
+one to work for, no one to love, many a one to close the old bachelor's
+eyes when he dies, but none to drop a tear for him, no one to--"
+
+"Oh! oh! oh! That is just like me. Oh! oh!" cried Grizel, and he pulled
+her closer to him, saying, "The more reason we should join thegither;
+Grizel, if you don't take pity on me, and come and bide with me and be
+my little housekeeper, the Lord Almighty only knows what is to become of
+the old doctor."
+
+At this she broke away from him, and stood far back pressing her arms to
+her sides, and she cried, "It is not out of charity you ask me, is it?"
+and then she went a little nearer. "You would not say it if it wasn't
+true, would you?"
+
+"No, my dawtie, it's true," he told her, and if he had been pitying
+himself a little, there was an end of that now.
+
+She remembered something and cried joyously, "And you knew what was in
+my blood before you asked me, so I don't need to tell you, do I? And you
+are not afraid that I shall corrupt you, are you? And you don't think it
+a pity I didn't die when I was a tiny baby, do you? Some people think
+so, I heard them say it."
+
+"What would have become of me?" was all he dared answer in words, but he
+drew her to him again, and when she asked if it was true, as she had
+heard some woman say, that in some matters men were all alike, and did
+what that one man had done to her mamma, he could reply solemnly, "No,
+it is not true; it's a lie that has done more harm than any war in any
+century."
+
+She sat on his knee, telling him many things that had come recently to
+her knowledge but were not so new to him. The fall of woman was the
+subject, a strange topic for a girl of thirteen and a man of sixty. They
+don't become wicked in a moment, he learned; if they are good to begin
+with, it takes quite a long time to make them bad. Her mamma was good to
+begin with. "I know she was good, because when she thought she was the
+girl she used to be, she looked sweet and said lovely things." The way
+the men do is this, they put evil thoughts into the woman's head, and
+say them often to her, till she gets accustomed to them, and thinks they
+cannot be bad when the man she loves likes them, and it is called
+corrupting the mind.
+
+"And then a baby comes to them," Grizel said softly, "and it is called a
+child of shame. I am a child of shame."
+
+He made no reply, so she looked up, and his face was very old and sad.
+"I am sorry too," she whispered, but still he said nothing, and then she
+put her fingers on his eyes to discover if they were wet, and they were
+wet. And so Grizel knew that there was someone who loved her at last.
+
+The mirror was the only article of value that Grizel took with her to
+her new home; everything else was rouped at the door of Double Dykes;
+Tommy, who should have been at his books, acting as auctioneer's clerk
+for sixpence. There are houses in Thrums where you may still be told who
+got the bed and who the rocking-chair, and how Nether Drumgley's wife
+dared him to come home without the spinet; but it is not by the sales
+that the roup is best remembered. Curiosity took many persons into
+Double Dykes that day, and in the room that had never been furnished
+they saw a mournful stack of empty brandy bottles, piled there by the
+auctioneer who had found them in every corner, beneath the bed, in
+presses, in boxes, whither they had been thrust by Grizel's mamma, as
+if to conceal their number from herself. The counting of these bottles
+was a labor, but it is not even by them that the roup is remembered.
+Among them some sacrilegious hands found a bundle of papers with a sad
+blue ribbon round them. They were the Painted Lady's love-letters, the
+letters she had written to the man. Why or how they had come back to her
+no one knew.
+
+Most of them were given to Grizel, but a dozen or more passed without
+her leave into the kists of various people, where often since then they
+have been consulted by swains in need of a pretty phrase; and Tommy's
+school-fellows, the very boys and girls who hooted the Painted Lady,
+were in time--so oddly do things turn out--to be among those whom her
+letters taught how to woo. Where the kists did not let in the damp or
+careless fingers, the paper long remained clean, the ink but little
+faded. Some of the letters were creased, as if they had once been much
+folded, perhaps for slipping into secret hiding-places, but none of them
+bore any address or a date. "To my beloved," was sometimes written on
+the cover, and inside he was darling or beloved again. So no one could
+have arranged them in the order in which they were written, though there
+was a three-cornered one which said it was the first. There was a violet
+in it, clinging to the paper as if they were fond of each other, and
+Grizel's mamma had written, "The violet is me, hiding in a corner
+because I am so happy." The letters were in many moods, playful,
+reflective, sad, despairing, arch, but all were written in an ecstasy of
+the purest love, and most of them were cheerful, so that you seemed to
+see the sun dancing on the paper while she wrote, the same sun that
+afterwards showed up her painted cheeks. Why they came back to her no
+one ever discovered, any more than how she who slipped the violet into
+that three-cornered one and took it out to kiss again and wrote, "It is
+my first love-letter, and I love it so much I am reluctant to let it
+go," became in a few years the derision of the Double Dykes. Some of
+these letters may be in old kists still, but whether that is so or not,
+they alone have passed the Painted Lady's memory from one generation to
+another, and they have purified it, so that what she was died with her
+vile body, and what she might have been lived on, as if it were her true
+self.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+WHO TOLD TOMMY TO SPEAK
+
+
+"Miss Alison Cray presents her compliments to--and requests the favor of
+their company at her marriage with Mr. Ivie McLean, on January 8th, at
+six o'clock."
+
+Tommy in his Sabbath clothes, with a rose from the Dovecot hot-house for
+buttonhole (which he slipped into his pocket when he saw other boys
+approaching), delivered them at the doors of the aristocracy, where, by
+the way, he had been a few weeks earlier, with another circular.
+
+"Miss Alison Cray being about to give up school, has pleasure in stating
+that she has disposed of the good-will of her establishment to Miss
+Jessy Langlands and Miss S. Oram, who will enter upon their scholastic
+duties on January 9th, at Hoods Cottage, where she most cordially," and
+so on.
+
+Here if the writer dared (but you would be so angry) he would introduce
+at the length of a chapter two brand-new characters, the Misses
+Langlands and Oram, who suddenly present themselves to him in the most
+sympathetic light. Miss Ailie has been safely stowed to port, but their
+little boat is only setting sail, and they are such young ones, neither
+out of her teens, that he would fain turn for a time from her to them.
+Twelve pounds they paid for the good-will, and, oh, the exciting
+discussions, oh, the scraping to get the money together! If little Miss
+Langlands had not been so bold, big Miss Oram must have drawn back, but
+if Miss Oram had not had that idea about a paper partition, of what
+avail the boldness of Miss Langlands? How these two trumps of girls
+succeeded in hiring the Painted Lady's spinet from Nether Drumgley--in
+the absence of his wife, who on her way home from buying a cochin-china
+met the spinet in a cart--how the mother of one of them, realizing in a
+klink that she was common no more, henceforth wore black caps instead of
+mutches (but the father dandered on in the old plebeian way), what the
+enterprise meant to a young man in distant Newcastle, whose favorite
+name was Jessy, how the news travelled to still more distant Canada,
+where a family of emigrants which had left its Sarah behind in Thrums,
+could talk of nothing else for weeks--it is hard to have to pass on
+without dwelling on these things, and indeed--but pass on we must.
+
+The chief figure at the wedding of Miss Ailie was undoubtedly Mr. T.
+Sandys. When one remembers his prominence, it is difficult to think that
+the wedding could have taken place without him. It was he (in his
+Sabbath clothes again, and now flaunting his buttonhole brazenly) who
+in insulting language ordered the rabble to stand back there. It was he
+who dashed out to the 'Sosh to get a hundred ha'pennies for the fifty
+pennies Mr. McLean had brought to toss into the air. It was he who went
+round in the carriage to pick up the guests and whisked them in and out,
+and slammed the door, and saw to it that the minister was not kept
+waiting, and warned Miss Ailie that if she did not come now they should
+begin without her. It was he who stood near her with a handkerchief
+ready in his hand lest she took to crying on her new brown silk (Miss
+Ailie was married in brown silk after all). As a crown to his audacity,
+it was he who told Mr. Dishart, in the middle of a noble passage, to
+mind the lamp.
+
+These duties were Dr. McQueen's, the best man, but either demoralized by
+the bridegroom, who went all to pieces at the critical moment and was
+much more nervous than the bride, or in terror lest Grizel, who had sent
+him to the wedding speckless and most beautifully starched, should
+suddenly appear at the door and cry, "Oh, oh, take your fingers off your
+shirt!" he was through other till the knot was tied, and then it was too
+late, for Tommy had made his mark. It was Tommy who led the way to the
+school-room, where the feast was ready, it was Tommy who put the guests
+in their places (even the banker cringed to him), it was. Tommy who
+winked to Mr. Dishart as a sign to say grace. As you will readily
+believe, Miss Ailie could not endure the thought of excluding her
+pupils from the festivities, and they began to arrive as soon as the
+tables had been cleared of all save oranges and tarts and raisins.
+Tommy, waving Gavinia aside, showed them in, and one of them, curious to
+tell, was Corp, in borrowed blacks, and Tommy shook hands with him and
+called him Mr. Shiach, both new experiences to Corp, who knocked over a
+table in his anxiety to behave himself, and roared at intervals "Do you
+see the little deevil!" and bit his warts and then politely swallowed
+the blood.
+
+As if oranges and tarts and raisins were not enough, came the Punch and
+Judy show, Tommy's culminating triumph. All the way to Redlintie had Mr.
+McLean sent for the Punch and Judy show, and nevertheless there was a
+probability of no performance, for Miss Ailie considered the show
+immoral. Most anxious was she to give pleasure to her pupils, and this
+she knew was the best way, but how could she countenance an
+entertainment which was an encouragement to every form of vice and
+crime? To send these children to the Misses Langlands and Oram, fresh
+from an introduction to the comic view of murder! It could not be done,
+now could it? Mr. McLean could make no suggestion. Mr. Dishart thought
+it would be advisable to substitute another entertainment; was there not
+a game called "The Minister's Cat"? Mrs. Dishart thought they should
+have the show and risk the consequences. So also thought Dr. McQueen.
+The banker was consulted, but saw no way out of the difficulty, nor did
+the lawyer, nor did the Misses Finlayson. Then Tommy appeared on the
+scene, and presently retired to find a way.
+
+He found it. The performance took place, and none of the fun was
+omitted, yet neither Miss Ailie--tuts, tuts Mrs. McLean--nor Mr. Dishart
+could disapprove. Punch did chuck his baby out at the window (roars of
+laughter) in his jovial time-honored way, _but_ immediately thereafter
+up popped the showman to say, "Ah, my dear boys and girls, let this be a
+lesson to you never to destroy your offsprings. Oh, shame on Punch, for
+to do the wicked deed; he will be catched in the end and serve him
+right." Then when Mr. Punch had wolloped his wife with the stick, amid
+thunders of applause, up again bobbed the showman, "Ah, my dear boys and
+girls, what a lesson is this we sees, what goings on is this? He have
+bashed the head of her as should ha' been the apple of his eye, and he
+does not care a--he does not care; but mark my words, his home it will
+now be desolate, no more shall she meet him at his door with kindly
+smile, he have done for her quite, and now he is a hunted man. Oh, be
+warned by his sad igsample, and do not bash the head of your loving
+wife." And there was a great deal more of the same, and simple Mrs.
+McLean almost wept tears of joy because her favorite's good heart had
+suggested these improvements.
+
+Grizel was not at the wedding; she was invited, but could not go
+because she was in mourning. But only her parramatty frock was in
+mourning, for already she had been the doctor's housekeeper for two full
+months, and her father had not appeared to plague her (he never did
+appear, it may be told at once), and so how could her face be woeful
+when her heart leapt with gladness? Never had prisoner pined for the
+fields more than this reticent girl to be frank, and she poured out her
+inmost self to the doctor, so that daily he discovered something
+beautiful (and exasperating) about womanhood. And it was his love for
+her that had changed her. "You do love me, don't you?" she would say,
+and his answer might be "I have told you that fifty times already;" to
+which she would reply, gleefully, "That is not often, I say it all day
+to myself."
+
+Exasperating? Yes, that was the word. Long before summer came, the
+doctor knew that he had given himself into the hands of a tyrant. It was
+idle his saying that this irregularity and that carelessness were habits
+that had become part of him; she only rocked her arms impatiently, and
+if he would not stand still to be put to rights, then she would follow
+him along the street, brushing him as he walked, a sight that was
+witnessed several times while he was in the mutinous stage.
+
+"Talk about masterfulness," he would say, when she whipped off his coat
+or made a dart at the mud on his trousers; "you are the most masterful
+little besom I ever clapped eyes on."
+
+But as he said it he perhaps crossed his legs, and she immediately
+cried, "You have missed two holes in lacing your boots!"
+
+Of a morning he would ask her sarcastically to examine him from top to
+toe and see if he would do, and examine him she did, turning him round,
+pointing out that he had been sitting "again" on his tails, that oh, oh,
+he must have cut that buttonhole with his knife. He became most artful
+in hiding deficiencies from her, but her suspicions once roused would
+not sleep, and all subterfuge was vain. "Why have you buttoned your coat
+up tight to the throat to-day?" she would demand sternly.
+
+"It is such a cold morning," he said.
+
+"That is not the reason," she replied at once (she could see through
+broadcloth at a glance), "I believe you have on the old necktie again,
+and you promised to buy a new one."
+
+"I always forget about it when I'm out," he said humbly, and next
+evening he found on his table a new tie, made by Grizel herself out of
+her mamma's rokelay.
+
+It was related by one who had dropped in at the doctor's house
+unexpectedly, that he found Grizel making a new shirt, and forcing the
+doctor to try on the sleeves while they were still in the pin stage.
+
+She soon knew his every want, and just as he was beginning to want it,
+there it was at his elbow. He realized what a study she had made of him
+when he heard her talking of his favorite dishes and his favorite seat,
+and his way of biting his underlip when in thought, and how hard he was
+on his left cuff. It had been one of his boasts that he had no favorite
+dishes, etc., but he saw now that he had been a slave to them for years
+without knowing it.
+
+She discussed him with other mothers as if he were her little boy, and
+he denounced her for it. But all the time she was spoiling him. Formerly
+he had got on very well when nothing was in its place. Now he roared
+helplessly if he mislaid his razor.
+
+He was determined to make a lady of her, which necessitated her being
+sent to school; she preferred hemming, baking and rubbing things till
+they shone, and not both could have had their way (which sounds fatal
+for the man), had they not arranged a compromise, Grizel, for instance,
+to study geography for an hour in the evening with Miss Langlands (go to
+school in the daytime she would not) so long as the doctor shaved every
+morning, but if no shave no geography; the doctor to wipe his pen on the
+blot-sheet instead of on the lining of his coat if she took three
+lessons a week from Miss Oram on the spinet. How happy and proud she
+was! Her glee was a constant source of wonder to McQueen. Perhaps she
+put on airs a little, her walk, said the critical, had become a strut;
+but how could she help that when the new joyousness of living was
+dancing and singing within her?
+
+Had all her fears for the future rolled away like clouds that leave no
+mark behind? The doctor thought so at times, she so seldom spoke of them
+to him; he did not see that when they came she hid them from him because
+she had discovered that they saddened him. And she had so little time to
+brood, being convinced of the sinfulness of sitting still, that if the
+clouds came suddenly, they never stayed long save once, and then it was,
+mayhap, as well. The thunderclap was caused by Tommy, who brought it on
+unintentionally and was almost as much scared by his handiwork as Grizel
+herself. She and he had been very friendly of late, partly because they
+shared with McQueen the secret of the frustrated elopement, partly
+because they both thought that in that curious incident Tommy had
+behaved in a most disinterested and splendid way. Grizel had not been
+sure of it at first, but it had grown on Tommy, he had so thoroughly
+convinced himself of his intention to get into the train with her at
+Tilliedrum that her doubts were dispelled--easily dispelled, you say,
+but the truth must be told, Grizel was very anxious to be rid of them.
+And Tommy's were honest convictions, born full grown of a desire for
+happiness to all. Had Elspeth discovered how nearly he had deserted her,
+the same sentiment would have made him swear to her with tears that
+never should he have gone farther than Tilliedrum, and while he was
+persuading her he would have persuaded himself. Then again, when he met
+Grizel--well, to get him in doubt it would have been necessary to catch
+him on the way between these two girls.
+
+So Tommy and Grizel were friends, and finding that it hurt the doctor to
+speak on a certain subject to him, Grizel gave her confidences to Tommy.
+She had a fear, which he shared on its being explained to him, that she
+might meet a man of the stamp of her father, and grow fond of him before
+she knew the kind he was, and as even Tommy could not suggest an
+infallible test which would lay them bare at the first glance, he
+consented to consult Blinder once more. He found the blind man by his
+fire-side, very difficult to coax into words on the important topic, but
+Tommy's "You've said ower much no to tell a bit more," seemed to impress
+him, and he answered the question,--
+
+"You said a woman should fly frae the like o' Grizel's father though it
+should be to the other end of the world, but how is she to ken that he's
+that kind?"
+
+"She'll ken," Blinder answered after thinking it over, "if she likes him
+and fears him at one breath, and has a sort of secret dread that he's
+getting a power ower her that she canna resist."
+
+These words were a flash of light on a neglected corner to Tommy. "Now I
+see, now I ken," he exclaimed, amazed; "now I ken what my mother meant!
+Blinder, is that no the kind of man that's called masterful?"
+
+"It's what poor women find them and call them to their cost," said
+Blinder.
+
+Tommy's excitement was prodigious. "Now I ken, now I see!" he cried,
+slapping his leg and stamping up and down the room.
+
+"Sit down!" roared his host.
+
+"I canna," retorted the boy. "Oh, to think o't, to think I came to speir
+that question at you, to think her and me has wondered what kind he was,
+and I kent a' the time!" Without staying to tell Blinder what he was
+blethering about, he hurried off to Grizel, who was waiting for him in
+the Den, and to her he poured out his astonishing news.
+
+"I ken all about them, I've kent since afore I came to Thrums, but
+though I generally say the prayer, I've forgot to think o' what it
+means." In a stampede of words he told her all he could remember of his
+mother's story as related to him on a grim night in London so long ago,
+and she listened eagerly. And when that was over, he repeated first his
+prayer and then Elspeth's, "O God, whatever is to be my fate, may I
+never be one of them that bow the knee to masterful man, and if I was
+born like that and canna help it, O take me up to heaven afore I'm
+fil't." Grizel repeated it after him until she had it by heart, and even
+as she said it a strange thing happened, for she began to draw back
+from Tommy, with a look of terror on her face.
+
+"What makes you look at me like that?" he cried.
+
+"I believe--I think--you are masterful," she gasped.
+
+"Me!" he retorted indignantly.
+
+"Now," she went on, waving him back, "now I know why I would not give in
+to you when you wanted me to be Stroke's wife. I was afraid you were
+masterful!"
+
+"Was that it?" cried Tommy.
+
+"Now," she proceeded, too excited to heed his interruptions, "now I know
+why I would not kiss your hand, now I know why I would not say I liked
+you. I was afraid of you, I--"
+
+"Were you?" His eyes began to sparkle, and something very like rapture
+was pushing the indignation from his face. "Oh, Grizel, have I a power
+ower you?"
+
+"No, you have not," she cried passionately. "I was just frightened that
+you might have. Oh, oh, I know you now!"
+
+"To think o't, to think o't!" he crowed, wagging his head, and then she
+clenched her fist, crying, "Oh, you wicked, you should cry with shame!"
+
+But he had his answer ready, "It canna be my wite, for I never kent o't
+till you telled me. Grizel, it has just come about without either of us
+kenning!"
+
+She shuddered at this, and then seized him by the shoulders. "It has
+not come about at all," she said, "I was only frightened that it might
+come, and now it can't come, for I won't let it."
+
+"But can you help yoursel'?"
+
+"Yes, I can. I shall never be friends with you again."
+
+She had such a capacity for keeping her word that this alarmed him, and
+he did his best to extinguish his lights. "I'm no masterful, Grizel," he
+said, "and I dinna want to be, it was just for a minute that I liked the
+thought." She shook her head, but his next words had more effect. "If I
+had been that kind, would I have teached you Elspeth's prayer?"
+
+"N-no, I don't think so," she said slowly, and perhaps he would have
+succeeded in soothing her, had not a sudden thought brought back the
+terror to her face.
+
+"What is 't now?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, oh, oh!" she cried, "and I nearly went away with you!" and without
+another word she fled from the Den. She never told the doctor of this
+incident, and in time it became a mere shadow in the background, so that
+she was again his happy housekeeper, but that was because she had found
+strength to break with Tommy. She was only an eager little girl,
+pathetically ignorant about what she wanted most to understand, but she
+saw how an instinct had been fighting for her, and now it should not
+have to fight alone. How careful she became! All Tommy's wiles were
+vain, she would scarcely answer if he spoke to her; if he had ever
+possessed a power over her it was gone, Elspeth's prayer had saved her.
+
+Jean Myles had told Tommy to teach that prayer to Elspeth; but who had
+told him to repeat it to Grizel?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+THE BRANDING OF TOMMY
+
+
+Grizel's secession had at least one good effect: it gave Tommy more time
+in which to make a scholar of himself. Would you like a picture of Tommy
+trying to make a scholar of himself?
+
+They all helped him in their different ways: Grizel, by declining his
+company; Corp, by being far away at Look-about-you, adding to the inches
+of a farm-house; Aaron Latta, by saying nothing but looking "college or
+the herding;" Mr. McLean, who had settled down with Ailie at the
+Dovecot, by inquiries about his progress; Elspeth by--but did Elspeth's
+talks with him about how they should live in Aberdeen and afterwards
+(when they were in the big house) do more than send his mind a-galloping
+(she holding on behind) along roads that lead not to Aberdeen? What
+drove Tommy oftenest to the weary drudgery was, perhaps, the alarm that
+came over him when he seemed of a sudden to hear the names of the
+bursars proclaimed and no Thomas Sandys among them. Then did he shudder,
+for well he knew that Aaron would keep his threat, and he hastily
+covered the round table with books and sat for hours sorrowfully
+pecking at them, every little while to discover that his mind had soared
+to other things, when he hauled it back, as one draws in a reluctant
+kite. On these occasions Aaron seldom troubled him, except by glances
+that, nevertheless, brought the kite back more quickly than if they had
+been words of warning. If Elspeth was present, the warper might sit
+moodily by the fire, but when the man and the boy were left together,
+one or other of them soon retired, as if this was the only way of
+preserving the peace. Though determined to keep his word to Jean Myles
+liberally, Aaron had never liked Tommy, and Tommy's avoidance of him is
+easily accounted for; he knew that Aaron did not admire him, and unless
+you admired Tommy he was always a boor in your presence, shy and
+self-distrustful. Especially was this so if you were a lady (how
+amazingly he got on in after years with some of you, what agony others
+endured till he went away!), and it is the chief reason why there are
+such contradictory accounts of him to-day.
+
+Sometimes Mr. Cathro had hopes of him other than those that could only
+be revealed in a shameful whisper with the door shut. "Not so bad," he
+might say to Mr. McLean; "if he keeps it up we may squeeze him through
+yet, without trusting to--to what I was fool enough to mention to you.
+The mathematics are his weak point, there's nothing practical about him
+(except when it's needed to carry out his devil's designs) and he cares
+not a doit about the line A B, nor what it's doing in the circle K, but
+there's whiles he surprises me when we're at Homer. He has the spirit
+o't, man, even when he bogles at the sense."
+
+But the next time Ivie called for a report--!
+
+In his great days, so glittering, so brief (the days of the penny Life)
+Tommy, looking back to this year, was sure that he had never really
+tried to work. But he had. He did his very best, doggedly, wearily
+sitting at the round table till Elspeth feared that he was killing
+himself and gave him a melancholy comfort by saying so. An hour
+afterwards he might discover that he had been far away from his books,
+looking on at his affecting death and counting the mourners at the
+funeral.
+
+Had he thought that Grizel's discovery was making her unhappy he would
+have melted at once, but never did she look so proud as when she
+scornfully passed him by, and he wagged his head complacently over her
+coming chagrin when she heard that he had carried the highest bursary.
+Then she would know what she had flung away. This should have helped him
+to another struggle with his lexicon, but it only provided a breeze for
+the kite, which flew so strong that he had to let go the string.
+
+Aaron and the Dominie met one day in the square, and to Aaron's surprise
+Mr. Cathro's despondency about Tommy was more pronounced than before.
+"I wonder at that," the warper said, "for I assure you he has been
+harder 'at it than ever thae last nights. What's more, he used to look
+doleful as he sat at his table, but I notice now that he's as sweer to
+leave off as he's keen to begin, and the face of him is a' eagerness
+too, and he reads ower to himself what he has wrote and wags his head at
+it as if he thought it grand."
+
+"Say you so?" asked Cathro, suspiciously; "does he leave what he writes
+lying about, Aaron?"
+
+"No, but he takes it to you, does he no'?"
+
+"Not him," said the Dominie, emphatically. "I may be mistaken, Aaron,
+but I'm doubting the young whelp is at his tricks again."
+
+The Dominie was right, and before many days passed he discovered what
+was Tommy's new and delicious occupation.
+
+For years Mr. Cathro had been in the habit of writing letters for such
+of the populace as could not guide a pen, and though he often told them
+not to come deaving him he liked the job, unexpected presents of a hen
+or a ham occasionally arriving as his reward, while the personal matters
+thus confided to him, as if he were a safe for the banking of private
+histories, gave him and his wife gossip for winter nights. Of late the
+number of his clients had decreased without his noticing it, so
+confident was he that they could not get on without him, but he
+received a shock at last from Andrew Dickie, who came one Saturday night
+with paper, envelope, a Queen's head, and a request for a letter for
+Bell Birse, now of Tilliedrum.
+
+"You want me to speir in your name whether she'll have you, do you?"
+asked Cathro, with a flourish of his pen.
+
+"It's no just so simple as that," said Andrew, and then he seemed to be
+rather at a loss to say what it was. "I dinna ken," he continued
+presently with a grave face, "whether you've noticed that I'm a gey
+queer deevil? Losh, I think I'm the queerest deevil I ken."
+
+"We are all that," the Dominie assured him. "But what do you want me to
+write?"
+
+"Well, it's like this," said Andrew, "I'm willing to marry her if she's
+agreeable, but I want to make sure that she'll take me afore I speir
+her. I'm a proud man, Dominie."
+
+"You're a sly one!"
+
+"Am I no!" said Andrew, well pleased. "Well, could you put the letter in
+that wy?"
+
+"I wouldna," replied Mr. Cathro, "though I could, and I couldna though I
+would. It would defy the face of clay to do it, you canny lover."
+
+Now, the Dominie had frequently declined to write as he was bidden, and
+had suggested alterations which were invariably accepted, but to his
+astonishment Andrew would not give in. "I'll be stepping, then," he
+said coolly, "for if you hinna the knack o't I ken somebody that has."
+
+"Who?" demanded the irate Dominie.
+
+"I promised no to tell you," replied Andrew, and away he went. Mr.
+Cathro expected him to return presently in humbler mood, but was
+disappointed, and a week or two afterwards he heard Andrew and Mary Jane
+Proctor cried in the parish church. "Did Bell Birse refuse him?" he
+asked the kirk officer, and was informed that Bell had never got a
+chance. "His letter was so cunning," said John, "that without speiring
+her, it drew ane frae her in which she let out that she was centred on
+Davit Allardyce."
+
+"But who wrote Andrew's letter?" asked Mr. Cathro, sharply.
+
+"I thought it had been yoursel'," said John, and the Dominie chafed, and
+lost much of the afternoon service by going over in his mind the names
+of possible rivals. He never thought of Tommy.
+
+Then a week or two later fell a heavier blow. At least twice a year the
+Dominie had written for Meggy Duff to her daughter in Ireland a long
+letter founded on this suggestion, "Dear Kaytherine, if you dinna send
+ten shillings immediately, your puir auld mother will have neither house
+nor hame. I'm crying to you for't, Kaytherine; hearken and you'll hear
+my cry across the cauldriff sea." He met Meggy in the Banker's Close one
+day, and asked her pleasantly if the time was not drawing nigh for
+another appeal.
+
+"I have wrote," replied the old woman, giving her pocket a boastful
+smack, which she thus explained, "And it was the whole ten shillings
+this time, and you never got more for me than five."
+
+"Who wrote the letter for you?" he asked, lowering.
+
+She, too, it seemed, had promised not to tell.
+
+"Did you promise to tell nobody, Meggy, or just no to tell me," he
+pressed her, of a sudden suspecting Tommy.
+
+"Just no to tell you," she answered, and at that.
+
+"Da-a-a," began the Dominie, and then saved his reputation by adding
+"gont." The derivation of the word dagont has puzzled many, but here we
+seem to have it.
+
+It is interesting to know what Tommy wrote. The general opinion was that
+his letter must have been a triumph of eloquent appeal, and indeed he
+had first sketched out several masterpieces, all of some length and in
+different styles, but on the whole not unlike the concoctions of Meggy's
+former secretary; that is, he had dwelt on the duties of daughters, on
+the hardness of the times, on the certainty that if Katherine helped
+this time assistance would never be needed again. This sort of thing had
+always satisfied the Dominie, but Tommy, despite his several attempts,
+had a vague consciousness that there was something second-rate about
+them, and he tapped on his brain till it responded. The letter he
+despatched to Ireland, but had the wisdom not to read aloud even to
+Meggy, contained nothing save her own words, "Dear Kaytherine, if you
+dinna send ten shillings immediately, your puir auld mother will have
+neither house nor hame. I'm crying to you for't, Kaytherine; hearken and
+you'll hear my cry across the cauldriff sea." It was a call from the
+heart which transported Katherine to Thrums in a second of time, she
+seemed to see her mother again, grown frail since last they met--and so
+all was well for Meggy. Tommy did not put all this to himself but he
+felt it, and after that he _could not_ have written the letter
+differently. Happy Tommy! To be an artist is a great thing, but to be an
+artist and not know it is the most glorious plight in the world.
+
+Other fickle clients put their correspondence into the boy's hands, and
+Cathro found it out but said nothing. Dignity kept him in check; he did
+not even let the tawse speak for him. So well did he dissemble that
+Tommy could not decide how much he knew, and dreaded his getting hold of
+some of the letters, yet pined to watch his face while he read them.
+This could not last forever. Mr. Cathro was like a haughty kettle which
+has choked its spout that none may know it has come a-boil, and we all
+know what in that event must happen sooner or later to the lid.
+
+The three boys who had college in the tail of their eye had certain
+privileges not for the herd. It was taken for granted that when
+knowledge came their way they needed no overseer to make them stand
+their ground, and accordingly for great part of the day they had a back
+bench to themselves, with half a dozen hedges of boys and girls between
+them and the Dominie. From his chair Mr. Cathro could not see them, but
+a foot-board was nailed to it, and when he stood on this, as he had an
+aggravating trick of doing, softly and swiftly, they were suddenly in
+view. A large fire had been burning all day and the atmosphere was
+soporific. Mr. Cathro was so sleepy himself that the sight of a nodding
+head enraged him like a caricature, and he was on the foot-board
+frequently for the reason that makes bearded men suck peppermints in
+church. Against his better judgment he took several peeps at Tommy, whom
+he had lately suspected of writing his letters in school or at least of
+gloating over them on that back bench. To-day he was sure of it. However
+absorbing Euclid may be, even the forty-seventh of the first book does
+not make you chuckle and wag your head; you can bring a substantive in
+Virgil back to the verb that has lost it without looking as if you would
+like to exhibit them together in the square. But Tommy was thus elated
+until he gave way to grief of the most affecting kind. Now he looked
+gloomily before him as if all was over, now he buried his face in his
+hands, next his eyes were closed as if in prayer. All this the Dominie
+stood from him, but when at last he began to blubber--
+
+At the blackboard was an arithmetic class, slates in hand, each member
+adding up aloud in turn a row of figures. By and by it was known that
+Cathro had ceased to listen. "Go on," his voice rather than himself
+said, and he accepted Mary Dundas's trembling assertion that four and
+seven make ten. Such was the faith in Cathro that even boys who could
+add promptly turned their eleven into ten, and he did not catch them at
+it. So obviously was his mind as well as his gaze on, something beyond,
+that Sandy Riach, a wit who had been waiting his chance for years,
+snapped at it now, and roared "Ten and eleven, nineteen" ("Go on," said
+Cathro), "and four, twenty," gasped Sandy, "and eight, sixteen," he
+added, gaining courage. "Very good," nmrmured the Dominie, whereupon
+Sandy clenched his reputation forever by saying, in one glorious
+mouthful, "and six, eleven, and two, five, and one, nocht."
+
+There was no laughing at it then (though Sandy held a levee in the
+evening), they were all so stricken with amazement. By one movement they
+swung round to see what had fascinated Cathro, and the other classes
+doing likewise, Tommy became suddenly the centre of observation. Big
+tears were slinking down his face, and falling on some sheets of paper,
+which emotion prevented his concealing. Anon the unusual stillness in
+the school made him look up, but he was dazed, like one uncertain of his
+whereabouts, and he blinked rapidly to clear his eyes, as a bird shakes
+water from its wings.
+
+Mr. Cathro first uttered what was afterward described as a kind of
+throttled skirl, and then he roared "Come here!" whereupon Tommy stepped
+forward heavily, and tried, as commanded, to come to his senses, but it
+was not easy to make so long a journey in a moment, and several times,
+as he seemed about to conquer his fears, a wave of feeling set them
+flowing again.
+
+"Take your time," said Mr. Cathro, grimly, "I can wait," and this had
+such a helpful effect that Tommy was able presently to speak up for his
+misdeeds. They consisted of some letters written at home but brought to
+the school for private reading, and the Dominie got a nasty jar when he
+saw that they were all signed "Betsy Grieve." Miss Betsy Grieve, servant
+to Mr. Duthie, was about to marry, and these letters were
+acknowledgments of wedding presents. Now, Mr. Cathro had written similar
+letters for Betsy only a few days before.
+
+"Did she ask you to write these for her?" he demanded, fuming, and Tommy
+replied demurely that she had. He could not help adding, though he felt
+the unwisdom of it, "She got some other body to do them first, but his
+letters didna satisfy her."
+
+"Oh!" said Mr. Cathro, and it was such a vicious oh that Tommy squeaked
+tremblingly, "I dinna know who he was."
+
+Keeping his mouth shut by gripping his underlip with his teeth, the
+Dominie read the letters, and Tommy gazed eagerly at him, all fear
+forgotten, soul conquering body. The others stood or sat waiting,
+perplexed as to the cause, confident of the issue. The letters were much
+finer productions than Cathro's, he had to admit it to himself as he
+read. Yet the rivals had started fair, for Betsy was a recent immigrant
+from Dunkeld way, and the letters were to people known neither to Tommy
+nor to the Dominie. Also, she had given the same details for the
+guidance of each. A lady had sent a teapot, which affected to be new,
+but was not; Betsy recognized it by a scratch on the lid, and wanted to
+scratch back, but politely. So Tommy wrote, "When you come to see me we
+shall have a cup of tea out of your beautiful present, and it will be
+like a meeting of three old friends." That was perhaps too polite, Betsy
+feared, but Tommy said authoritatively, "No, the politer the nippier."
+
+There was a set of six cups and saucers from Peter something, who had
+loved Betsy in vain. She had shown the Dominie and Tommy the ear-rings
+given her long ago by Peter (they were bought with 'Sosh checks) and the
+poem he had written about them, and she was most anxious to gratify him
+in her reply. All Cathro could do, however, was to wish Peter well in
+some ornate sentences, while Tommy's was a letter that only a tender
+woman's heart could have indited, with such beautiful touches about the
+days which are no more alas forever, that Betsy listened to it with
+heaving breast and felt so sorry for her old swain that, forgetting she
+had never loved him, she all but gave Andrew the go-by and returned to
+Peter. As for Peter, who had been getting over his trouble, he saw now
+for the first time what he had lost, and he carried Betsy's dear letter
+in his oxter pocket and was inconsolable.
+
+But the masterpiece went to Mrs. Dinnie, baker, in return for a flagon
+bun. Long ago her daughter, Janet, and Betsy had agreed to marry on the
+same day, and many a quip had Mrs. Dinnie cast at their romantic
+compact. But Janet died, and so it was a sad letter that Tommy had to
+write to her mother. "I'm doubting you're no auld enough for this ane,"
+soft-hearted Betsy said, but she did not know her man. "Tell me some one
+thing the mother used often to say when she was taking her fun off the
+pair of you," he said, and "Where is she buried?" was a suggestive
+question, with the happy tag, "Is there a tree hanging over the grave?"
+Thus assisted, he composed a letter that had a tear in every sentence.
+Betsy rubbed her eyes red over it, and not all its sentiments were
+allowed to die, for Mrs. Dinnie, touched to the heart, printed the best
+of them in black licorice on short bread for funeral feasts, at which
+they gave rise to solemn reflections as they went down.
+
+Nevertheless, this letter affected none so much as the writer of it. His
+first rough sketch became so damp as he wrote that he had to abandon his
+pen and take to pencil; while he was revising he had often to desist to
+dry his eyes on the coverlet of Aaron's bed, which made Elspeth weep
+also, though she had no notion what he was at. But when the work was
+finished he took her into the secret and read his letter to her, and he
+almost choked as he did so. Yet he smiled rapturously through his woe,
+and she knew no better than to be proud of him, and he woke next morning
+with a cold, brought on you can see how, but his triumph was worth its
+price.
+
+Having read the letter in an uncanny silence, Mr. Cathro unbottled Tommy
+for the details, and out they came with a rush, blowing away the cork
+discretion. Yet was the Dominie slow to strike; he seemed to find more
+satisfaction in surveying his young friend with a wondering gaze that
+had a dash of admiration in it, which Tommy was the first to note.
+
+"I don't mind admitting before the whole school," said Mr. Cathro,
+slowly, "that if these letters had been addressed to me they would have
+taken me in."
+
+Tommy tried to look modest, but his chest would have its way.
+
+"You little sacket," cried the Dominie, "how did you manage it?"
+
+"I think I thought I was Betsy at the time," Tommy answered, with proper
+awe.
+
+"She told me nothing about the weeping-willow at the grave," said the
+Dominie, perhaps in self-defence.
+
+"You hadna speired if there was one," retorted Tommy, jealously.
+
+"What made you think of it?"
+
+"I saw it might come in neat." (He had said in the letter that the
+weeping-willow reminded him of the days when Janet's bonny hair hung
+down kissing her waist just as the willow kissed the grave.)
+
+"Willows don't hang so low as you seem to think," said the Dominie.
+
+"Yes, they do," replied Tommy, "I walked three miles to see one to make
+sure. I was near putting in another beautiful bit about
+weeping-willows."
+
+"Well, why didn't you?"
+
+Tommy looked up with an impudent snigger. "You could never guess," he
+said.
+
+"Answer me at once," thundered his preceptor. "Was it because--"
+
+"No," interrupted Tommy, so conscious of Mr. Cathro's inferiority that
+to let him go on seemed waste of time. "It was because, though it is a
+beautiful thing in itself, I felt a servant lassie wouldna have thought
+o't. I was sweer," he admitted, with a sigh; then firmly, "but I cut it
+out."
+
+Again Cathro admired, reluctantly. The hack does feel the difference
+between himself and the artist. Cathro might possibly have had the idea,
+he could not have cut it out.
+
+_But_ the hack is sometimes, or usually, or nearly always the artist's
+master, and can make him suffer for his dem'd superiority.
+
+"What made you snivel when you read the pathetic bits?" asked Cathro,
+with itching fingers.
+
+"I was so sorry for Peter and Mrs. Dinnie," Tommy answered, a little
+puzzled himself now. "I saw them so clear."
+
+"And yet until Betsy came to you, you had never heard tell of them?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And on reflection you don't care a doit about them?"
+
+"N-no."
+
+"And you care as little for Betsy?"
+
+"No now, but at the time I a kind of thought I was to be married to
+Andrew."
+
+"And even while you blubbered you were saying to yourself, 'What a
+clever billie I am!'"
+
+Mr. Cathro had certainly intended to end the scene with the strap, but
+as he stretched out his hand for it he had another idea. "Do you know
+why Nether Drumgley's sheep are branded with the letters N.D.?" he asked
+his pupils, and a dozen replied, "So as all may ken wha they belong to."
+
+"Precisely," said Mr. Cathro, "and similarly they used to brand a letter
+on a felon, so that all might know whom _he_ belonged to." He crossed to
+the fireplace, and, picking up a charred stick, wrote with it on the
+forehead of startled Tommy the letters "S.T."
+
+"Now," said the Dominie complacently, "we know to whom Tommy belongs."
+
+All were so taken aback that for some seconds nothing could be heard
+save Tommy indignantly wiping his brow; then "Wha is he?" cried one, the
+mouthpiece of half a hundred.
+
+"He is one of the two proprietors we have just been speaking of,"
+replied Cathro, dryly, and turning again to Tommy, he said, "Wipe away,
+Sentimental Tommy, try hot water, try cold water, try a knife, but you
+will never get those letters off you; you are branded for ever and
+ever."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+OF FOUR MINISTERS WHO AFTERWARDS BOASTED THAT THEY HAD KNOWN TOMMY
+SANDYS
+
+
+Bursary examination time had come, and to the siege of Aberdeen marched
+a hungry half-dozen--three of them from Thrums, two from the Glenuharity
+school. The sixth was Tod Lindertis, a ploughman from the Dubb of
+Prosen, his place of study the bothy after lousing time (Do you hear the
+klink of quoits?) or a one-roomed house near it, his tutor a dogged
+little woman, who knew not the accusative from the dative, but never
+tired of holding the book while Tod recited. Him someone greets with the
+good-natured jeer, "It's your fourth try, is it no, Tod?" and he answers
+cheerily, "It is, my lathie, and I'll keep kick, kick, kicking away to
+the _n_th time."
+
+"Which means till the door flies open," says the dogged little woman,
+who is the gallant Tod's no less gallant wife, and already the mother of
+two. I hope Tod will succeed this time.
+
+The competitors, who were to travel part of the way on their shanks, met
+soon after daybreak in Cathro's yard, where a little crowd awaited them,
+parents trying to look humble, Mr. Duthie and Ramsay Cameron thinking
+of the morning when they set off on the same errand--but the results
+were different, and Mr. Duthie is now a minister, and Ramsay is in the
+middle of another wob. Both dominies were present, hating each other,
+for that day only, up to the mouth, where their icy politeness was a
+thing to shudder at, and each was drilling his detachment to the last
+moment, but by different methods; for while Mr. Cathro entreated Joe
+Meldrum for God's sake to mind that about the genitive, and Willie
+Simpson to keep his mouth shut and drink even water sparingly, Mr.
+Ogilvy cracked jokes with Gav Dishart and explained them to Lauchlan
+McLauchlan. "Think of anything now but what is before you," was Mr.
+Ogilvy's advice. "Think of nothing else," roared Mr. Cathro. But though
+Mr. Ogilvy seemed outwardly calm it was base pretence; his dickie
+gradually wriggled through the opening of his waistcoat, as if bearing a
+protest from his inward parts, and he let it hang crumpled and
+conspicuous, while Grizel, on the outskirts of the crowd, yearned to put
+it right.
+
+Grizel was not there, she told several people, including herself, to say
+good-by to Tommy, and oh, how she scorned Elspeth, for looking as if
+life would not be endurable without him. Knowing what Elspeth was, Tommy
+had decided that she should not accompany him to the yard (of course she
+was to follow him to Aberdeen if he distinguished himself--Mr. McLean
+had promised to bring her), but she told him of her dream that he headed
+the bursary list, and as this dream coincided with some dreams of his
+own, though not with all, it seemed to give her such fortitude that he
+let her come. An expressionless face was Tommy's, so that not even the
+experienced dominie of Glenquharity, covertly scanning his rival's lot,
+could tell whether he was gloomy or uplifted; he did not seem to be in
+need of a long sleep like Willie Simpson, nor were his eyes glazed like
+Gav Dishart's, who carried all the problems of Euclid before him on an
+invisible blackboard and dared not even wink lest he displaced them, nor
+did he, like Tod Lindertis, answer questions about his money pocket or
+where he had stowed his bread and cheese with
+
+"After envy, spare, obey,
+The dative put, remember, pray."
+
+Mr. Ogilvy noticed that Cathro tapped his forehead doubtfully every time
+his eyes fell on Tommy, but otherwise shunned him, and he asked "What
+are his chances?"
+
+"That's the laddie," replied Mr. Cathro, "who, when you took her
+ladyship to see Corp Shiach years ago impersona--"
+
+"I know," Mr. Ogilvy interrupted him hastily, "but how will he stand,
+think you?"
+
+Mr. Cathro coughed. "We'll see," he said guardedly.
+
+Nevertheless Tommy was not to get round the corner without betraying a
+little of himself, for Elspeth having borne up magnificently when he
+shook hands, screamed at the tragedy of his back and fell into the arms
+of Tod's wife, whereupon Tommy first tried to brazen it out and then
+kissed her in the presence of a score of witnesses, including Grizel,
+who stamped her foot, though what right had she to be so angry? "I'm
+sure," Elspeth sobbed, "that the professor would let me sit beside you;
+I would just hunker on the floor and hold your foot and no say a word."
+Tommy gave Tod's wife an imploring look, and she managed to comfort
+Elspeth with predictions of his coming triumph and the reunion to
+follow. Grateful Elspeth in return asked Tommy to help Tod when the
+professors were not looking, and he promised, after which she had no
+more fear for Tod.
+
+And now, ye drums that we all carry in our breasts, beat your best over
+the bravest sight ever seen in a small Scotch town of an autumn morning,
+the departure of its fighting lads for the lists at Aberdeen. Let the
+tune be the sweet familiar one you found somewhere in the Bible long
+ago, "The mothers we leave behind us"--leave behind us on their knees.
+May it dirl through your bones, brave boys, to the end, as you hope not
+to be damned. And now, quick march.
+
+A week has elapsed, and now--there is no call for music now, for these
+are but the vanquished crawling back, Joe Meldrum and--and another. No,
+it is not Tod, he stays on in Aberdeen, for he is a twelve-pound tenner.
+The two were within a mile of Thrums at three o'clock, but after that
+they lagged, waiting for the gloaming, when they stole to their homes,
+ducking as they passed windows without the blinds down. Elspeth ran to
+Tommy when he appeared in the doorway, and then she got quickly between
+him and Aaron. The warper was sitting by the fire at his evening meal,
+and he gave the wanderer a long steady look, then without a word
+returned to his porridge and porter. It was a less hearty welcome home
+even than Joe's; his mother was among those who had wept to lose her
+son, but when he came back to her she gave him a whack on the head with
+the thieval.
+
+Aaron asked not a question about those days in Aberdeen, but he heard a
+little about them from Elspeth. Tommy had not excused himself to
+Elspeth, he had let her do as she liked with his head (this was a great
+treat to her), and while it lay pressed against hers, she made remarks
+about Aberdeen professors which it would have done them good to hear.
+These she repeated to Aaron, who was about to answer roughly, and then
+suddenly put her on his knee instead.
+
+"They didna ask the right questions," she told him, and when the warper
+asked if Tommy had said so, she declared that he had refused to say a
+word against them, which seemed to her to cover him with glory. "But he
+doubted they would make that mistake afore he started, she said
+brightly, so you see he saw through them afore ever he set eyes on
+them."
+
+Corp would have replied admiringly to this "Oh, the little deevil!"
+(when he heard of Tommy's failure he wanted to fight Gav Dishart and
+Willie Simpson), but Aaron was another kind of confidant, and even when
+she explained on Tommy's authority that there are two kinds of
+cleverness, the kind you learn from books and a kind that is inside
+yourself, which latter was Tommy's kind, he only replied,
+
+"He can take it wi' him to the herding, then, and see if it'll keep the
+cattle frae stravaiging."
+
+"It's no that kind of cleverness either," said Elspeth, quaking, and
+quaked also Tommy, who had gone to the garret, to listen through the
+floor.
+
+"No? I would like to ken what use his cleverness can be put to, then,"
+said Aaron, and Elspeth answered nothing, and Tommy only sighed, for
+that indeed was the problem. But though to these three and to Cathro,
+and to Mr. and Mrs. McLean and to others more mildly interested, it
+seemed a problem beyond solution, there was one in Thrums who rocked her
+arms at their denseness, a girl growing so long in the legs that twice
+within the last year she had found it necessary to let down her
+parramatty frock. As soon as she heard that Tommy had come home
+vanquished, she put on the quaint blue bonnet with the white strings,
+in which she fondly believed she looked ever so old (her period of
+mourning was at an end, but she still wore her black dress) and
+forgetting all except that he was unhappy, she ran to a certain little
+house to comfort him. But she did not go in, for through the window she
+saw Elspeth petting him, and that somehow annoyed her. In the evening,
+however, she called on Mr. Cathro.
+
+Perhaps you want to know why she, who at last saw Sentimental Tommy in
+his true light and spurned him accordingly, now exerted herself in his
+behalf instead of going on with the papering of the surgery. Well, that
+was the reason. She had put the question to herself before--not, indeed,
+before going to Monypenny but before calling on the Dominie--and decided
+that she wanted to send Tommy to college, because she disliked him so
+much that she could not endure the prospect of his remaining in Thrums.
+Now, are you satisfied?
+
+She could scarcely take time to say good-evening to Mr. Cathro before
+telling him the object of her visit. "The letters Tommy has been writing
+for people are very clever, are they not?" she began.
+
+"You've heard of them, have you?"
+
+"Everybody has heard of them," she said injudiciously, and he groaned
+and asked if she had come to tell him this. But he admitted their
+cleverness, whereupon she asked, "Well, if he is clever at writing
+letters, would he not be clever at writing an essay?"
+
+"I wager my head against a snuff mull that he would be, but what are you
+driving at?"
+
+"I was wondering whether he could not win the prize I heard Dr. McQueen
+speaking about, the--is it not called the Hugh Blackadder?"
+
+"My head against a buckie that he could! Sit down, Grizel, I see what
+you mean now. Ay, but the pity is he's not eligible for the Hugh
+Blackadder. Oh, that he was, oh, that he was! It would make Ogilvy of
+Glenquharity sing small at last! His loons have carried the Blackadder
+for the last seven years without a break. The Hugh Blackadder
+Mortification, the bequest is called, and, 'deed, it has been a sore
+mortification to me!"
+
+Calming down, he told her the story of the bequest. Hugh Blackadder was
+a Thrums man who made a fortune in America, and bequeathed the interest
+of three hundred pounds of it to be competed for yearly by the youth of
+his native place. He had grown fond of Thrums and all its ways over
+there, and left directions that the prize should be given for the best
+essay in the Scots tongue, the ministers of the town and glens to be the
+judges, the competitors to be boys who were going to college, but had
+not without it the wherewithal to support themselves. The ministers took
+this to mean that those who carried small bursaries were eligible, and
+indeed it had usually gone to a bursar.
+
+"Sentimental Tommy would not have been able to compete if he had got a
+bursary," Mr. Cathro explained, "because however small it was Mr. McLean
+meant to double it; and he can't compete without it, for McLean refuses
+to help him now (he was here an hour since, saying the laddie was
+obviously hopeless), so I never thought of entering Tommy for the
+Blackadder. No, it will go to Ogilvy's Lauchlan McLauchlan, who is a
+twelve-pounder, and, as there can be no competitors, he'll get it
+without the trouble of coming back to write the essay."
+
+"But suppose Mr. McLean were willing to do what he promised if Tommy won
+the Blackadder?"
+
+"It's useless to appeal to McLean. He's hard set against the laddie now
+and washes his hands of him, saying that Aaron Latta is right after all.
+He may soften, and get Tommy into a trade to save him from the herding,
+but send him to college he won't, and indeed he's right, the laddie's
+a fool."
+
+"Not at writing let--"
+
+"And what is the effect of his letter-writing, but to make me
+ridiculous? Me! I wonder you can expect me to move a finger for him, he
+has been my torment ever since his inscrutable face appeared at my
+door."
+
+"Never mind him," said Grizel, cunningly. "But think what a triumph it
+would be to you if your boy beat Mr. Ogilvy's."
+
+The Dominie rose in his excitement and slammed the table, "My certie,
+lassie, but it would!" he cried, "Ogilvy looks on the Blackadder as his
+perquisite, and he's surer of it than ever this year. And there's no
+doubt but Tommy would carry it. My head to a buckie preen he would carry
+it, and then, oh, for a sight of Ogilvy's face, oh, for--" He broke off
+abruptly. "But what's the good of thinking of it?" he said, dolefully,
+"Mr. McLean's a firm man when he makes up his mind."
+
+Nevertheless, though McLean, who had a Scotchman's faith in the verdict
+of professors, and had been bitterly disappointed by Tommy's failure,
+refused to be converted by the Dominie's entreaties, he yielded to them
+when they were voiced by Ailie (brought into the plot _vice_ Grizel
+retired), and Elspeth got round Aaron, and so it came about that with
+his usual luck, Tommy was given another chance, present at the
+competition, which took place in the Thrums school, the Rev. Mr. Duthie,
+the Rev. Mr. Dishart, the Rev. Mr. Gloag of Noran Side, the Rev. Mr.
+Lorrimer of Glenquharity (these on hair-bottomed chairs), and Mr. Cathro
+and Mr. Ogilvy (cane); present also to a less extent (that is to say,
+their faces at the windows), Corp and others, who applauded the local
+champion when he entered and derided McLauchlan. The subject of the
+essay was changed yearly, this time "A Day in Church" was announced,
+and immediately Lauchlan McLauchlan, who had not missed a service since
+his scarlet fever year (and too few then), smote his red head in agony,
+while Tommy, who had missed as many as possible, looked calmly
+confident. For two hours the competitors were put into a small room
+communicating with the larger one, and Tommy began at once with a
+confident smirk that presently gave way to a most holy expression; while
+Lauchlan gaped at him and at last got started also, but had to pause
+occasionally to rub his face on his sleeve, for like Corp he was one of
+the kind who cannot think without perspiring. In the large room the
+ministers gossiped about eternal punishment, and of the two dominies one
+sat at his ease, like a passenger who knows that the coach will reach
+the goal without any exertion on his part, while the other paced the
+floor, with many a despondent glance through the open door whence the
+scraping proceeded; and the one was pleasantly cool; and the other in a
+plot of heat; and the one made genial remarks about every-day matters,
+and the answers of the other stood on their heads. It was a familiar
+comedy to Mr. Ogilvy, hardly a variation on what had happened five times
+in six for many years: the same scene, the same scraping in the little
+room, the same background of ministers (black-aviced Mr. Lorrimer had
+begun to bark again), the same dominies; everything was as it had so
+often been, except that he and Cathro had changed places; it was Cathro
+who sat smiling now and Mr. Ogilvy who dolefully paced the floor.
+
+To be able to write! Throughout Mr. Ogilvy's life, save when he was
+about one and twenty, this had seemed the great thing, and he ever
+approached the thought reverently, as if it were a maid of more than
+mortal purity. And it is, and because he knew this she let him see her
+face, which shall ever be hidden from those who look not for the soul,
+and to help him nearer to her came assistance in strange guise, the loss
+of loved ones, dolour unutterable; but still she was beyond his reach.
+Night by night, when the only light in the glen was the school-house
+lamp, of use at least as a landmark to solitary travellers--who miss it
+nowadays, for it burns no more--she hovered over him, nor did she deride
+his hopeless efforts, but rather, as she saw him go from black to gray
+and from gray to white in her service, were her luminous eyes sorrowful
+because she was not for him, and she bent impulsively toward him, so
+that once or twice in a long life he touched her fingers, and a heavenly
+spark was lit, for he had risen higher than himself, and that is
+literature.
+
+He knew that oblivion was at hand, ready to sweep away his pages almost
+as soon as they were filled (Do we not all hear her besom when we pause
+to dip?), but he had done his best and he had a sense of humor, and
+perhaps some day would come a pupil of whom he could make what he had
+failed to make of himself. That prodigy never did come, though it was
+not for want of nursing, and there came at least, in succession most
+maddening to Mr. Cathro, a row of youths who could be trained to carry
+the Hugh Blackadder. Mr. Ogilvy's many triumphs in this competition had
+not dulled his appetite for more, and depressed he was at the prospect
+of a reverse. That it was coming now he could not doubt. McLauchlan, who
+was to be Rev., had a flow of words (which would prevent his perspiring
+much in the pulpit), but he could no more describe a familiar scene with
+the pen than a milkmaid can draw a cow. The Thrums representatives were
+sometimes as little gifted, it is true, and never were they so well
+exercised, but this Tommy had the knack of it, as Mr. Ogilvy could not
+doubt, for the story of his letter-writing had been through the glens.
+
+"Keep up your spirits," Mr. Lorrimer had said to Mm as they walked
+together to the fray, "Cathro's loon may compose the better of the two,
+but, as I understand, the first years of his life were spent in London,
+and so he may bogle at the Scotch."
+
+But the Dominie replied, "Don't buoy me up on a soap bubble. If there's
+as much in him as I fear, that should be a help to him instead of a
+hindrance, for it will have set him a-thinking about the words he uses."
+
+And the satisfaction on Tommy's face when the subject of the essay was
+given out, with the business-like way in which he set to work, had
+added to the Dominie's misgivings; if anything was required to
+dishearten him utterly it was provided by Cathro's confident smile. The
+two Thrums ministers were naturally desirous that Tommy should win, but
+the younger of them was very fond of Mr. Ogilvy, and noticing his
+unhappy peeps through the door dividing the rooms, proposed that it
+should be closed. He shut it himself, and as he did so he observed that
+Tommy was biting his pen and frowning, while McLauchlan, having ceased
+to think, was getting on nicely. But it did not strike Mr. Dishart that
+this was worth commenting on.
+
+"Are you not satisfied with the honors you have already got, you greedy
+man?" he said, laying his hand affectionately on Mr. Ogilvy, who only
+sighed for reply.
+
+"It is well that the prize should go to different localities, for in
+that way its sphere of usefulness is extended," remarked pompous Mr.
+Gloag, who could be impartial, as there was no candidate from Noran
+Side. He was a minister much in request for church soirees, where he
+amused the congregations so greatly with personal anecdote about himself
+that they never thought much of him afterwards. There is one such
+minister in every presbytery.
+
+"And to have carried the Hugh Blackadder seven times running is surely
+enough for any one locality, even though it be Glenquharity," said Mr.
+Lorrimer, preparing for defeat.
+
+"There's consolation for you, sir," said Mr. Cathro, sarcastically, to
+his rival, who tried to take snuff in sheer bravado, but let it slip
+through his fingers, and after that, until the two hours were up, the
+talk was chiefly of how Tommy would get on at Aberdeen. But it was
+confined to the four ministers and one dominie. Mr. Ogilvy still hovered
+about the door of communication, and his face fell more and more, making
+Mr. Dishart quite unhappy.
+
+"I'm an old fool," the Dominie admitted, "but I can't help being cast
+down. The fact is that--I have only heard the scrape of one pen for
+nearly an hour."
+
+"Poor Lauchlan!" exclaimed Mr. Cathro, rubbing his hands gleefully, and
+indeed it was such a shameless exhibition that the Auld Licht minister
+said reproachfully, "You forget yourself, Mr. Cathro, let us not be
+unseemly exalted in the hour of our triumph."
+
+Then Mr. Cathro sat upon his hands as the best way of keeping them
+apart, but the moment Mr. Dishart's back presented itself, he winked at
+Mr. Ogilvy. He winked a good deal more presently. For after all--how to
+tell it! Tommy was ignominiously beaten, making such a beggarly show
+that the judges thought it unnecessary to take the essays home with them
+for leisurely consideration before pronouncing Mr. Lauchlan McLauchlan
+winner. There was quite a commotion in the school-room. At the end of
+the allotted time the two competitors had been told to hand in their
+essays, and how Mr. McLauchlan was sniggering is not worth recording, so
+dumfounded, confused, and raging was Tommy. He clung to his papers,
+crying fiercely that the two hours could not be up yet, and Lauchlan
+having tried to keep the laugh in too long it exploded in his mouth,
+whereupon, said he, with a guffaw, "He hasna written a word for near an
+hour!"
+
+"What! It was you I heard!" cried Mr. Ogilvy gleaming, while the unhappy
+Cathro tore the essay from Tommy's hands. Essay! It was no more an essay
+than a twig is a tree, for the gowk had stuck in the middle of his
+second page. Yes, stuck is the right expression, as his chagrined
+teacher had to admit when the boy was cross-examined. He had not been
+"up to some of his tricks," he had stuck, and his explanations, as you
+will admit, merely emphasized his incapacity.
+
+He had brought himself to public scorn for lack of a word. What word?
+they asked testily, but even now he could not tell. He had wanted a
+Scotch word that would signify how many people were in church, and it
+was on the tip of his tongue but would come no farther. Puckle was
+nearly the word, but it did not mean so many people as he meant. The
+hour had gone by just like winking; he had forgotten all about time
+while searching his mind for the word.
+
+When Mr. Ogilvy heard this he seemed to be much impressed, repeatedly he
+nodded his head as some beat time to music, and he muttered to himself,
+"The right word--yes, that's everything," and "'the time went by like
+winking'--exactly, precisely," and he would have liked to examine
+Tommy's bumps, but did not, nor said a word aloud, for was he not there
+in McLauchlan's interest?
+
+The other five were furious; even Mr. Lorrimer, though his man had won,
+could not smile in face of such imbecility. "You little tattie doolie,"
+Cathro roared, "were there not a dozen words to wile from if you had an
+ill-will to puckle? What ailed you at manzy, or--"
+
+"I thought of manzy," replied Tommy, woefully, for he was ashamed of
+himself, "but--but a manse's a swarm. It would mean that the folk in the
+kirk were buzzing thegither like bees, instead of sitting still."
+
+"Even if it does mean that," said Mr. Duthie, with impatience, "what was
+the need of being so particular? Surely the art of essay-writing
+consists in using the first word that comes and hurrying on."
+
+"That's how I did," said the proud McLauchlan, who is now leader of a
+party in the church, and a figure in Edinburgh during the month of May.
+
+"I see," interposed Mr. Gloag, "that McLauchlan speaks of there being a
+mask of people in the church. Mask is a fine Scotch word."
+
+"Admirable," assented Mr. Dishart. "I thought of mask," whimpered Tommy,
+"but that would mean the kirk was crammed, and I just meant it to be
+middling full."
+
+"Flow would have done," suggested Mr. Lorrimer.
+
+"Flow's but a handful," said Tommy.
+
+"Curran, then, you jackanapes!"
+
+"Curran's no enough."
+
+Mr. Lorrimer flung up his hands in despair.
+
+"I wanted something between curran and mask," said Tommy, dogged, yet
+almost at the crying.
+
+Mr. Ogilvy, who had been hiding his admiration with difficulty, spread a
+net for him. "You said you wanted a word that meant middling full. Well,
+why did you not say middling full--or fell mask?"
+
+"Yes, why not?" demanded the ministers, unconsciously caught in the net.
+
+"I wanted one word," replied Tommy, unconsciously avoiding it.
+
+"You jewel!" muttered Mr. Ogilvy under his breath, but Mr. Cathro would
+have banged the boy's head had not the ministers interfered.
+
+"It is so easy, too, to find the right word," said Mr. Gloag.
+
+"It's no; it's as difficult as to hit a squirrel," cried Tommy, and
+again Mr. Ogilvy nodded approval.
+
+But the ministers were only pained.
+
+"The lad is merely a numskull," said Mr. Dishart, kindly.
+
+"And no teacher could have turned him into anything else," said Mr.
+Duthie.
+
+"And so, Cathro, you need not feel sore over your defeat," added Mr.
+Gloag; but nevertheless Cathro took Tommy by the neck and ran him out of
+the parish school of Thrums. When he returned to the others he found the
+ministers congratulating McLauchlan, whose nose was in the air, and
+complimenting Mr. Ogilvy, who listened to their formal phrases solemnly
+and accepted their hand-shakes with a dry chuckle.
+
+"Ay, grin away, sir," the mortified dominie of Thrums said to him
+sourly, "the joke is on your side."
+
+"You are right, sir," replied Mr. Ogilvy, mysteriously, "the joke is on
+my side, and the best of it is that not one of you knows what the joke
+is!"
+
+And then an odd thing happened. As they were preparing to leave the
+school, the door opened a little and there appeared in the aperture the
+face of Tommy, tear-stained but excited. "I ken the word now," he cried,
+"it came to me a' at once; it is hantle!"
+
+The door closed with a victorious bang, just in time to prevent Cathro--
+
+"Oh, the sumph!" exclaimed Mr. Lauchlan McLauchlan, "as if it mattered
+what the word is now!"
+
+And said Mr. Dishart, "Cathro, you had better tell Aaron Latta that the
+sooner he sends this nincompoop to the herding the better."
+
+But Mr. Ogilvy giving his Lauchlan a push that nearly sent him
+sprawling, said in an ecstasy to himself, "He _had_ to think of it till
+he got it--and he got it. The laddie is a genius!" They were about to
+tear up Tommy's essay, but he snatched it from them and put it in his
+oxter pocket. "I am a collector of curiosities," he explained, "and this
+paper may be worth money yet."
+
+"Well," said Cathro, savagely, "I have one satisfaction, I ran him out
+of my school."
+
+"Who knows," replied Mr. Ogilvy, "but what you may be proud to dust a
+chair for him when he comes back?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+THE END OF A BOYHOOD
+
+
+Convinced of his own worthlessness, Tommy was sufficiently humble now,
+but Aaron Latta, nevertheless, marched to the square on the following
+market day and came back with the boy's sentence, Elspeth being happily
+absent.
+
+"I say nothing about the disgrace you have brought on this house," the
+warper began without emotion, "for it has been a shamed house since
+afore you were born, and it's a small offence to skail on a clarty
+floor. But now I've done more for you than I promised Jean Myles to do,
+and you had your pick atween college and the herding, and the herding
+you've chosen twice. I call you no names, you ken best what you're
+fitted for, but I've seen the farmer of the Dubb of Prosen the day, and
+he was short-handed through the loss of Tod Lindertis, so you're fee'd
+to him. Dinna think you get Tod's place, it'll be years afore you rise
+to that, but it's right and proper that as he steps up, you should step
+down."
+
+"The Dubb of Prosen!" cried Tommy in dismay. "It's fifteen miles frae
+here."
+
+"It's a' that."
+
+"But--but--but Elspeth and me never thought of my being so far away that
+she couldna see me. We thought of a farmer near Thrums."
+
+"The farther you're frae her the better," said Aaron, uneasily, yet
+honestly believing what he said.
+
+"It'll kill her," Tommy cried fiercely. With only his own suffering to
+consider he would probably have nursed it into a play through which he
+stalked as the noble child of misfortune, but in his anxiety for Elspeth
+he could still forget himself. "Fine you ken she canna do without me,"
+he screamed.
+
+"She maun be weaned," replied the warper, with a show of temper; he was
+convinced that the sooner Elspeth learned to do without Tommy the better
+it would be for herself in the end, but in his way of regarding the boy
+there was also a touch of jealousy, pathetic rather than forbidding. To
+him he left the task of breaking the news to Elspeth; and Tommy,
+terrified lest she should swoon under it, was almost offended when she
+remained calm. But, alas, the reason was that she thought she was going
+with him.
+
+"Will we have to walk all the way to the Dubb of Prosen?" she asked,
+quite brightly, and at that Tommy twisted about in misery. "You are
+no--you canna--" he began, and then dodged the telling. "We--we may get
+a lift in a cart," he said weakly.
+
+"And I'll sit aside you in the fields, and make chains o' the gowans,
+will I no? Speak, Tommy!"
+
+"Ay--ay, will you," he groaned.
+
+"And we'll have a wee, wee room to oursels, and--"
+
+He broke down, "Oh, Elspeth," he cried, "it was ill-done of me no to
+stick to my books, and get a bursary, and it was waur o' me to bother
+about that word. I'm a scoundrel, I am, I'm a black, I'm a--"
+
+But she put her hand on his mouth, saying, "I'm fonder o' you than ever,
+Tommy, and I'll like the Dubb o' Prosen fine, and what does it matter
+where we are when we're thegither?" which was poor comfort for him, but
+still he could not tell her the truth, and so in the end Aaron had to
+tell her. It struck her down, and the doctor had to be called in during
+the night to stop her hysterics. When at last she fell asleep Tommy's
+arm was beneath her, and by and by it was in agony, but he set his teeth
+and kept it there rather than risk waking her.
+
+When Tommy was out of the way, Aaron did his clumsy best to soothe her,
+sometimes half shamefacedly pressing her cheek to his, and she did not
+repel him, but there was no response. "Dinna take on in that way,
+dawtie," he would say, "I'll be good to you."
+
+"But you're no Tommy," Elspeth answered.
+
+"I'm not, I'm but a stunted tree, blasted in my youth, but for a' that I
+would like to have somebody to care for me, and there's none to do't,
+Elspeth, if you winna. I'll gang walks wi' you, I'll take you to the
+fishing, I'll come to the garret at night to hap you up, I'll--I'll
+teach you the games I used to play mysel'. I'm no sure but what you
+might make something o' me yet, bairn, if you tried hard."
+
+"But you're no Tommy," Elspeth wailed again, and when he advised her to
+put Tommy out of her mind for a little and speak of other things, she
+only answered innocently, "What else is there to speak about?"
+
+Mr. McLean had sent Tommy a pound, and so was done with him, but Ailie
+still thought him a dear, though no longer a wonder, and Elspeth took a
+strange confession to her, how one night she was so angry with God that
+she had gone to bed without saying her prayers. She had just meant to
+keep Him in suspense for a little, and then say them, but she fell
+asleep. And that was not the worst, for when she woke in the morning,
+and saw that she was still living, she was glad she had not said them.
+But next night she said them twice.
+
+And this, too, is another flash into her dark character. Tommy, who
+never missed saying his prayers and could say them with surprising
+quickness, told her, "God is fonder of lonely lassies than of any other
+kind, and every time you greet it makes Him greet, and when you're
+cheerful it makes Him cheerful too." This was meant to dry her eyes, but
+it had not that effect, for, said Elspeth, vindictively, "Well, then,
+I'll just make Him as miserable as I can."
+
+When Tommy was merely concerned with his own affairs he did not think
+much about God, but he knew that no other could console Elspeth, and his
+love for her usually told him the right things to say, and while he said
+them, he was quite carried away by his sentiments and even wept over
+them, but within the hour he might be leering. They were beautiful, and
+were repeated of course to Mrs. McLean, who told her husband of them,
+declaring that this boy's love for his sister made her a better woman.
+
+"But nevertheless," said Ivie, "Mr. Cathro assures me--"
+
+"He is prejudiced," retorted Mrs. McLean warmly, prejudice being a
+failing which all women marvel at. "Just listen to what the boy said to
+Elspeth to-day. He said to her, 'When I am away, try for a whole day to
+be better than you ever were before, and think of nothing else, and then
+when prayer-time comes you will see that you have been happy without
+knowing it.' Fancy his finding out that."
+
+"I wonder if he ever tried it himself?" said Mr. McLean.
+
+"Ivie, think shame of yourself!"
+
+"Well, even Cathro admits that he has a kind of cleverness, but--"
+
+"Cleverness!" exclaimed Ailie, indignantly, "that is not cleverness, it
+is holiness;" and leaving the cynic she sought Elspeth, and did her good
+by pointing out that a girl who had such a brother should try to save
+him pain. "He is very miserable, dear," she said, "because you are so
+unhappy. If you looked brighter, think how that would help him, and it
+would show that you are worthy of him." So Elspeth went home trying hard
+to look brighter, but made a sad mess of it.
+
+"Think of getting letters frae me every time the post comes in!" said
+Tommy, and then indeed her face shone.
+
+And then Elspeth could write to him--yes, as often as ever she liked!
+This pleased her even more. It was such an exquisite thought that she
+could not wait, but wrote the first one before he started, and he
+answered it across the table. And Mrs. McLean made a letter bag, with
+two strings to it, and showed her how to carry it about with her in a
+safer place than a pocket.
+
+Then a cheering thing occurred. Came Corp, with the astounding news
+that, in the Glenquharity dominie's opinion, Tommy should have got the
+Hugh Blackadder.
+
+"He says he is glad he wasna judge, because he would have had to give
+you the prize, and he laughs like to split at the ministers for giving
+it to Lauchlan McLauchlan."
+
+Now, great was the repute of Mr. Ogilvy, and Tommy gaped incredulous.
+"He had no word of that at the time," he said.
+
+"No likely! He says if the ministers was so doited as to think his loon
+did best, it wasna for him to conter them."
+
+"Man, Corp, you ca'me me aff my feet! How do you ken this?"
+
+Corp had promised not to tell, and he thought he did not tell, but Tommy
+was too clever for him. Grizel, it appeared, had heard Mr. Ogilvy saying
+this strange thing to the doctor, and she burned to pass it on to Tommy,
+but she could not carry it to him herself, because--Why was it? Oh, yes,
+because she hated him. So she made a messenger of Corp, and warned him
+against telling who had sent him with the news.
+
+Half enlightened, Tommy began to strut again. "You see there's something
+in me for all they say," he told Elspeth. "Listen to this. At the
+bursary examinations there was some English we had to turn into Latin,
+and it said, 'No man ever attained supreme eminence who worked for mere
+lucre; such efforts must ever be bounded by base mediocrity. None shall
+climb high but he who climbs for love, for in truth where the heart is,
+there alone shall the treasure be found.' Elspeth, it came ower me in a
+clink how true that was, and I sat saying it to myself, though I saw Gav
+Dishart and Willie Simpson and the rest beginning to put it into Latin
+at once, as little ta'en up wi' the words as if they had been about auld
+Hannibal. I aye kent, Elspeth, that I could never do much at the
+learning, but I didna see the reason till I read that. Syne I kent that
+playing so real-like in the Den, and telling about my fits when it wasna
+me that had them but Corp, and mourning for Lewis Doig's father, and
+writing letters for folk so grandly, and a' my other queer ploys that
+ended in Cathro's calling me Sentimental Tommy, was what my heart was
+in, and I saw in a jiffy that if thae things were work, I should soon
+rise to supreme eminence."
+
+"But they're no," said Elspeth, sadly.
+
+"No," he admitted, his face falling, "but, Elspeth, if I was to hear
+some day of work I could put my heart into as if it were a game! I
+wouldna be laug in finding the treasure syne. Oh, the blatter I would
+make!"
+
+"I doubt there's no sic work," she answered, but he told her not to be
+so sure. "I thought there wasna mysel'," he said, "till now, but sure as
+death my heart was as ta'en up wi' hunting for the right word as if it
+had been a game, and that was how the time slipped by so quick. Yet it
+was paying work, for the way I did it made Mr. Ogilvy see I should have
+got the prize, and a' body kens there's more cleverness in him than in
+a cart-load o' ministers."
+
+"But, but there are no more Hugh Blackadders to try for, Tommy?"
+
+"That's nothing, there maun be other work o' the same kind. Elspeth,
+cheer up, I tell you, I'll find a wy!"
+
+"But you didna ken yoursel' that you should have got the Hugh
+Blackadder?"
+
+He would not let this depress him. "I ken now," he said. Nevertheless,
+why he should have got it was a mystery which he longed to fathom. Mr.
+Ogilvy had returned to Glenquharity, so that an explanation could not be
+drawn from him even if he were willing to supply it, which was
+improbable; but Tommy caught Grizel in the Banker's Close and compelled
+her to speak.
+
+"I won't tell you a word of what Mr. Ogilvy said," she insisted, in her
+obstinate way, and, oh, how she despised Corp for breaking his promise.
+
+"Corp didna ken he telled me," said Tommy, less to clear Corp than to
+exalt himself, "I wriggled it out o' him;" but even this did not bring
+Grizel to a proper frame of mind, so he said, to annoy her,
+
+"At any rate you're fond o' me."
+
+"I am not," she replied, stamping; "I think you are horrid."
+
+"What else made you send Corp to me?"
+
+"I did that because I heard you were calling yourself a blockhead."
+
+"Oho," said he, "so you have been speiring about me though you winna
+speak to me!"
+
+Grizel looked alarmed, and thinking to weaken his case, said, hastily,
+"I very nearly kept it from you, I said often to myself 'I won't tell
+him.'"
+
+"So you have been thinking a lot about me!" was his prompt comment.
+
+"If I have," she retorted, "I did not think nice things. And what is
+more, I was angry with myself for telling Corp to tell you."
+
+Surely this was crushing, but apparently Tommy did not think so, for he
+said, "You did it against your will! That means I hare a power over you
+that you canna resist. Oho, oho!"
+
+Had she become more friendly so should he, had she shed one tear he
+would have melted immediately; but she only looked him up and down
+disdainfully, and it hardened him. He said with a leer, "I ken what
+makes you hold your hands so tight, it's to keep your arms frae
+wagging;" and then her cry, "How do you know?" convicted her. He had not
+succeeded in his mission, but on his way home he muttered, triumphantly,
+"I did her, I did her!" and once he stopped to ask himself the question,
+"Was it because my heart was in it?" It was their last meeting till they
+were man and woman.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A blazing sun had come out on top of heavy showers, and the land reeked
+and smelled as of the wash-tub. The smaller girls of Monypenny were
+sitting in passages playing at fivey, just as Sappho for instance used
+to play it; but they heard the Dubb of Prosen cart draw up at Aaron
+Latta's door, and they followed it to see the last of Tommy Sandys. Corp
+was already there, calling in at the door every time he heard a sob;
+"Dinna, Elspeth, dinna, he'll find a wy," but Grizel had refused to
+come, though Tommy knew that she had been asking when he started and
+which road the cart would take. Well, he was not giving her a thought at
+any rate; his box was in the cart now, and his face was streaked with
+tears that were all for Elspeth. She should not have come to the door,
+but she came, and--it was such a pitiable sight that Aaron Latta could
+not look on. He went hurriedly to his workshop, but not to warp, and
+even the carter was touched and he said to Tommy, "I tell you what, man,
+I have to go round by Causeway End smiddy, and you and the crittur have
+time, if you like, to take the short cut and meet me at the far corner
+o' Caddam wood."
+
+So Tommy and Elspeth, holding each other's hands, took the short cut and
+they came to the far end of Caddam, and Elspeth thought they had better
+say it here before the cart came; but Tommy said he would walk back with
+her through the wood as far as the Toom Well, and they could say it
+there. They tried to say it at the Well, but--Elspeth was still with him
+when he returned to the far corner of Caddam, where the cart was now
+awaiting him. The carter was sitting on the shaft, and he told them he
+was in no hurry, and what is more, he had the delicacy to turn his back
+on them and struck his horse with the reins for looking round at the
+sorrowful pair. They should have said it now, but first Tommy walked
+back a little bit of the way with Elspeth, and then she came back with
+him, and that was to be the last time, but he could not leave her, and
+so, there they were in the wood, looking woefully at each other, and it
+was not said yet.
+
+They had said it now, and all was over; they were several paces apart.
+Elspeth smiled, she had promised to smile because Tommy said it would
+kill him if she was greeting at the very end. But what a smile it was!
+Tommy whistled, he had promised to whistle to show that he was happy as
+long as Elspeth could smile. She stood still, but he went on, turning
+round every few yards to--to whistle. "Never forget, day nor night, what
+I said to you," he called to her. "You're the only one I love, and I
+care not a hair for Grizel."
+
+But when he disappeared, shouting to her, "I'll find a wy, I'll find a
+wy," she screamed and ran after him. He was already in the cart, and it
+had started. He stood up in it and waved his hand to her, and she stood
+on the dyke and waved to him, and thus they stood waving till a hollow
+in the road swallowed cart and man and boy. Then Elspeth put her hands
+to her eyes and went sobbing homeward.
+
+When she was gone, a girl who had heard all that passed between them
+rose from among the broom of Caddam and took Elspeth's place on the
+dyke, where she stood motionless waiting for the cart to reappear as it
+climbed the other side of the hollow. She wore a black frock and a blue
+bonnet with white strings, but the cart was far away, and Tommy thought
+she was Elspeth, and springing to his feet again in the cart he waved
+and waved. At first she did not respond, for had she not heard him say,
+"You're the only one I love, and I care not a hair for Grizel?" And she
+knew he was mistaking her for Elspeth. But by and by it struck her that
+he would be more unhappy if he thought Elspeth was too overcome by grief
+to wave to him. Her arms rocked passionately; no, no, she would not lift
+them to wave to him, he could be as unhappy as he chose. Then in a
+spirit of self-abnegation that surely raised her high among the
+daughters of men, though she was but a painted lady's child, she waved
+to him to save him pain, and he, still erect in the cart, waved back
+until nothing could be seen by either of them save wood and fields and a
+long, deserted road.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sentimental Tommy, by J. M. Barrie
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