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 kneeli