d 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