But there were two faithful souls, or, more strictly, one, for Corp could never have carried it through without Gavinia’s help.  Tommy called on them promptly at their house in the Bellies Brae (four rooms, but a lodger), and said, almost before he had time to look, that the baby had Corp’s chin and Gavinia’s eyes.  He had made this up on the way.  He also wanted to say, so desirous was he of pleasing his old friends, that he should like to hold the baby in his arms; but it was such a thundering lie that even an author could not say it.

Tommy sat down in that house with a very warm heart for its inmates; but they chilled him—­Gavinia with her stiff words, and Corp by looking miserable instead of joyous.

“I expected you to come to me first, Corp,” said Tommy, reproachfully.  “I had scarcely a word with you at the station.”

“He couldna hae presumed,” replied Gavinia, primly.

“I couldna hae presumed,” said Corp, with a groan.

“Fudge!” Tommy said.  “You were my greatest friend, and I like you as much as ever, Corp.”  Corp’s face shone, but Gavinia said at once, “You werena sic great friends as that; were you, man?”

“No,” Corp replied gloomily.

“Whatever has come over you both?” asked Tommy, in surprise.  “You will be saying next, Gavinia, that we never played at Jacobites in the Den!”

“I dinna deny that Corp and me played,” Gavinia answered determinedly, “but you didna.  You said to us, ‘Think shame,’ you said, ’to be playing vulgar games when you could be reading superior books.’  They were his very words, were they no, man?” she demanded of her unhappy husband, with a threatening look.

“They were,” said Corp, in deepest gloom.

“I must get to the bottom of this,” said Tommy, rising, “and as you are too great a coward, Corp, to tell the truth with that shameless woman glowering at you, out you go, Gavinia, and take your disgraced bairn with you.  Do as you are told, you besom, for I am Captain Stroke again.”

Corp was choking with delight as Gavinia withdrew haughtily.  “I was sure you would sort her,” he said, rubbing his hands, “I was sure you wasna the kind to be ashamed o’ auld friends.”

“But what does it mean?”

“She has a notion,” Corp explained, growing grave again, “that it wouldna do for you to own the like o’ us.  ‘We mauna cheapen him,’ she said.  She wanted you to see that we hinna been cheapening you.”  He said, in a sepulchral voice, “There has been leddies here, and they want to ken what Thomas Sandys was like as a boy.  It’s me they speir for, but Gavinia she just shoves me out o’ sight, and says she, ’Leave them to me.’”

Corp told Tommy some of the things Gavinia said about Thomas Sandys as a boy:  how he sat rapt in church, and, instead of going bird-nesting, lay on the ground listening to the beautiful little warblers overhead, and gave all his pennies to poorer children, and could repeat the Shorter Catechism, beginning at either end, and was very respectful to the aged and infirm, and of a yielding disposition, and said, from his earliest years, “I don’t want to be great; I just want to be good.”