He heard her inquiring for one Alexander Bett, and being told that there was no such person in Thrums, “He’s married on a woman of the name of Gavinia,” said the old lady; and then they directed her to the house of the only Gavinia in the place.  With dark forebodings Corp skulked after her.  He remembered who she was now.  She was the old woman with the nut-cracker face on whom he had cried in, more than a year ago, to say that Gavinia was to have him.  Her mud cottage had been near the Slugs.  Yes, and this was the boy who had been supping porridge with her.  Corp guessed rightly that the boy had remembered his unlucky visit.  “I’m doomed!” Corp muttered to himself—­pronouncing it in another way.

The woman, the boy, and the bag entered the house of Gavinia, and presently she came out with them.  She was looking very important and terrible.  They went straight to Ailie’s cottage, and Corp was wondering why, when he suddenly remembered that Tommy was to be there at tea to-day.

CHAPTER XI

THE TEA-PARTY

It was quite a large tea-party, and was held in what had been the school-room; nothing there now, however, to recall an academic past, for even the space against which a map of the world (Mercator’s projection) had once hung was gone the colour of the rest of the walls, and with it had faded away the last relic of the Hanky School.

“It will not fade so quickly from my memory,” Tommy said, to please Mrs. McLean.  His affection for his old schoolmistress was as sincere as hers for him.  I could tell you of scores of pretty things he had done to give her pleasure since his return, all carried out, too, with a delicacy which few men could rival, and never a woman; but they might make you like him, so we shall pass them by.

Ailie said, blushing, that she had taught him very little.  “Everything I know,” he replied, and then, with a courteous bow to the gentleman opposite, “except what I learned from Mr. Cathro.”

“Thank you,” Cathro said shortly.  Tommy had behaved splendidly to him, and called him his dear preceptor, and yet the Dominie still itched to be at him with the tawse as of old.  “And fine he knows I’m itching,” he reflected, which made him itch the more.

It should have been a most successful party, for in the rehearsals between the hostess and her maid Christina every conceivable difficulty had been ironed out.  Ailie was wearing her black silk, but without the Honiton lace, so that Miss Sophia Innes need not become depressed; and she had herself taken the chair with the weak back.  Mr. Cathro, who, though a lean man, needed a great deal of room at table, had been seated far away from the spinet, to allow Christina to pass him without climbing.  Miss Sophia and Grizel had the doctor between them, and there was also a bachelor, but an older one, for Elspeth.  Mr. McLean, as stout and humoursome as of yore, had