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.