Miss Ailie was in her parlor, trying to give her mind to a blue and white note-book, but when she saw who was coming up the garden she dropped the little volume and tottered to her bedroom.  She was there when Gavinia came up to announce that she had shown a gentleman into the blue-and-white room, who gave the name of Ivie McLean.  “Tell him—­I shall come down—­presently,” gasped Miss Ailie, and then Gavinia was sure this was the man who was making her mistress so unhappy.

“She’s so easily flichtered now,” Gavinia told Tommy in the kitchen, “that for fear o’ starting her I never whistle at my work without telling her I’m to do’t, and if I fall on the stair, my first thought is to jump up and cry, ‘It was just me tum’ling.’  And now I believe this brute’ll be the death o’ her.”

“But what can he do to her?”

“I dinna ken, but she’s greeting sair, and yon can hear how he’s rampaging up and down the blue-and-white room.  Listen to his thrawn feet!  He’s raging because she’s so long in coming down, and come she daurna.  Oh, the poor crittur!”

Now, Tommy was very fond of his old school-mistress, and he began to be unhappy with Gavinia.

“She hasna a man-body in the world to take care o’ her,” sobbed the girl.

“Has she no?” cried Tommy, fiercely, and under one of the impulses that so easily mastered him he marched into the blue-and-white room.

“Well, my young friend, and what may you want?” asked Mr. McLean, impatiently.

Tommy sat down and folded his arms.  “I’m going to sit here and see what you do to Miss Ailie,” he said, determinedly.

Mr. McLean said “Oh!” and then seemed favorably impressed, for he added quietly:  “She is a friend of yours, is she?  Well, I have no intention of hurting her.”

“You had better no,” replied Tommy, stoutly.

“Did she send you here?”

“No; I came mysel’.”

“To protect her?”

There was the irony in it that so puts up a boy’s dander.  “Dinna think,” said Tommy, hotly, “that I’m fleid at you, though I have no beard—­at least, I hinna it wi’ me.”

At this unexpected conclusion a smile crossed Mr. McLean’s face, but was gone in an instant.  “I wish you had laughed,” said Tommy, on the watch; “once a body laughs he canna be angry no more,” which was pretty good even for Tommy.  It made Mr. McLean ask him why he was so fond of Miss Ailie.

“I’m the only man-body she has,” he answered.

“Oh?  But why are you her man-body?”

The boy could think of no better reason than this:  “Because—­because she’s so sair in need o’ are.” (There were moments when one liked Tommy.)

Mr. McLean turned to the window, and perhaps forgot that he was not alone.  “Well, what are you thinking about so deeply?” he asked by and by.

“I was trying to think o’ something that would gar you laugh,” answered Tommy, very earnestly, and was surprised to see that he had nearly done it.