Keeping his mouth shut by gripping his underlip with his teeth, the Dominie read the letters, and Tommy gazed eagerly at him, all fear forgotten, soul conquering body.  The others stood or sat waiting, perplexed as to the cause, confident of the issue.  The letters were much finer productions than Cathro’s, he had to admit it to himself as he read.  Yet the rivals had started fair, for Betsy was a recent immigrant from Dunkeld way, and the letters were to people known neither to Tommy nor to the Dominie.  Also, she had given the same details for the guidance of each.  A lady had sent a teapot, which affected to be new, but was not; Betsy recognized it by a scratch on the lid, and wanted to scratch back, but politely.  So Tommy wrote, “When you come to see me we shall have a cup of tea out of your beautiful present, and it will be like a meeting of three old friends.”  That was perhaps too polite, Betsy feared, but Tommy said authoritatively, “No, the politer the nippier.”

There was a set of six cups and saucers from Peter something, who had loved Betsy in vain.  She had shown the Dominie and Tommy the ear-rings given her long ago by Peter (they were bought with ’Sosh checks) and the poem he had written about them, and she was most anxious to gratify him in her reply.  All Cathro could do, however, was to wish Peter well in some ornate sentences, while Tommy’s was a letter that only a tender woman’s heart could have indited, with such beautiful touches about the days which are no more alas forever, that Betsy listened to it with heaving breast and felt so sorry for her old swain that, forgetting she had never loved him, she all but gave Andrew the go-by and returned to Peter.  As for Peter, who had been getting over his trouble, he saw now for the first time what he had lost, and he carried Betsy’s dear letter in his oxter pocket and was inconsolable.

But the masterpiece went to Mrs. Dinnie, baker, in return for a flagon bun.  Long ago her daughter, Janet, and Betsy had agreed to marry on the same day, and many a quip had Mrs. Dinnie cast at their romantic compact.  But Janet died, and so it was a sad letter that Tommy had to write to her mother.  “I’m doubting you’re no auld enough for this ane,” soft-hearted Betsy said, but she did not know her man.  “Tell me some one thing the mother used often to say when she was taking her fun off the pair of you,” he said, and “Where is she buried?” was a suggestive question, with the happy tag, “Is there a tree hanging over the grave?” Thus assisted, he composed a letter that had a tear in every sentence.  Betsy rubbed her eyes red over it, and not all its sentiments were allowed to die, for Mrs. Dinnie, touched to the heart, printed the best of them in black licorice on short bread for funeral feasts, at which they gave rise to solemn reflections as they went down.