But Tommy, you know, was only a little boy.

CHAPTER V

THE GIRL WITH TWO MOTHERS

Elspeth at last did something to win Tommy’s respect; she fell ill of an ailment called in Thrums the croop.  When Tommy first heard his mother call it croop, he thought she was merely humoring Elspeth, and that it was nothing more distinguished than London whooping-cough, but on learning that it was genuine croop, he began to survey the ambitious little creature with a new interest.

This was well for Elspeth, as she had now to spend most of the day at home with him, their mother, whose health was failing through frequent attacks of bronchitis, being no longer able to carry her through the streets.  Of course Elspeth took to repaying his attentions by loving him, and he soon suspected it, and then gloomily admitted it to himself, but never to Shovel.  Being but an Englishman, Shovel saw no reason why relatives should conceal their affection for each other, but he played on this Scottish weakness of Tommy’s with cruel enjoyment.

“She’s fond on yer!” he would say severely.

“You’s a liar.”

“Gar long!  I believe as you’re fond on her!”

“You jest take care, Shovel.”

“Ain’t yer?”

“Na-o!”

“Will yer swear?”

“So I will swear.”

“Let’s hear yer.”

“Dagont!”

So for a time the truth was kept hidden, and Shovel retired, casting aspersions, and offering to eat all the hair on Elspeth’s head for a penny.

This hair was white at present, which made Tommy uneasy about her future, but on the whole he thought he might make something of her if she was only longer.  Sometimes he stretched her on the floor, pulling her legs out straight, for she had a silly way of doubling them up, and then he measured her carefully with his mother’s old boots.  Her growth proved to be distressingly irregular, as one day she seemed to have grown an inch since last night, and then next day she had shrunk two inches.

After her day’s work Mrs. Sandys was now so listless that, had not Tommy interfered, Elspeth would have been a backward child.  Reddy had been able to walk from the first day, and so of course had he, but this little slow-coach’s legs wobbled at the joints, like the blade of a knife without a spring.  The question of questions was How to keep her on end?

Tommy sat on the fender revolving this problem, his head resting on his hand:  that favorite position of mighty intellects when about to be photographed, Elspeth lay on her stomach on the floor, gazing earnestly at him, as if she knew she was in his thoughts for some stupendous purpose.  Thus the apple may have looked at Newton before it fell.

Hankey, the postman, compelled the flowers in his window to stand erect by tying them to sticks, so Tommy took two sticks from a bundle of firewood, and splicing Elspeth’s legs to them, held her upright against the door with one hand.  All he asked of her to-day was to remain in this position after he said “One, two, three, four, picture!” and withdrew his hand, but down she flopped every time, and he said, with scorn,