The distance seems greater than ever to-day, poor woman, and you stop longer at the corners, where rude men jeer at you.  Scarcely can you push open the door of the dancing-school or lift the pail; the fire has gone out, you must again go on your knees before it, and again the smoke makes you cough.  Gaunt slattern, fighting to bring up the phlegm, was it really you for whom another woman gave her life, and thought it a rich reward to get dressing you once in your long clothes, when she called you her beautiful, and smiled, and smiling, died?  Well, well; but take courage, Jean Myles.  The long road still lies straight up hill, but your climbing is near an end.  Shrink from the rude men no more, they are soon to forget you, so soon!  It is a heavy door, but soon you will have pushed it open for the last time.  The girls will babble still, but not to you, not of you.  Cheer up, the work is nearly done.  Her beautiful!  Come, beautiful, strength for a few more days, and then you can leave the key of the leaden door behind you, and on your way home you may kiss your hand joyously to the weary streets, for you are going to die.

Tommy and Elspeth had been to the foot of the stair many times to look for her before their mother came back that evening, yet when she re-entered her home, behold, they were sitting calmly on the fender as if this were a day like yesterday or to-morrow, as if Tommy had not been on a business visit to Thrums Street, as if the hump on the bed did not mean that a glorious something was hidden under the coverlet.  True, Elspeth would look at Tommy imploringly every few minutes, meaning that she could not keep it in much longer, and then Tommy would mutter the one word “Bell” to remind her that it was against the rules to begin before the Thrums eight-o’clock bell rang.  They also wiled away the time of waiting by inviting each other to conferences at the window where these whispers passed—­

“She ain’t got a notion, Tommy.”

“Dinna look so often at the bed.”

“If I could jest get one more peep at it!”

“No, no; but you can put your hand on the top of it as you go by.”

The artfulness of Tommy lured his unsuspecting mother into telling how they would be holding Hogmanay in Thrums to-night, how cartloads of kebbock cheeses had been rolling into the town all the livelong day ("Do you hear them, Elspeth?"), and in dark closes the children were already gathering, with smeared faces and in eccentric dress, to sally forth as guisers at the clap of eight, when the ringing of a bell lets Hogmanay loose. ("You see, Elspeth?”) Inside the houses men and women were preparing (though not by fasting, which would have been such a good way that it is surprising no one ever thought of it) for a series of visits, at every one of which they would be offered a dram and kebbock and bannock, and in the grander houses “bridies,” which are a sublime kind of pie.

Tommy had the audacity to ask what bridies were like.  And he could not dress up and be a guiser, could he, mother, for the guisers sang a song, and he did not know the words?  What a pity they could not get bridies to buy in London, and learn the song and sing it.  But of course they could not! ("Elspeth, if you tumble off the fender again, she’ll guess.”)