“Is this my Hogmanay, guidwife?” he asked in the nick of time, and the situation thus being saved, the luscious feast was partaken of, the guisers listening solemnly as each bite went down.  They also took care to address their hostess as “guidwife” or “mistress,” affecting not to have met her lately, and inquiring genially after the health of herself and family.  “How many have you?” was Tommy’s masterpiece, and she answered in the proper spirit, but all the time she was hiding great part of her bridie beneath her apron, Hogmanay having come too late for her.

Everything was to be done exactly as they were doing it in Thrums Street, and so presently Tommy made a speech; it was the speech of old Petey, who had rehearsed it several times before him.  “Here’s a toast,” said Tommy, standing up and waving his arms, “here’s a toast that we’ll drink in silence, one that maun have sad thoughts at the back o’t to some of us, but one, my friends, that keeps the hearts of Thrums folk green and ties us all thegither, like as it were wi’ twine.  It’s to all them, wherever they may be the night, wha’ have sat as lads and lasses at the Cuttle Well.”

To one of the listeners it was such an unexpected ending that a faint cry broke from her, which startled the children, and they sat in silence looking at her.  She had turned her face from them, but her arm was extended as if entreating Tommy to stop.

“That was the end,” he said, at length, in a tone of expostulation; “it’s auld Petey’s speech.”

“Are you sure,” his mother asked wistfully, “that Petey was to say all them as have sat at the Cuttle Well?  He made no exception, did he?”

Tommy did not know what exception was, but he assured her that he had repeated the speech, word for word.  For the remainder of the evening she sat apart by the fire, while her children gambled for crack-nuts, young Petey having made a teetotum for Tommy and taught him what the letters on it meant.  Their mirth rang faintly in her ear, and they scarcely heard her fits of coughing; she was as much engrossed in her own thoughts as they in theirs, but hers were sad and theirs were jocund—­Hogmanay, like all festivals, being but a bank from which we can only draw what we put in.  So an hour or more passed, after which Tommy whispered to Elspeth:  “Now’s the time; they’re at it now,” and each took a hand of their mother, and she woke from her reverie to find that they had pulled her from her chair and were jumping up and down, shouting, excitedly, “For Auld Lang Syne, my dear, for Auld Lang Syne, Auld Lang Syne, my dear, Auld Lang Syne.”  She tried to sing the words with her children, tried to dance round with them, tried to smile, but—­

It was Tommy who dropped her hand first.  “Mother,” he cried, “your face is wet, you’re greeting sair, and you said you had forgot the way.”

“I mind it now, man, I mind it now,” she said, standing helplessly in the middle of the room.