“Have you forgot,” he whispered, “that my mother said as she would come and see us every night in our bed?  If yer cries, she’ll see as we’re terrible unhappy, and that will make her unhappy too.”

“Oh, Tommy, is she here now?”

“Whisht!  She’s here, but they don’t like living ones to let on as they knows it.”

Elspeth kept closer to Tommy, and with their heads beneath the blankets, so as to stifle the sound, he explained to her how they could cheat their mother.  When she understood, he took the blankets off their faces and said in the darkness in a loud voice: 

“It’s a grand place, Thrums!”

Elspeth replied in a similar voice, “Ain’t the town-house just big!”

Said Tommy, almost chuckling, “Oh, the bonny, bonny Auld Licht Kirk!”

Said Elspeth, “Oh, the beauty outside stairs!”

Said Tommy, “The minister is so long!”

Said Elspeth, “The folk is so kind!”

Said Tommy, “Especially the laddies!”

“Oh, I is so happy!” cried Elspeth.

“Me too!” cried Tommy.

“My mother would be so chirpy if she could jest see us!” Elspeth said, quite archly.

“But she canna!” replied Tommy, slyly pinching Elspeth in the rib.

Then they dived beneath the blankets, and the whispering was resumed.

“Did she hear, does yer think?” asked Elspeth.

“Every word,” Tommy replied.  “Elspeth, we’ve done her!”

CHAPTER XIII

SHOWS HOW TOMMY TOOK CARE OF ELSPETH

Thus the first day passed, and others followed in which women, who had known Jean Myles, did her children kindnesses, but could not do all they would have done, for Aaron forbade them to enter his home except on business though it was begging for a housewife all day.  Had Elspeth at the age of six now settled down to domestic duties she would not have been the youngest housekeeper ever known in Thrums, but she was never very good at doing things, only at loving and being loved, and the observant neighbors thought her a backward girl; they forgot, like most people, that service is not necessarily a handicraft.  Tommy discovered what they were saying, and to shield Elspeth he took to housewifery with the blind down; but Aaron, entering the kitchen unexpectedly, took the besom from, him, saying: 

“It’s an ill thing for men folk to ken ower muckle about women’s work.”

“You do it yoursel’,” Tommy argued.

“I said men folk,” replied Aaron, quietly.