that women have an equal right with men to grow beards.  The hero had such a way with him and was so young (Miss Ailie could not stand them a day more than twenty) that the school-mistress was enraptured and scared at every page, but she fondly hoped that Tommy did not understand.  However, he discovered one day what something printed thus, “D—­n,” meant, and he immediately said the word with such unction that Miss Ailie let fall her knitting.  She would have ended the readings then had not Agatha been at that point in the arms of an officer who, Miss Ailie felt almost certain, had a wife in India, and so how could she rest till she knew for certain?  To track the officer by herself was not to be thought of, to read without knitting being such shameless waste of time, and it was decided to resume the readings on a revised plan:  Tommy to say “stroke” in place of the “D—­ns,” and “word we have no concern with” instead of “Darling” and “Little One.”

Miss Ailie was not the only person at the Dovecot who admired Tommy.  Though in duty bound, as young patriots, to jeer at him for having been born in the wrong place, the pupils of his own age could not resist the charm of his reminiscences; even Gav Dishart, a son of the manse, listened attentively to him.  His great topic was his birthplace, and whatever happened in Thrums, he instantly made contemptible by citing something of the same kind, but on a larger scale, that had happened in London; he turned up his nose almost farther than was safe when they said Catlaw was a stiff mountain to climb. ("Oh, Gav, if you just saw the London mountains!”) Snow! why they didn’t know what snow was in Thrums.  If they could only see St. Paul’s or Hyde Park or Shovel! he couldn’t help laughing at Thrums, he couldn’t—­Larfing, he said at first, but in a short time his Scotch was better than theirs, though less unconscious.  His English was better also, of course, and you had to speak in a kind of English when inside the Hanky School; you got your revenge at “minutes.”  On the whole, Tommy irritated his fellow-pupils a good deal, but they found it difficult to keep away from him.

He also contrived to enrage the less genteel boys of Monypenny.  Their leader was Corp Shiach, three years Tommy’s senior, who had never been inside a school except once, when he broke hopefully into Ballingall’s because of a stirring rumor (nothing in it) that the dominie had hangit himself with his remaining brace; then in order of merit came Birkie Fleemister; then, perhaps, the smith’s family, called the Haggerty-Taggertys, they were such slovens.  When school was over Tommy frequently stepped out of his boots and stockings, so that he no longer looked offensively genteel, and then Monypenny was willing to let him join in spyo, smuggle bools, kickbonnety, peeries, the preens, suckers pilly, or whatever game was in season, even to the baiting of the Painted Lady, but they would not have Elspeth, who should have been content to play dumps with the female Haggerty-Taggertys,