Such a shabby dark room it was, but it was home, such a weary worn woman in the bed, but he was her son, and she had been wringing her hands because he was so long in coming, and do you think he hurt her when he pressed his head on her poor breast, and do you think she grudged the heat his cold hands drew from her warm face?  He squeezed her with a violence that put more heat into her blood than he took out of it.

And he was very considerate, too:  not a word of reproach in him, though he knew very well what that bundle in the back of the bed was.

She guessed that he had heard the news and stayed away through jealousy of his sister, and by and by she said, with a faint smile, “I have a present for you, laddie.”  In the great world without, she used few Thrums words now; you would have known she was Scotch by her accent only, but when she and Tommy were together in that room, with the door shut, she always spoke as if her window still looked out on the bonny Marywellbrae.  It is not really bonny, it is gey an’ mean an’ bleak, and you must not come to see it.  It is just a steep wind-swept street, old and wrinkled, like your mother’s face.

She had a present for him, she said, and Tommy replied, “I knows,” with averted face.

“Such a bonny thing.”

“Bonny enough,” he said bitterly.

“Look at her, laddie.”

But he shrank from the ordeal, crying, “No, no, keep her covered up!”

The little traitor seemed to be asleep, and so he ventured to say, eagerly, “It wouldn’t not take long to carry all our things to another house, would it?  Me and Shovel could near do it ourselves.”

“And that’s God’s truth,” the woman said, with a look round the room.  “But what for should we do that?”

“Do you no see, mother?” he whispered excitedly.  “Then you and me could slip away, and—­and leave her—­in the press.”

The feeble smile with which his mother received this he interpreted thus, “Wherever we go’d to she would be there before us.”

“The little besom!” he cried helplessly.

His mother saw that mischievous boys had been mounting him on his horse, which needed only one slap to make it go a mile; but she was a spiritless woman, and replied indifferently, “You’re a funny litlin.”

Presently a dry sob broke from her, and thinking the child was the cause, soft-hearted Tommy said, “It can’t not be helped, mother; don’t cry, mother, I’m fond on yer yet, mother; I—­I took her away.  I found another woman—­but she would come.”

“She’s God’s gift, man,” his mother said, but she added, in a different tone, “Ay, but he hasna sent her keep.”

“God’s gift!” Tommy shuddered, but he said sourly, “I wish he would take her back.  Do you wish that, too, mother?”

The weary woman almost said she did, but her arms—­they gripped the baby as if frightened that he had sent for it.  Jealous Tommy, suddenly deprived of his mother’s hand, cried, “It’s true what Shovel says, you don’t not love me never again; you jest loves that little limmer!”