“You’re a three P,” he said, with a wave of his pencil.

“I’m no sic thing!” cried the old lady.

“It winna do, woman,” Tommy said sternly.  “Miss Ailie telled me you paid in your first penny on the chap of ten.”  He wetted the pencil on his tongue to show that it was vain to trifle with him, and Meggy bowed her head.

“It’ll be through the town that I’ve joined,” she moaned, but Tommy explained that he was there to save her.

“I’m willing to come to your house,” he said, “and collect the money every week, and not a soul will I tell except the committee.”

“Kitty Elshioner would see you coming,” said Meggy.

“No, no, I’ll creep yont the hedge and climb the hen-house.”

“But it would be a’ found out at any rate,” she remembered, “when I go for the peats and things at Hogmanay.”

“It needna be,” eagerly replied Tommy.  “I’ll bring them to you in a barrow in the dead o’ night.”

“Could you?” she cried passionately, and he promised he would, and it may be mentioned here that he did.

“And what for yoursel’?” she inquired.

“A bawbee,” he said, “the night afore the Muckley.”

The bargain was made, but before he could get away, “Tell me, laddie,” said Meggy, coaxingly, “has Kitty Elshioner joined?” They were all as curious to know who had joined as they were anxious to keep their own membership a secret; but Tommy betrayed none, at least none who agreed to his proposal.  There were so many of these that on the night before the Muckley he had thirteen pence.

“And you was doing good all the time you was making the thirteen pence,” Elspeth said, fondly.  “I believe that was the reason you did it.”

“I believe it was!” Tommy exclaimed.  He had not thought of this before, but it was easy to him to believe anything.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE MUCKLEY

Every child in Thrums went to bed on the night before the Muckley hugging a pirly, or, as the vulgar say, a money-box; and all the pirlies were ready for to-morrow, that is to say, the mouths of them had been widened with gully knives by owners now so skilful at the jerk which sends their contents to the floor that pirlies they were no longer.  “Disgorge!” was the universal cry, or, in the vernacular, “Out you come, you sweer deevils!”

Not a coin but had its history, not a boy who was unable to pick out his own among a hundred.  The black one came from the ’Sosh, the bent lad he got for carrying in Ronny-On’s sticks.  Oh michty me, sure as death he had nearly forgotten the one with the warts on it.  Which to spend first?  The goldy one?  Na faags, it was ower ill to come by.  The scartit one?  No, no, it was a lucky.  Well, then, the one found in the rat’s hole?  (That was a day!) Ay, dagont, ay, we’ll make the first blatter with it.