skulked after her. He remembered who she was now. She was the old
woman with the nut-cracker face on whom he had cried in, more than a
year ago, to say that Gavinia was to have him. Her mud cottage had
been near the Slugs. Yes, and this was the boy who had been supping
porridge with her. Corp guessed rightly that the boy had remembered
his unlucky visit. "I'm doomed!" Corp muttered to himself--pronouncing
it in another way.

The woman, the boy, and the bag entered the house of Gavinia, and
presently she came out with them. She was looking very important and
terrible. They went straight to Ailie's cottage, and Corp was
wondering why, when he suddenly remembered that Tommy was to be there
at tea to-day.




CHAPTER XI

THE TEA-PARTY


It was quite a large tea-party, and was held in what had been the
school-room; nothing there now, however, to recall an academic past,
for even the space against which a map of the world (Mercator's
projection) had once hung was gone the colour of the rest of the
walls, and with it had faded away the last relic of the Hanky School.

"It will not fade so quickly from my memory," Tommy said, to please
Mrs. McLean. His affection for his old schoolmistress was as sincere