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,