useful. He devoted much thought to what she was most in need of, and at
last he bought her a colored picture of Lord Byron swimming the
Hellespont.

He told her that he got his shilling from two toffs for playing with a
little girl, and the explanation satisfied her; but she could have cried
at the waste of the money, which would have been such a God-send to her.
He cried altogether, however, at sight of her face, having expected it
to look so pleased, and then she told him, with caresses, that the
picture was the one thing she had been longing for ever since she came
to London. How had he known this, she asked, and he clapped his hands
gleefully, and said he just knowed when he saw it in the shop window.

"It was noble of you," she said, "to spend all your siller on me."

"Wasn't it, mother?" he crowed "I'm thinking there ain't many as noble
as I is!"

He did not say why he had been so good to her, but it was because she
had written no letters to Thrums since the intrusion of Elspeth; a
strange reason for a boy whose greatest glory at one time had been to
sit on the fender and exultingly watch his mother write down words that
would be read aloud in the wonderful place. She was a long time in
writing a letter, but that only made the whole evening romantic, and he
found an arduous employment in keeping his tongue wet in preparation for
the licking of the stamp.

But she could not write to the Thrums folk now without telling them of
Elspeth, who was at present sleeping the sleep of the shameless in the
hollow of the bed, and so for his sake, Tommy thought, she meant to