"Did I say onything but the name? Quick, tell me."

"You said, 'Oh, Aaron Latta, oh, Aaron, little did we think, Aaron,' and
things like that. Are you angry with me, mother?"

"No," she said, relieved, but it was some time before the desire to
write came back to her. Then she told him "The letter is to a woman that
was gey cruel to me," adding, with a complacent pursing of her lips, the
curious remark, "That's the kind I like to write to best."

The pen went scrape, scrape, but Tommy did not weary, though he often
sighed, because his mother would never read aloud to him what she wrote.
The Thrums people never answered her letters, for the reason, she said,
that those she wrote to could not write, which seemed to simple Tommy to
be a sufficient explanation. So he had never heard the inside of a
letter talking, though a postman lived in the house, and even Shovel's
old girl got letters; once when her uncle died she got a telegram, which
Shovel proudly wheeled up and down the street in a barrow, other blokes
keeping guard at the side. To give a letter to a woman who had been
cruel to you struck Tommy as the height of nobility.

"She'll be uplifted when she gets it!" he cried.

"She'll be mad when she gets it," answered his mother, without looking
up.

This was the letter:--

"MY DEAR ESTHER,--I send you these few scrapes to let you see I have not
forgot you, though my way is now grand by yours. A spleet new black