sometimes hearing a few words in the old tongue that is harsh and
ungracious to you, but was so sweet to her, and bearing them away with
her beneath her shawl as if they were something warm to lay over her
cold heart.

For a time she upbraided Tommy passionately for not keeping away from
this street, but soon her hunger for news of Thrums overcame her
prudence, and she consented to let him go back if he promised never to
tell that his mother came from Thrums. "And if ony-body wants to ken
your name, say it's Tommy, but dinna let on that it's Tommy Sandys."

"Elspeth," Tommy whispered that night, "I'm near sure there's something
queer about my mother and me and you." But he did not trouble himself
with wondering what the something queer might be, so engrossed was he in
the new and exciting life that had suddenly opened to him.




CHAPTER VI

THE ENCHANTED STREET


In Thrums Street, as it ought to have been called, herded at least
one-half of the Thrums folk in London, and they formed a colony, of
which the grocer at the corner sometimes said wrathfully that not a
member would give sixpence for anything except Bibles or whiskey. In the
streets one could only tell they were not Londoners by their walk, the
flagstones having no grip for their feet, or, if they had come south