"That would be a doush of water in Esther's face?" his mother said,
smiling.

"She wrote to Martha Scrymgeour," said Tommy, "that it ain't no pleasure
to her now to boast as her laddie is at a school for gentlemen's
children only. But what made her maddest was a bit in Jean Myles's
letter about chairs. Jean Myles has give all her hair-bottomed chairs to
a poor woman and buyed a new kind, because hair-bottomed ones ain't
fashionable now. So Esther Auld can't not bear the sight of her chairs
now, though she were windy of them till the letter went to Thrums."

"Poor Esther!" said Mrs. Sandys gaily.

"Oh, and I forgot this, mother. Jean Myles's reason for not telling
where she bides in London is that she's so grand that she thinks if auld
Petey and the rest knowed where the place was they would visit her and
boast as they was her friends. Auld Petey stamped wi' rage when he heard
that, and Martha Scrymgeour said, 'Oh, the pridefu' limmer!'"

"Ay, Martha," muttered Mrs. Sandys, "you and Jean Myles is evens now."

But the passage that had made them all wince the most was one giving
Jean's reasons for making no calls in Thrums Street. "You can break it
to Martha Scrymgeour's father and mither," the letter said, "and to
Petey Whamond's sisters and the rest as has friends in London, that I
have seen no Thrums faces here, the low part where they bide not being
for the like of me to file my feet in. Forby that, I could not let my
son mix with their bairns for fear they should teach him the vulgar
Thrums words and clarty his blue-velvet suit. I'm thinking you have to
dress your laddie in corduroy, Esther, but you see that would not do for