Chapter 6 - Page 2

Tommy, had got his place in the cellar when his
brother died, and the brother had succeeded Matthew Croall when he died.

They die very soon, Tommy learned from Lumsden, generally when they are
eight and thirty. Lumsden was thirty-six, and when he died his nephew
was to get the place. The wages are good.

Then there were several masons, one of whom, like the first baker, had
found work for all the others, and there were men who had drifted into
trades strange to their birthplace, and there was usually one at least
who had come to London to "better himself" and had not done it as yet.
The family Tommy liked best was the Whamonds, and especially he liked
old Petey and young Petey Whamond. They were a large family of women and
men, all of whom earned their living in other streets, except the old
man, who kept house and was a famous knitter of stockings, as probably
his father had been before him. He was a great one, too, at telling what
they would be doing at that moment in Thrums, every corner of which was
as familiar to him as the ins and outs of the family hose. Young Petey
got fourteen shillings a week from a hatter, and one of his duties was
to carry as many as twenty band-boxes at a time through fashionable
streets; it is a matter for elation that dukes and statesmen had often
to take the curb-stone, because young Petey was coming. Nevertheless
young Petey was not satisfied, and never would be (such is the Thrums
nature) until he became a salesman in the shop to which he acted at
present as fetch and carry, and he used to tell Tommy that this position
would be his as soon as he could sneer sufficiently at the old hats.
When gentlemen come into the shop and buy a new hat, he explained, they
put it on, meaning to tell you to send the old one to their address, and
the art of being a fashionable hatter lies in this: you must be able to
curl your lips so contemptuously at the old hat that they tell you
guiltily to keep it, as they have no further use for it. Then they
retire ashamed of their want of moral courage and you have made an extra
half-guinea.

"But I aye snort," young Petey admitted, "and it should be done without
a sound." When he graduated, he was to marry Martha Spens, who was
waiting for him at Tillyloss. There was a London seamstress whom he
preferred, and she was willing, but it is safest to stick to Thrums.

When Tommy was among his new friends a Scotch word or phrase often
escaped his lips, but old Petey and the others thought he had picked it
up from them, and would have been content to accept him as a London waif
who lived somewhere round the corner. To trick people so simply,
however, is not agreeable to an artist, and he told them his name was