Chapter 7 - Page 2

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
mine. So no more at present, and we all join in compliments, and my
little velvets says he wishes I would send some of his toys to your
little corduroys. And so maybe I will, Esther, if you'll tell Aaron
Latta how rich and happy I am, and if you're feared to say it to his
face, tell it to the roaring farmer of Double Dykes, and he'll pass it
on."

"Did you ever hear of such a woman?" Tommy said indignantly, when he had
repeated as much of this insult to Thrums as he could remember.

But it was information his mother wanted.

"What said they to that bit?" she asked.

At first, it appears, they limited their comments to "Losh, losh,"
"keeps a'," "it cows," "my eertie," "ay, ay," "sal, tal," "dagont" (the
meaning of which is obvious). But by and by they recovered their breath,
and then Baker Lamsden said, wonderingly:

"Wha that was at her marriage could have thought it would turn out so
weel? It was an eerie marriage that,