Chapter 13

SHOWS HOW TOMMY TOOK CARE OF ELSPETH

Thus the first day passed, and others followed in which women, who had
known Jean Myles, did her children kindnesses, but could not do all they
would have done, for Aaron forbade them to enter his home except on
business though it was begging for a housewife all day. Had Elspeth at
the age of six now settled down to domestic duties she would not have
been the youngest housekeeper ever known in Thrums, but she was never
very good at doing things, only at loving and being loved, and the
observant neighbors thought her a backward girl; they forgot, like most
people, that service is not necessarily a handicraft. Tommy discovered
what they were saying, and to shield Elspeth he took to housewifery with
the blind down; but Aaron, entering the kitchen unexpectedly, took the
besom from, him, saying:

"It's an ill thing for men folk to ken ower muckle about women's work."

"You do it yoursel'," Tommy argued.

"I said men folk," replied Aaron, quietly.

The children knew that remarks of this sort had reference to their
mother, of whom he never spoke more directly; indeed he seldom spoke to
them at all, and save when he was cooking or giving the kitchen a
slovenly cleaning they saw little of him. Monypenny had predicted that
their presence must make a new man of him, but he was still unsociable
and morose and sat as long as ever at the warping-mill, of which he
seemed to have become the silent wheel. Tommy and Elspeth always dropped
their voices when they spoke of him, and sometimes when his mill stopped
he heard one of them say to the other, "Whisht, he's coming!" Though he
seldom, spoke sharply to them, his face did not lose its loneliness at
sight of them. Elspeth was his favorite (somewhat to the indignation of
both); they found this out without his telling them or even showing it
markedly, and when they wanted to ask anything of him she was deputed to
do it, but she did it quavering, and after drawing farther away from him
instead of going nearer. A dreary life would have lain before them had
they not been sent to school.

There were at this time three schools in Thrums, the chief of them ruled
over by the terrible Cathro (called Knuckly when you were a street away
from him). It was a famous school, from which a band of three or four or
even six marched every autumn to the universities as determined after
bursaries as ever were Highlandmen to lift cattle, and for the same
reason, that they could not do without.

A very different kind of dominie was Cursing Ballingall, who had been
dropped at Thrums by a travelling circus, and first became familiar to
the town as, carrying two carpet shoes, two books, a pillow,