Chapter 25

A PENNY PASS-BOOK

Elspeth conveyed the gift to Tommy in a brown paper wrapping, and when
it lay revealed as an aging volume of _Mamma's Boy_, a magazine for the
Home, nothing could have looked more harmless. But, ah, you never know.
Hungrily Tommy ran his eye through the bill of fare for something choice
to begin with, and he found it. "The Boy Pirate" it was called. Never
could have been fairer promise, and down he sat confidently.

It was a paper on the boys who have been undone by reading pernicious
fiction. It gave their names, and the number of pistols they had bought,
and what the judge said when he pronounced sentence. It counted the
sensational tales found beneath the bed, and described the desolation of
the mothers and sisters. It told the color of the father's hair before
and afterwards.

Tommy flung the thing from him, picked it up again, and read on
uneasily, and when at last he rose he was shrinking from himself. In
hopes that he might sleep it off he went early to bed, but his
contrition was still with him in the morning. Then Elspeth was shown the
article which had saved him, and she, too, shuddered at what she had
been, though her remorse was but a poor display beside his, he was so
much better at everything than Elspeth. Tommy's distress of mind was so
genuine and so keen that it had several hours' start of his admiration
of it; and it was still sincere, though he himself had become gloomy,
when he told his followers that they were no more. Grizel heard his tale
with disdain, and said she hated Miss Ailie for giving him the silly
book, but he reproved these unchristian sentiments, while admitting that
Miss Ailie had played on him a scurvy trick.

"But you're glad you've repented, Tommy," Elspeth reminded him,
anxiously.

"Ay, I'm glad," he answered, without heartiness.

"Well, gin you repent I'll repent too," said Corp, always ready to
accept Tommy without question.

"You'll be happier," replied Tommy, sourly.

"Ay, to be good's the great thing," Corp growled; "but, Tommy, could we
no have just one michty blatter, methinks, to end up wi'?"

This, of course, could not be, and Saturday forenoon found Tommy
wandering the streets listlessly, very happy, you know, but inclined to
kick at any one who came near, such, for instance, as the stranger who
asked him in the square if he could point out the abode of Miss Ailie
Cray.

Tommy led the way, casting some converted looks at the gentleman, and
judging him to be the mysterious unknown in whom the late Captain Stroke
had taken such a reprehensible interest. He was a stout, red-faced man,
stepping firmly into the fifties, with a