Chapter 34

WHO TOLD TOMMY TO SPEAK

"Miss Alison Cray presents her compliments to--and requests the favor of
their company at her marriage with Mr. Ivie McLean, on January 8th, at
six o'clock."

Tommy in his Sabbath clothes, with a rose from the Dovecot hot-house for
buttonhole (which he slipped into his pocket when he saw other boys
approaching), delivered them at the doors of the aristocracy, where, by
the way, he had been a few weeks earlier, with another circular.

"Miss Alison Cray being about to give up school, has pleasure in stating
that she has disposed of the good-will of her establishment to Miss
Jessy Langlands and Miss S. Oram, who will enter upon their scholastic
duties on January 9th, at Hoods Cottage, where she most cordially," and
so on.

Here if the writer dared (but you would be so angry) he would introduce
at the length of a chapter two brand-new characters, the Misses
Langlands and Oram, who suddenly present themselves to him in the most
sympathetic light. Miss Ailie has been safely stowed to port, but their
little boat is only setting sail, and they are such young ones, neither
out of her teens, that he would fain turn for a time from her to them.
Twelve pounds they paid for the good-will, and, oh, the exciting
discussions, oh, the scraping to get the money together! If little Miss
Langlands had not been so bold, big Miss Oram must have drawn back, but
if Miss Oram had not had that idea about a paper partition, of what
avail the boldness of Miss Langlands? How these two trumps of girls
succeeded in hiring the Painted Lady's spinet from Nether Drumgley--in
the absence of his wife, who on her way home from buying a cochin-china
met the spinet in a cart--how the mother of one of them, realizing in a
klink that she was common no more, henceforth wore black caps instead of
mutches (but the father dandered on in the old plebeian way), what the
enterprise meant to a young man in distant Newcastle, whose favorite
name was Jessy, how the news travelled to still more distant Canada,
where a family of emigrants which had left its Sarah behind in Thrums,
could talk of nothing else for weeks--it is hard to have to pass on
without dwelling on these things, and indeed--but pass on we must.

The chief figure at the wedding of Miss Ailie was undoubtedly Mr. T.
Sandys. When one remembers his prominence, it is difficult to think that
the wedding could have taken place without him. It was he (in his
Sabbath clothes again, and now flaunting his buttonhole brazenly) who
in insulting language ordered the rabble to stand back there. It was he
who dashed out to the 'Sosh to get a hundred ha'pennies for the fifty
pennies Mr. McLean had brought to toss into the air. It was he who went