Chapter 37

THE END OF A BOYHOOD

Convinced of his own worthlessness, Tommy was sufficiently humble now,
but Aaron Latta, nevertheless, marched to the square on the following
market day and came back with the boy's sentence, Elspeth being happily
absent.

"I say nothing about the disgrace you have brought on this house," the
warper began without emotion, "for it has been a shamed house since
afore you were born, and it's a small offence to skail on a clarty
floor. But now I've done more for you than I promised Jean Myles to do,
and you had your pick atween college and the herding, and the herding
you've chosen twice. I call you no names, you ken best what you're
fitted for, but I've seen the farmer of the Dubb of Prosen the day, and
he was short-handed through the loss of Tod Lindertis, so you're fee'd
to him. Dinna think you get Tod's place, it'll be years afore you rise
to that, but it's right and proper that as he steps up, you should step
down."

"The Dubb of Prosen!" cried Tommy in dismay. "It's fifteen miles frae
here."

"It's a' that."

"But--but--but Elspeth and me never thought of my being so far away that
she couldna see me. We thought of a farmer near Thrums."

"The farther you're frae her the better," said Aaron, uneasily, yet
honestly believing what he said.

"It'll kill her," Tommy cried fiercely. With only his own suffering to
consider he would probably have nursed it into a play through which he
stalked as the noble child of misfortune, but in his anxiety for Elspeth
he could still forget himself. "Fine you ken she canna do without me,"
he screamed.

"She maun be weaned," replied the warper, with a show of temper; he was
convinced that the sooner Elspeth learned to do without Tommy the better
it would be for herself in the end, but in his way of regarding the boy
there was also a touch of jealousy, pathetic rather than forbidding. To
him he left the task of breaking the news to Elspeth; and Tommy,
terrified lest she should swoon under it, was almost offended when she
remained calm. But, alas, the reason was that she thought she was going
with him.

"Will we have to walk all the way to the Dubb of Prosen?" she asked,
quite brightly, and at that Tommy twisted about in misery. "You are
no--you canna--" he began, and then dodged the telling. "We--we may get
a lift in a cart," he said weakly.

"And I'll sit aside you in the fields, and make chains o' the gowans,
will I no? Speak, Tommy!"

"Ay--ay, will you," he groaned.

"And we'll have a wee, wee room to oursels, and--"

He