The artfulness of Tommy lured his unsuspecting mother into telling how
they would be holding Hogmanay in Thrums to-night, how cartloads of
kebbock cheeses had been rolling into the town all the livelong day ("Do
you hear them, Elspeth?"), and in dark closes the children were already
gathering, with smeared faces and in eccentric dress, to sally forth as
guisers at the clap of eight, when the ringing of a bell lets Hogmanay
loose. ("You see, Elspeth?") Inside the houses men and women were
preparing (though not by fasting, which would have been such a good way
that it is surprising no one ever thought of it) for a series of visits,
at every one of which they would be offered a dram and kebbock and
bannock, and in the grander houses "bridies," which are a sublime kind
of pie.

Tommy had the audacity to ask what bridies were like. And he could not
dress up and be a guiser, could he, mother, for the guisers sang a song,
and he did not know the words? What a pity they could not get bridies to
buy in London, and learn the song and sing it. But of course they could
not! ("Elspeth, if you tumble off the fender again, she'll guess.")

Such is a sample of Tommy, but Elspeth was sly also, if in a smaller
way, and it was she who said: "There ain't nothin' in the bed, is there,
Tommy!" This duplicity made her uneasy, and she added, behind her teeth,
"Maybe there is," and then, "O God, I knows as there is."

But as the great moment drew near there were no more questions; two
children were staring at the clock and listening intently for the peal
of a bell nearly five hundred miles away.

The clock struck. "Whisht! It's time, Elspeth! They've begun! Come on!"

A few minutes afterwards Mrs. Sandys was roused by a knock at the door,
followed by the entrance of two mysterious figures. The female wore a
boy's jacket turned outside in, the male a woman's bonnet and a shawl,
and to make his disguise the more impenetrable he carried a poker in his
right hand. They stopped in the middle of the floor and began to recite,
rather tremulously,

Get up, good wife, and binna sweir,
And deal your bread to them that's here.
For the time will come when you'll be dead,
And then you'll need neither ale nor bread.

Mrs. Sandys had started, and then turned piteously from them; but when
they were done she tried to smile, and said, with forced gayety, that
she saw they were guisers, and it was a fine night, and would they take
a chair. The male strang