boastful was Shovel of the way she could lay on, and he was partial
to her too, and once when she was giving it to him pretty strong with
the tongs, his father (who followed many professions, among them that of
finding lost dogs), had struck her and told her to drop it, and then
Shovel sauced his father for interfering, saying she should lick him as
long as she blooming well liked, which made his father go for him with a
dog-collar; and that was how Shovel lost his eye.

For reasons less unselfish than his old girl's Shovel also was willing
to make up to Tommy at this humiliating time. It might be said of these
two boys that Shovel knew everything but Tommy knew other things, and as
the other things are best worth hearing of Shovel liked to listen to
them, even when they were about Thrums, as they usually were. The very
first time Tommy told him of the wondrous spot, Shovel had drawn a great
breath, and said, thoughtfully:

"I allers knowed as there were sich a beauty place, but I didn't jest
know its name."

"How could yer know?" Tommy asked jealously.

"I ain't sure," said Shovel, "p'raps I dreamed on it."

"That's it," Tommy cried. "I tell yer, everybody dreams on it!" and
Tommy was right; everybody dreams of it, though not all call it Thrums.

On the whole, then, the coming of the kid, who turned out to be called
Elspeth, did not ostracize Tommy, but he wished that he had let the
other girl in, for he never doubted that her admittance would have kept
this one out. He told neither his mother nor his friend of the other
girl, fearing that his mother would be angry with him when she learned
what she had missed, and that Shovel would crow over his blundering, but
occasionally he took a side glance at the victorious infant, and a
poorer affair, he thought, he had never set eyes on. Sometimes it was
she who looked at him, and then her chuckle of triumph was hard to bear.
As long as his mother was there, however, he endured in silence, but the
first day she went out in a vain search for work (it is about as
difficult to get washing as to get into the Cabinet), he gave the infant
a piece of his mind, poking up her head with a stick so that she was
bound to listen.

"You thinks as it was clever on you, does yer? Oh, if I had been on the
stair!

"You needn't not try to get round me. I likes the other one five times
better; yes, three times better.

"Thievey, thievey, thief, that's her place you is lying in. What?