years Mr.
McLean's letters had been the one thing the sisters looked forward to,
and now, when Miss Ailie was without Miss Kitty, must she lose them
also? She never doubted, though she may have been wrong, that, if Ivie
knew of Miss Kitty's death, one letter would come in answer, and that
the last. She could not tell him. In the meantime he wrote twice asking
the reason of this long silence, and at last Miss Ailie, whose
handwriting was very like her sister's, wrote him a letter which was
posted at Tilliedrum and signed "Katherine Cray." The thing seems
monstrous, but this gentle lady did it, and it was never so difficult to
do again. Latterly, it had been easy.

This last letter of Mr. McLean's announced to Miss Kitty that he was
about to start for home "for good," and he spoke in it of coming to
Thrums to see the sisters, as soon as he reached Redlintie. Poor Miss
Ailie! After sleepless nights she trudged to the Tilliedrum post-office
with a full confession of her crime, which would be her welcome home to
him when he arrived at his brother's house. Many of the words were
written on damp blobs. After that she could do nothing but wait for the
storm, and waiting she became so meek, that Gavinia, who loved her
because she was "that simple," said sorrowfully:

"How is't you never rage at me now, ma'am? I'm sure it keepit you
lightsome, and I likit to hear the bum o't."

"And instead o' the raging I was prigging for," the soft-hearted maid
told her friends, "she gave me a flannel petticoat!" Indeed, Miss Ailie
had taken to giving away her possessions at this time, like a woman who
thought she was on her death-bed. There was something for each of her
pupils, including--but the important thing is that there was a gift for
Tommy, which had the effect of planting the Hanoverian Woman (to whom he
must have given many uneasy moments) more securely on the British
Throne.

CHAPTER XXV

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