ms, but you have never seen no better, your man having neither the
siller nor the desire to take yon jaunts, and I'm thinking that is just
as well, for if you saw how the like of me lives it might disgust you
with your own bit house. I often laugh, Esther, to think that I was once
like you, and looked upon Thrums as a bonny place. How is the old hole?
My son makes grand sport of the onfortunate bairns as has to bide in
Thrums, and I see him doing it the now to his favorite companion, which
is a young gentleman of ladylike manners, as bides in our terrace. So no
more at present, for my man is sitting ganting for my society, and I
daresay yours is crying to you to darn his old socks. Mind and tell
Aaron Latta."

This letter was posted next day by Tommy, with the assistance of Shovel,
who seems to have been the young gentleman of ladylike manners referred
to in the text.

CHAPTER IV

THE END OF AN IDYLL

Tommy never saw Reddy again owing to a fright he got about this time,
for which she was really to blame, though a woman who lived in his house
was the instrument.

It is, perhaps, idle to attempt a summary of those who lived in that
house, as one at least will be off, and another in his place, while we
are giving them a line apiece. They were usually this kind who lived
through the wall from Mrs. Sandys, but beneath her were the two rooms of
Hankey, the postman, and his lodger, the dreariest of middle-aged clerks
except when telling wistfully of his ambition, which was to get out of
the tea department into the coffee department, where there is an easier
way of counting up the figures. Shovel and family were also on this
floor, and in the rooms under them was a newly married couple. When the
husband was away at his work, his wife would make some change in the
furniture, taking the picture from this wall, for instance, and hanging
it on that wall, or wheeling the funny chair she had lain in before she
could walk without a crutch, to the other side of the fireplace, or
putting a skirt of yellow paper round the flower pot, and when he
returned he always jumped back in wonder and exclaimed: "What an immense
improvement!" These two were so fond of one another that Tommy asked
them the reason, and they gave it by pointing to the chair with the
wheels, which seemed to him to be no reason at all. What was this young
husband's trade Tommy never knew, but he was the only prettily dressed
man in the house, and he could b