them. It was Tommy's mother, whose first free act on
coming to London had been to find out that street, and many a time since
them site had skulked through it or watched it from dark places, never
daring to disclose herself, but sometimes recognizing familiar faces,
sometimes hearing a few words in the old tongue that is harsh and
ungracious to you, but was so sweet to her, and bearing them away with
her beneath her shawl as if they were something warm to lay over her
cold heart.

For a time she upbraided Tommy passionately for not keeping away from
this street, but soon her hunger for news of Thrums overcame her
prudence, and she consented to let him go back if he promised never to
tell that his mother came from Thrums. "And if ony-body wants to ken
your name, say it's Tommy, but dinna let on that it's Tommy Sandys."

"Elspeth," Tommy whispered that night, "I'm near sure there's something
queer about my mother and me and you." But he did not trouble himself
with wondering what the something queer might be, so engrossed was he in
the new and exciting life that had suddenly opened to him.

CHAPTER VI

THE ENCHANTED STREET

In Thrums Street, as it ought to have been called, herded at least
one-half of the Thrums folk in London, and they formed a colony, of
which the grocer at the corner sometimes said wrathfully that not a
member would give sixpence for anything except Bibles or whiskey. In the
streets one could only tell they were not Londoners by their walk, the
flagstones having no grip for their feet, or, if they had come south
late in life, by their backs, which they carried at the angle on which
webs are most easily supported. When mixing with the world they talked
the English tongue, which came out of them as broad as if it had been
squeezed through a mangle, but when the day's work was done, it was only
a few of the giddier striplings that remained Londoners. For the
majority there was no raking the streets after diversion, they spent the
hour or two before bed-time in reproducing the life of Thrums. Few of
them knew much of London except the nearest way between this street and
their work, and their most interesting visitor was a Presbyterian
minister, most of whose congregation lived in much more fashionable
parts, but they were almost exclusively servant girls, and when
descending area-steps to visit them he had been challenged often and
jocularly by policemen, which perhaps was what gave him a subd