Thus it seemed, to Tommy that she denied herself the pleasure of writing to Thrums lest the sorry news of Elspeth's advent should spoil his reception when he went north.
So grateful Tommy gave her the picture, hoping that it would fill the void.

But it did not.

She put it on the mantelpiece so that she might just sit and look at it, she said, and he grinned at it from every part of the room, but when he returned to her, he saw that she was neither looking at it nor thinking of it.

She was looking straight before her, and sometimes her lips twitched, and then she drew them into her mouth to keep them still.

It is a kind of dry weeping that sometimes comes to miserable ones when their minds stray into the happy past, and Tommy sat and watched her silently for a long time, never doubting that the cause of all her woe was that she could not write to Thrums.
He had seldom seen tears on his mother's face, but he saw one now.