This was all Tommy knew of his mother's life in Thrums, though she had told him much about other Thrums folk, and not till long afterwards did he see that there must be something queer about herself, which she was hiding from him.
This letter was not for her granny, however, and Tommy asked next, "Is it to Aaron Latta ?" which so startled her that she dropped the pen.
"Whaur heard you that name ?" she said sharply.

"I never spoke it to you." "I've heard you saying it when you was sleeping, mother." "Did I say onything but the name?
Quick, tell me." "You said, 'Oh, Aaron Latta, oh, Aaron, little did we think, Aaron,' and things like that.

Are you angry with me, mother ?" "No," she said, relieved, but it was some time before the desire to write came back to her.

Then she told him "The letter is to a woman that was gey cruel to me," adding, with a complacent pursing of her lips, the curious remark, "That's the kind I like to write to best." The pen went scrape, scrape, but Tommy did not weary, though he often sighed, because his mother would never read aloud to him what she wrote.
The Thrums people never answered her letters, for the reason, she said, that those she wrote to could not write, which seemed to simple Tommy to be a sufficient explanation.

So he had never heard the inside of a letter talking, though a postman lived in the house, and even Shovel's old girl got letters; once when her uncle died she got a telegram, which Shovel proudly wheeled up and down the street in a barrow, other blokes keeping guard at the side.