He never thought of Tommy.
Then a week or two later fell a heavier blow.

At least twice a year the Dominie had written for Meggy Duff to her daughter in Ireland a long letter founded on this suggestion, "Dear Kaytherine, if you dinna send ten shillings immediately, your puir auld mother will have neither house nor hame.

I'm crying to you for't, Kaytherine; hearken and you'll hear my cry across the cauldriff sea." He met Meggy in the Banker's Close one day, and asked her pleasantly if the time was not drawing nigh for another appeal.
"I have wrote," replied the old woman, giving her pocket a boastful smack, which she thus explained, "And it was the whole ten shillings this time, and you never got more for me than five." "Who wrote the letter for you ?" he asked, lowering.
She, too, it seemed, had promised not to tell.
"Did you promise to tell nobody, Meggy, or just no to tell me," he pressed her, of a sudden suspecting Tommy.
"Just no to tell you," she answered, and at that.
"Da-a-a," began the Dominie, and then saved his reputation by adding "gont." The derivation of the word dagont has puzzled many, but here we seem to have it.
It is interesting to know what Tommy wrote.

The general opinion was that his letter must have been a triumph of eloquent appeal, and indeed he had first sketched out several masterpieces, all of some length and in different styles, but on the whole not unlike the concoctions of Meggy's former secretary; that is, he had dwelt on the duties of daughters, on the hardness of the times, on the certainty that if Katherine helped this time assistance would never be needed again.

This sort of thing had always satisfied the Dominie, but Tommy, despite his several attempts, had a vague consciousness that there was something second-rate about them, and he tapped on his brain till it responded.