Presently he returned, having deposited his money in a safe place, and his first remark was perhaps the meanest on record.

He held out his hand and said greedily, "Have you ony mair ?" This, you feel certain, must have been the most important event of that evening, but strange to say, it was not.

Before Tommy could answer James's question, a woman in a shawl had pounced upon him and hurried him and Elspeth out of the street.

She had been standing at a corner looking wistfully at the window blinds behind which folk from Thrums passed to and fro, hiding her face from people in the street, but gazing eagerly after 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.