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It is the first mention of her in these pages. The people Mrs. Sandys wanted to hear of chiefly were Aaron Latta and Jean Myles, and soon Tommy brought news of them, but at the same time he had heard of the Den, and he said first: "Oh, mother, I thought as you had told me about all the beauty places in Thrums, and you ain't never told me about the Den." His mother heaved a quick breath.
The smith had often denounced this woman, but he never said a word against her again. He stood long reflecting, and then took the letter to Blinder and read it to him. "She doesna say, 'Oh, Aaron Latta, do you mind the Cuttle Well?" was the blind man's first comment. "She was thinking about it," said Auchterlonie. "Ay, and he's thinking about it," said Blinder, "night and day, night and day.
I suppose she thought your house was so small. But Tommy said, 'The house of the man who befriended us when we were children shall never be too small for us." "Did he say that? Ay, but, Elspeth, I would rather hear what you said." "I said it was to dear, good Aaron Latta I was going back, and to no one else." "God bless you for that, Elspeth."
Corp and Gavinia and Ailie and Aaron Latta were the only persons asked to the wedding, and when it was over, they said they never saw anyone stand up by a woman's side looking so anxious to be her man; and I am sure that in this they did Tommy no more than justice. It was a sad day to Elspeth. Could she be expected to smile while her noble brother did this great deed of sacrifice?
He and Aaron Latta were the first admitted to see her, when she was able once more to sit in a chair. They had been told to ask her no questions. She chatted pleasantly to them, and they thought she was quite her old self. They wondered to see Tommy still so sad-eyed.
"Well, for a day or two Tommy Sandys has been coming to the school in a black jacket with crape on the cuffs, and not only so, he has sat quiet and forlorn-like at his desk as if he had lost some near and dear relative. Now I knew that he had not, for his only relative is a sister whom you may have seen at the Hanky School, and both she and Aaron Latta are hearty.
They were dressed in the black clothes Aaron Latta had bought for them in London, and they had agreed just to walk, but when they reached the door and saw the tree-tops of the Den they they ran. Would you not like to hold them back? It is a child's tragedy.
"What said they to that bit?" she asked. But by and by they recovered their breath, and then Baker Lamsden said, wonderingly: "Wha that was at her marriage could have thought it would turn out so weel? It was an eerie marriage that, Petey!" "Ay, man, you may say so," old Petey answered. "I was there; I was one o' them as went in ahint Aaron Latta, and I'm no' likely to forget it."
You pay me what you want to now, and the rest when I come around the latta paht of August." "Oh keep 'em, Clem!" the big girl urged, passionately, and the rest joined her with their entreaties. "I guess I betta not," said Clementina, and she completed the work of taking off the slippers in which the big girl could lend her no further aid, such was her affliction of spirit.
"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."
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