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Instead of routing her out, Tammas, without taking any one into his confidence, determined to treat Chirsty as dead, and celebrate her decease in a "lyke wake" a last wake. These wakes were very general in Thrums in the old days, though they had ceased to be common by the date of Little Rathie's death.
Try if F. B. will put the rhymes into the paper. Do they take it in in Park Lane? See whether you can get me a guinea for these tears of mine: "Mes Larmes," Pen, do you remember? Yours ever, C. N. The verses are enclosed. O ma Reine! Although the Minstrel's lost you long, Although for bread the Minstrel sings, Ah, still for you he pipes the song, And thrums upon the crazy strings!
After the farmer had gone to bed, some half-dozen ploughmen and a few other poachers from Thrums would set out for the meeting-place. The smithy on these occasions must have been a weird sight; though one did not mark that at the time. The poacher crept from the darkness into the glaring smithy light; for in country parts the anvil might sometimes be heard clanging at all hours of the night.
One of his sources of income was the Mentor, a famous London weekly paper, which seemed to visitors to be taken in by every person of position in Thrums. It was to be seen not only in parlors, but on the armchair at the Jute Bank, in the gauger's gig, in the Spittal factor's dog-cart, on a shoemaker's form, protruding from Dr. McQueen's tail pocket and from Mr.
No heart opens to sympathy without letting in delicacy, and these poor people knew that Nanny would not like them to see her being taken away. For a week they had been aware of what was coming, and they had been most kind to her, but that hideous word, the poorhouse, they had not uttered. Poorhouse is not to be spoken in Thrums, though it is nothing to tell a man that you see death in his face.
Gently I drew the points, closing the cape around her slender throat, knotted the laces, smoothed out the thrums, took her small hands and laid them on my breast. One by one the stately Indians came to make their homage, bending their war-crests proudly and placing her hands upon their painted breasts. Then they went away in silence, each to his proper post, no doubt.
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.
"You see," Gavin said to Babbie, "I could not have a new neckcloth, not to speak of a cloak, without everybody in Thrums knowing about it. I dare say Nanny knows all about the braid, and even what it cost." "Three bawbees the yard at Kyowowy's shop," replied Nanny, promptly, "and your mother sewed it on. Sam'l Fairweather has the marrows o't on his top coat. No that it has the same look on him."
"I had not forgotten," I replied. "What else made me tell you last night that Babbie was in Nanny's house?" "But now you are afraid now when the deed is done, when for me there can be no turning back. Whatever be the issue, I should be a cur to return to Thrums without my wife. Every minute I feel my strength returning, and before you reach Thrums I will have set out to the Spittal."
Before the excitement had abated, Jeffrey was in Tilliedrum for electioneering purposes, and he was mobbed in the streets. Angry crowds pressed close to howl "Wife o' Deeside!" at him. A contingent from Thrums was there, and it was long afterward told of Sam'l Todd, by himself, that he hit Jeffrey on the back of the head with a clod of earth.
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