Sentimental Tommy | Page 9

the tongs, his father (who followed
many professions, among them that of finding lost dogs), had struck
her and told her to drop it, and then Shovel sauced his father for
interfering, saying she should lick him as long as she blooming well
liked, which made his father go for him with a dog-collar; and that was
how Shovel lost his eye.
For reasons less unselfish than his old girl's Shovel also was willing to
make up to Tommy at this humiliating time. It might be said of these
two boys that Shovel knew everything but Tommy knew other things,
and as the other things are best worth hearing of Shovel liked to listen
to them, even when they were about Thrums, as they usually were. The
very first time Tommy told him of the wondrous spot, Shovel had
drawn a great breath, and said, thoughtfully:
"I allers knowed as there were sich a beauty place, but I didn't jest
know its name."
"How could yer know?" Tommy asked jealously.
"I ain't sure," said Shovel, "p'raps I dreamed on it."

"That's it," Tommy cried. "I tell yer, everybody dreams on it!" and
Tommy was right; everybody dreams of it, though not all call it
Thrums.
On the whole, then, the coming of the kid, who turned out to be called
Elspeth, did not ostracize Tommy, but he wished that he had let the
other girl in, for he never doubted that her admittance would have kept
this one out. He told neither his mother nor his friend of the other girl,
fearing that his mother would be angry with him when she learned what
she had missed, and that Shovel would crow over his blundering, but
occasionally he took a side glance at the victorious infant, and a poorer
affair, he thought, he had never set eyes on. Sometimes it was she who
looked at him, and then her chuckle of triumph was hard to bear. As
long as his mother was there, however, he endured in silence, but the
first day she went out in a vain search for work (it is about as difficult
to get washing as to get into the Cabinet), he gave the infant a piece of
his mind, poking up her head with a stick so that she was bound to
listen.
"You thinks as it was clever on you, does yer? Oh, if I had been on the
stair!
"You needn't not try to get round me. I likes the other one five times
better; yes, three times better.
"Thievey, thievey, thief, that's her place you is lying in. What?
"If you puts out your tongue at me again--! What do yer say?
"She was twice bigger than you. You ain't got no hair, nor yet no teeth.
You're the littlest I ever seed. Eh? Don't not speak then, sulks!"
Prudence had kept him away from the other girl, but he was feeling a
great want: someone to applaud him. When we grow older we call it
sympathy. How Reddy (as he called her because she had beautiful
red-brown hair) had appreciated him! She had a way he liked of
opening her eyes very wide when she looked at him. Oh, what a
difference from that thing in the back of the bed!

Not the mere selfish desire to see her again, however, would take him
in quest of Reddy. He was one of those superior characters, was
Tommy, who got his pleasure in giving it, and therefore gave it. Now,
Reddy was a worthy girl. In suspecting her of overreaching him he had
maligned her: she had taken what he offered, and been thankful. It was
fitting that he should give her a treat: let her see him again.
His mother was at last re-engaged by her old employers, her supplanter
having proved unsatisfactory, and as the work lay in a distant street, she
usually took the kid with her, thus leaving no one to spy on Tammy's
movements. Reddy's reward for not playing him false, however, did not
reach her as soon as doubtless she would have liked, because the first
two or three times he saw her she was walking with the lady of his
choice, and of course he was not such a fool as to show himself. But he
walked behind them and noted with satisfaction that the lady seemed to
be reconciled to her lot and inclined to let bygones be bygones; when at
length Reddy and her patron met, Tommy thought this a good sign too,
that Ma-ma (as she would call the lady) had told her not to go farther
away than the lamp-post, lest she should get lost again. So evidently
she had got lost once already, and the lady had been sorry. He asked
Reddy