Elspeth conveyed the gift to Tommy in a brown paper wrapping, and when it lay revealed as an aging volume of Mamma's Boy, a magazine for the Home, nothing could have looked more harmless. But, ah, you never know. Hungrily Tommy ran his eye through the bill of fare for something choice to begin with, and he found it. "The Boy Pirate" it was called. Never could have been fairer promise, and down he sat confidently.  
It was a paper on the boys who have been undone¹ by reading pernicious fiction. It gave their names, and the number of pistols they had bought, and what the judge said when he pronounced sentence. It counted the sensational² tales found beneath the bed, and described the desolation of the mothers and sisters. It told the color of the father's hair before and afterwards.
 
Tommy flung the thing from him, picked it up again, and read on uneasily, and when at last he rose he was shrinking from himself. In hopes that he might sleep it off he went early to bed, but his contrition³ was still with him in the morning. Then Elspeth was shown the article which had saved him, and she, too, shuddered⁴ at what she had been, though her remorse⁵ was but a poor display beside his, he was so much better at everything than Elspeth. Tommy's distress⁶ of mind was so genuine and so keen that it had several hours' start of his admiration⁷ of it; and it was still sincere, though he himself had become gloomy, when he told his followers⁸ that they were no more. Grizel heard his tale with disdain⁹, and said she hated Miss Ailie for giving him the silly book, but he reproved these unchristian sentiments, while admitting that Miss Ailie had played on him a scurvy¹⁰ trick.
 
"But you're glad you've repented¹¹, Tommy," Elspeth reminded him, anxiously.
 
"Ay, I'm glad," he answered, without heartiness¹³.
 
"Well, gin you repent¹² I'll repent too," said Corp, always ready to accept Tommy without question.
 
"You'll be happier," replied Tommy, sourly.
 
"Ay, to be good's the great thing," Corp growled¹⁴; "but, Tommy, could we no have just one michty blatter, methinks, to end up wi'?"
 
This, of course, could not be, and Saturday forenoon found Tommy wandering the streets listlessly, very happy, you know, but inclined to kick at any one who came near, such, for instance, as the stranger who asked him in the square if he could point out the abode¹⁵ of Miss Ailie Cray.
 
Tommy led the way, casting some converted looks at the gentleman, and judging him to be the mysterious unknown in whom the late Captain Stroke had taken such a reprehensible¹⁷ interest. He was a stout¹⁸, red-faced man, stepping firmly into the fifties, with a beard that even the most converted must envy, and a frown sat on his brows all the way, proving him possibly ill-tempered, but also one of the notable few who can think hard about one thing for at least five consecutive¹⁹ minutes. Many took a glint at him as he passed, but missed the frown, they were wondering so much why the fur of his heavy top-coat was on the inside, where it made little show, save at blasty corners.
 
Miss Ailie was in her parlor²⁰, trying to give her mind to a blue and white note-book, but when she saw who was coming up the garden she dropped the little volume and tottered²¹ to her bedroom. She was there when Gavinia came up to announce that she had shown a gentleman into the blue-and-white room, who gave the name of Ivie McLean. "Tell him—I shall come down—presently," gasped²² Miss Ailie, and then Gavinia was sure this was the man who was making her mistress so unhappy.
 
"She's so easily flichtered now," Gavinia told Tommy in the kitchen, "that for fear o' starting her I never whistle at my work without telling her I'm to do't, and if I fall on the stair, my first thought is to jump up and cry, 'It was just me tum'ling.' And now I believe this brute'll be the death o' her."
 
"But what can he do to her?"
 
"I dinna ken¹⁶, but she's greeting sair, and yon can hear how he's rampaging up and down the blue-and-white room. Listen to his thrawn feet! He's raging because she's so long in coming down, and come she daurna. Oh, the poor crittur!"
 
Now, Tommy was very fond of his old school-mistress, and he began to be unhappy with Gavinia.
 
"She hasna a man-body in the world to take care o' her," sobbed²³ the girl.
 
"Has she no?" cried Tommy, fiercely, and under one of the impulses that so easily mastered him he marched into the blue-and-white room.
 
"Well, my young friend, and what may you want?" asked Mr. McLean, impatiently.
 
Tommy sat down and folded his arms. "I'm going to sit here and see what you do to Miss Ailie," he said, determinedly²⁴.
 
Mr. McLean said "Oh!" and then seemed favorably impressed, for he added quietly: "She is a friend of yours, is she? Well, I have no intention of hurting her."
 
"You had better no," replied Tommy, stoutly²⁵.
 
"Did she send you here?"
 
"No; I came mysel'."
 
"To protect her?"
 
There was the irony²⁶ in it that so puts up a boy's dander. "Dinna think," said Tommy, hotly, "that I'm fleid at you, though I have no beard—at least, I hinna it wi' me."
 
At this unexpected conclusion a smile crossed Mr. McLean's face, but was gone in an instant. "I wish you had laughed," said Tommy, on the watch; "once a body laughs he canna be angry no more," which was pretty good even for Tommy. It made Mr. McLean ask him why he was so fond of Miss Ailie.
 
"I'm the only man-body she has," he answered.
 
"Oh? But why are you her man-body?"
 
The boy could think of no better reason than this: "Because—because she's so sair in need o' are." (There were moments when one liked Tommy.)
 
Mr. McLean turned to the window, and perhaps forgot that he was not alone. "Well, what are you thinking about so deeply?" he asked by and by.
 
"I was trying to think o' something that would gar you laugh," answered Tommy, very earnestly, and was surprised to see that he had nearly done it.
 
The blue and white note-book was lying on the floor where Miss Ailie had dropped it. Often in Tommy's presence she had consulted this work, and certainly its effect on her was the reverse of laughter; but once he had seen Dr. McQueen pick it up and roar over every page. With an inspiration Tommy handed the book to Mr. McLean. "It made the doctor laugh," he said persuasively²⁷.
 
"Go away," said Ivie, impatiently; "I am in no mood for laughing."
 
"I tell you what," answered Tommy, "I'll go, if you promise to look at it," and to be rid of him the man agreed. For the next quarter of an hour Tommy and Gavinia were very near the door of the blue-and-white room, Tommy whispering dejectedly, "I hear no laughing," and Gavinia replying, "But he has quieted down."
 
Mr. McLean had a right to be very angry, but God only can say whether he had a right to be as angry as he was. The book had been handed to him open, and he was laying it down unread when a word underlined caught his eye. It was his own name. Nothing in all literature arrests our attention quite so much as that. He sat down to the book. It was just about this time that Miss Ailie went on her knees to pray.
 
It was only a penny pass-book. On its blue cover had been pasted a slip of white paper, and on the paper was written, in blue ink, "Alison Cray," with a date nearly nine years old. The contents were in Miss Ailie's prim²⁸ handwriting; jottings for her own use begun about the time when the sisters, trembling at their audacity²⁹, had opened school, and consulted and added to fitfully ever since. Hours must have been spent in erasing³⁰ the blots³¹ and other blemishes³² so carefully. The tiny volume was not yet full, and between its two last written pages lay a piece of blue blotting-paper neatly³³ cut to the size of the leaf.
 
Some of these notes were transcripts³⁴ from books, some contained the advice of friends, others were doubtless the result of talks with Miss Kitty (from whom there were signs that the work had been kept a secret), many were Miss Ailie's own. An entry of this kind was frequent: "If you are uncertain of the answer to a question in arithmetic, it is advisable to leave the room on some pretext³⁵ and work out the sum swiftly in the passage." Various pretexts³⁶ were suggested, and this one (which had an insufficient³⁷ line through it) had been inserted by Dr. McQueen on that day when Tommy saw him chuckling³⁸, "You pretend that your nose is bleeding and putting your handkerchief to it, retire hastily, the supposition being that you have gone to put the key of the blue-and-white room down your back." Evidently these small deceptions³⁹ troubled Miss Ailie, for ............