After all Tommy Tregennis had breakfast at the proper time the
following morning; and although he left home a little earlier than
usual it was with no intention of hurrying. Rather did he choose to
swagger slowly through the crooked streets, while every now and again
he bent ostentatiously to pick up a stone to throw at a sparrow, or a
lamp-post, or an old tin in the gutter. It did not matter in the least
what he aimed at, sparrow, post or tin, for never by any chance did he
hit it; but it mattered greatly that those children who had laughed
last night, laughed while he was sobbing in bed, should know that
there was no need for him to stand upright unless he cared to do so.
Without shame he could now assume any attitude he chose. For Tommy
Tregennis wore a new pair of trousers!
Tommy himself had not known of their existence, but weeks before, at
night while he slept, Mammy had planned and cut and sewn by the light
of the kitchen lamp. With puckered brow, and tightly compressed lips
holding two or three pins, she had spread her old green coat carefully
on the kitchen table, smoothed out every wrinkle, and upon it placed a
piece of newspaper which bore some resemblance to the shape of Tommy's
legs.
The first plan was faulty; the curve of the arm-hole interfered. The
newspaper pattern was taken up, Mammy's mouth held more pins and her
frown grew deeper. It was only after much anxious thought that she
decided finally that it was possible to cut a strip from a sleeve of
the coat and join it to the top of the trousers in such a way that
when Tommy's jersey was well pulled down the seam would not show. So
the pattern was pinned on more firmly, the first cut was made
half-an-inch from the edge of the paper, and after that there was no
drawing back.
As Mammy planned and pinned and cut and sewed in the yellow light of
the lamp the silence of the little kitchen was only broken by the fall
of a cinder now and again, and by the steady ticking of the clocks.
One clock stood on the chimney-piece, a canister on either side, and
beyond each canister a china dog with staring yellow eyes. It was the
chimney-piece clock that told the time. Nailed to the wall, to the
left of the fireplace, with long slender chains dangling and throwing
shadows in the lamplight, hung a cuckoo clock that was Tommy's most
cherished possession. All day and all night it ticked steadily through
the hours, but as the hands never moved it was not considered
trustworthy more than once a day; this was at five minutes past
twelve, when (at any rate on Saturdays and Sundays) Mammy would look
up to the wall, and say: "Deary me, five minutes past twelve; my dear
soul, why 'tis time to put on the potaties!"
As the clocks ticked, and the cinders fell, and the oil in the lamp
burned low, Mammy's deft fingers moved very busily, and her thoughts
were very busy too. They carried her a long way back--ten years back,
in fact--to the time before she was Mammy, to the days when Tommy, and
even Tommy's father, had not yet come into her life.
She was just Ellen in those days; Ellen Pertwee really, but no one
seemed to remember that she had a second name more than once a year
when it was all written in full in her Sunday School prize. For four
years Ellen had been a willing little servant-maid at Tomses the
draper's, but when she was eighteen there was a great change in her
life, for she went to the doctor's as house-parlour-maid, and her
wages were twelve pounds a year. She was very hazy at the time as to
the meaning of her grand new title; but the money was very real, and
she remembered even now how dazzled she was at the thought of so much
gold.
With her first month's wages, ten years ago, she had bought the cloth
for her new green coat. It had cost her much deliberation and several
sleepless nights, but at last she had gone back to Tomses on her
fortnightly night-out, and made the important purchase. Night after
night she had cut and shaped and pinned and stitched, much as she was
cutting and shaping now. At last the coat was finished (all sewn by
hand, too, for Ellen had no machine in those days) and she wore it in
Church on her next Sunday out.
It was after Church that very night that Tom Tregennis, much to her
surprise, asked her to walk out with him, and----. Well, now the new
green coat was the old green coat, and was being made into trousers
for little Tommy Tregennis to wear!