He was in full swing before any one could act.  Shovel having failed to hold him in his seat, had done what was perhaps the next best thing, got beneath it himself.  The arm of the petrified clergyman was still extended, as if blessing his brother’s remarks; the chairman seemed to be trying to fling his right hand at the culprit; but her ladyship, after the first stab, never moved a muscle.  Thus for nearly half a minute, when the officials woke up, and squeezing past many knees, seized Tommy by the neck and ran him out of the building.  All down the aisle he prayed hysterically, and for some time afterwards, to Shovel, who had been cast forth along with him.

At an hour of that night when their mother was asleep, and it is to be hoped they were the only two children awake in London, Tommy sat up softly in the wardrobe to discover whether Elspeth was still praying for him.  He knew that she was on the floor in a night-gown some twelve sizes too large for her, but the room was as silent and black as the world he had just left by taking his fingers from his ears and the blankets off his face.

“I see you,” he said mendaciously, and in a guarded voice, so as not to waken his mother, from whom he had kept his escapade.  This had not the desired effect of drawing a reply from Elspeth, and he tried bluster.

“You needna think as I’ll repent, you brat, so there!  What?

“I wish I hadna told you about it!” Indeed, he had endeavored not to do so, but pride in his achievement had eventually conquered prudence.

“Reddy would have laughed, she would, and said as I was a wonder.  Reddy was the kind I like.  What?

“You ate up the oranges quick, and the plum-duff too, so you should pray for yoursel’ as well as for me.  It’s easy to say as you didna know how I got them till after you eated them, but you should have found out.  What?

“Do you think it was for my own self as I done it?  I jest done it to get the oranges and plum-duff to you, I did, and the threepence too.  Eh?  Speak, you little besom.

“I tell you as I did repent in the hall.  I was greeting, and I never knowed I put up that prayer till Shovel told me on it.  We was sitting in the street by that time.”

This was true.  On leaving the hall Tommy had soon dropped to the cold ground and squatted there till he came to, when he remembered nothing of what had led to his expulsion.  Like a stream that has run into a pond and only finds itself again when it gets out, he was but a continuation of the boy who when last conscious of himself was in the corner crying remorsefully over his misdeed; and in this humility he would have returned to Elspeth had no one told him of his prayer.  Shovel, however, was at hand, not only to tell him all about it, but to applaud, and home strutted Tommy chuckling.

“I am sleeping,” he next said to Elspeth, “so you may as well come to your bed.”

He imitated the breathing of a sleeper, but it was the only sound to be heard in London, and he desisted fearfully.  “Come away, Elspeth,” he said, coaxingly, for he was very fond of her and could not sleep while she was cold and miserable.