"Why in the world has he left it to me?" she asked Pamela.
"You see the lawyer suggests coming to see you. He will explain it all.
It's a wonderful stroke of luck, Jean. No wonder you can't take it in."
"I feel like the little old woman in the nursery-rhyme who said, 'This is none of I.' I'm bound to wake up and find I've dreamt it…. Oh, Mrs. M'Cosh!"
"It's the wee laddie Scott to say his mother canna come and wash the morn's mornin'; she's no weel. It's juist as weel, seein' the biler's gone wrang. I suppose I'd better gie the laddie a piece?"
"Yes, and a penny." Then Jean remembered her new possessions. "No, give him this, please, Mrs. M'Cosh."
Mrs. M'Cosh received the coin and gasped. "Hauf a croon!" she said.
"Silver," said Pamela, "is to be no more accounted of than it was in the days of Solomon!"
"D'ye ken whit ye'll dae?" demanded Mrs. M'Cosh. "Ye'll get the laddie taen up by the pollis. Gie him thruppence—it's mair wise-like."
"Oh, very well," said Jean, thwarted at the very beginning of her efforts in philanthropy. "I'll go and see his mother to-morrow and find out what she needs. Have you heard the news, Mrs. M'Cosh?"
Mrs. M'Cosh came farther into the room and folded her hands on her snow-white apron.