It was slightly loose, and had she not at times shut her mouth suddenly, and then done something with her tongue, an accident might have happened.

This tooth fascinated Tommy, and once when she was talking he cried, excitedly, "Quick, it's coming!" whereupon her mouth snapped close, and she turned pink in the blue-and-white room.
Nevertheless Tommy became her favorite, and as he had taught himself to read, after a fashion, in London, where his lesson-books were chiefly placards and the journal subscribed to by Shovel's father, she often invited him after school hours to the blue-and-white room, where he sat on a kitchen chair (with his boots off) and read aloud, very slowly, while Miss Ailie knitted.

The volume was from the Thrums Book Club, of which Miss Ailie was one of the twelve members.

Each member contributed a book every year, and as their tastes in literature differed, all sorts of books came into the club, and there was one member who invariably gave a ro-ro-romance.

He was double-chinned and forty, but the school-mistress called him the dashing young banker, and for months she avoided his dangerous contribution.