If I hadna done that she might have found out and ta'en your place here and tried to pack you off to the Painted Lady's." Elspeth stared at him, the other grief already forgotten, and he thought he was getting on excellently, when she cried with passion, "I don't believe as it is Reddy!" and ran into the house.
"Dinna believe it, then!" disappointed Tommy shouted, and now he was in such a rage with himself that his heart hardened against her.

He sought the company of old Blinder.
Unfortunately Elspeth had believed it, and her woe was the more pitiful because she saw at once, what had never struck Tommy, that it would be wicked to keep Grizel out of her rights.

"I'll no win to Heaven now," she said, despairingly, to herself, for to offer to change places with Grizel was beyond her courage, and she tried some childish ways of getting round God, such as going on her knees and saying, "I'm so little, and I hinna no mother!" That was not a bad way.
Another way was to give Grizel everything she had, except Tommy.

She collected all her treasures, the bottle with the brass top that she had got from Shovel's old girl, the "housewife" that was a present from Miss Ailie, the teetotum, the pretty buttons Tommy had won for her at the game of buttony, the witchy marble, the twopence she had already saved for the Muckley, these and some other precious trifles she made a little bundle of and set off for Double Dykes with them, intending to leave them at the door.

This was Elspeth, who in ordinary circumstances would not have ventured near that mysterious dwelling even in daylight and in Tommy's company.