Greyfriars Bobby Part 10

"Eneugh broo for aince," said Tammy.

"Porridge that isna burned," suggested Ailie. Such pitiful poverty of the imagination!

"Nae, it's bread, an' b.u.t.ter, an' strawberry jam, an' tea wi' cream an'

sugar, an' cauld chuckie at a snawy picnic," announced Mr. Traill. And there it was, served very quickly and silently, after some manner of magic. Bobby had to stand on the fourth chair to eat his dinner, and when he had despatched it he sat up and viewed the little party with the liveliest interest and happiness.

"Tammy," Ailie said, when her shyness had worn off, "it's like the grand tales ye mak' up i' yer heid."

"Preserve me! Does the wee mannie mak' up stories?"

"It's juist fulish things, aboot haein' mair to eat, an' a sonsie doggie to play wi', an' twa gude legs to tak' me aboot. I think 'em oot at nicht when I canna sleep."

"Eh, laddie, do ye noo?" Mr. Traill suddenly had a terrible "cauld in 'is heid," that made his eyes water. "Hoo auld are ye?"

"Five, gangin' on sax."

"Losh! I thoucht ye war fifty, gangin' on saxty." Laughter saved the day from overmoist emotions. And presently Mr. Traill was able to say in a business-like tone:

"We'll hae to tak' ye to the infirmary. An' if they canna mak' yer legs ower ye'll get a pair o' braw crutches that are the niest thing to gude legs. An' syne we'll see if there's no' a place in Heriot's for a sma'

laddie that mak's up bonny tales o' his ain in the murky auld Cunzie Neuk."

Now the gay little feast was eaten, and early dark was coming on. If Mr.

Traill had entertained the hope that Bobby had recovered from his grief and might remain with him, he was disappointed. The little dog began to be restless. He ran to the door and back; he begged, and he scratched on the panel. And then he yelped! As soon as the door was opened he shot out of it, tumbled down the stairway and waited at the foot impatiently for the lower door to be unlatched. Ailie's thin, swift legs were left behind when Bobby dashed to the kirkyard.

Tammy followed at a surprising pace on his rude crutches, and Mr. Traill brought up the rear. If the children could not smuggle the frantic little dog inside, the landlord meant to put him over the wicket and, if necessary, to have it out with the caretaker, and then to go before the kirk minister and officers with his plea. He was still concealed by the buildings, from the alcoved gate, when he heard Mr. Brown's gruff voice taking the frightened bairns to task.

"Gie me the dog; an' dinna ye tak' him oot ony mair wi'oot spierin' me."

The children fled. Peeping around the angle of the Book Hunter's Stall, Mr. Traill saw the caretaker lift Bobby over the wicket to his arms, and start with him toward the lodge. He was perishing with curiosity about this astonishing change of front on the part of Mr. Brown, but it was a delicate situation in which it seemed best not to meddle. He went slowly back to the restaurant, begrudging Bobby to the luckier caretaker.

His envy was premature. Mr. Brown set Bobby inside the lodge kitchen and announced briefly to his wife: "The bit dog wull sleep i' the hoose the nicht." And he went about some business at the upper end of the kirkyard. When he came in an hour later Bobby was gone.

"I couldna keep 'im in, Jamie. He didna blatter, but he greeted so sair to be let oot, an syne he scratched a' the paint aff the door."

Mr. Brown glowered at her in exasperation. "Woman, they'll hae me up afore kirk sessions for brakin' the rules, an' syne they'll turn us a'

oot i' the cauld warld togither."

He slammed the door and stormed angrily around the kirk. It was still light enough to see the little creature on the snowy mound and, indeed, Bobby got up and wagged his tail in friendly greeting. At that all the bl.u.s.ter went out of the man, and he began to argue the matter with the dog.

"Come awa', Bobby. Ye canna be leevin' i' the kirkyaird."

Bobby was of a different opinion. He turned around and around, thoughtfully, several times, then sat up on the grave. Entirely willing to spend a social hour with his new friend, he fixed his eyes hospitably upon him. Mr. Brown dropped to the slab, lighted his pipe, and smoked for a time, to compose his agitated mind. By and by he got up briskly and stooped to lift the little dog. At that Bobby dug his claws in the clods and resisted with all his muscular body and determined mind. He clung to the grave so desperately, and looked up so piteously, that the caretaker surrendered. And there was snod Mistress Jeanie, forgetting her spotless gown and kneeling in the snow.

"Puir Bobby, puir wee Bobby!" she cried, and her tears fell on the little tousled head. The caretaker strode abruptly away and waited for the wifie in the shadow of the auld kirk. Bobby lifted his muzzle and licked the caressing hand. Then he curled himself up comfortably on the mound and went to sleep.

VIII.

In no part of Edinburgh did summer come up earlier, or with more lavish bloom, than in old Greyfriars kirkyard. Sheltered on the north and east, it was open to the moist breezes of the southwest, and during all the lengthening afternoons the sun lay down its slope and warmed the rear windows of the overlooking tenements. Before the end of May the caretaker had much ado to keep the growth in order. Vines threatened to engulf the circling street of sepulchers in greenery and bloom, and gra.s.s to encroach on the flower plots.

A half century ago there were no rotary lawnmowers to cut off clover heads; and, if there had been, one could not have been used on these dropping terraces, so populous with slabs and so closely set with turfed mounds and oblongs of early flowering annuals and bedding plants. Mr.

Brown had to get down on his hands and knees, with gardener's shears, to clip the turfed borders and banks, and take a sickle to the hummocks.

Thus he could dig out a root of dandelion with the trowel kept ever in his belt, consider the spreading crocuses and valley lilies, whether to spare them, give a country violet its blossoming time, and leave a screening burdock undisturbed until fledglings were out of their nests in the shrubbery.

Mistress Jeanie often brought out a little old milking stool on balmy mornings, and sat with knitting or mending in one of the narrow aisles, to advise her gude-mon in small matters. Bobby trotted quietly about, sniffing at everything with the liveliest interest, head on this side or that, alertly. His business, learned in his first summer in Greyfriars, was to guard the nests of foolish skylarks, song-thrushes, redb.r.e.a.s.t.s and wrens, that built low in lilac, laburnum, and flowering currant bushes, in crannies of wall and vault, and on the ground. It cannot but be a pleasant thing to be a wee young dog, full of life and good intentions, and to play one's dramatic part in making an old garden of souls tuneful with bird song. A cry of alarm from parent or nestling was answered instantly by the tiny, tousled policeman, and there was a prowler the less, or a skulking cat was sent flying over tomb and wall.

His duty done, without noise or waste of energy, Bobby returned to lie in the sun on Auld Jock's grave. Over this beloved mound a coverlet of rustic turf had been spread as soon as the frost was out of the ground, and a bonny briar bush planted at the head. Then it bore nature's own tribute of flowers, for violets, b.u.t.tercups, daisies and clover blossoms opened there and, later, a spike or so of wild foxglove and a knot of heather. Robin redb.r.e.a.s.t.s and wrens foraged around Bobby, unafraid; swallows swooped down from their mud villages, under the dizzy dormers and gables, to flush the flies on his muzzle, and whole flocks of little blue t.i.tmice fluttered just overhead, in their rovings from holly and laurel to newly ta.s.seled firs and yew trees.

The click of the wicket gate was another sort of alarm altogether. At that the little dog slipped under the fallen table-tomb and lay hidden there until any strange visitor had taken himself away. Except for two more forced returns and ingenious escapes from the sheepfarm on the Pentlands, Bobby had lived in the kirkyard undisturbed for six months.

The caretaker had neither the heart to put him out nor the courage to face the minister and the kirk officers with a plea for him to remain.

The little dog's presence there was known, apparently, only to Mr.

Traill, to a few of the tenement dwellers, and to the Heriot boys. If his life was clandestine in a way, it was as regular of hour and duty and as well ordered as that of the garrison in the Castle.

When the time-gun boomed, Bobby was let out for his midday meal at Mr.

Traill's and for a noisy run about the neighborhood to exercise his lungs and legs. On Wednesdays he haunted the Gra.s.smarket, sniffing at horses, carts and mired boots. Edinburgh had so many s.h.a.ggy little Skye and Scotch terriers that one more could go about unremarked. Bobby returned to the kirkyard at his own good pleasure. In the evening he was given a supper of porridge and broo, or milk, at the kitchen door of the lodge, and the nights he spent on Auld Jock's grave. The morning drum and bugle woke him to the chase, and all his other hours were spent in close attendance on the labors of the caretaker. The click of the wicket gate was the signal for instant disappearance.

A scramble up the wall from Heriot's Hospital grounds, or the patter of bare feet on the gravel, however, was notice to come out and greet a friend. Bobby was host to the disinherited children of the tenements.

Now, at the tap-tap-tapping of Tammy Barr's crutches, he scampered up the slope, and he suited his pace to the crippled boy's in coming down again. Tammy chose a heap of cut gra.s.s on which to sit enthroned and play king, a grand new crutch for a scepter, and Bobby for a courtier.

At command, the little dog rolled over and over, begged, and walked on his hind legs. He even permitted a pair of thin little arms to come near strangling him, in an excess of affection. Then he wagged his tail and lolled his tongue to show that he was friendly, and trotted away about his business. Tammy took an oat-cake from his pocket to nibble, and began a conversation with Mistress Jeanie.

"I broucht a picnic wi' me."

"Did ye, noo? An' hoo did ye ken aboot picnics, laddie?"

"Maister Traill was tellin' Ailie an' me. There's ilka thing to mak'

a picnic i' the kirkyaird. They couldna mak' my legs gude i' the infairmary, but I'm gangin' to Heriot's. I'll juist hae to airn ma leevin' wi' ma heid, an' no' remember aboot ma legs, ava. Is he no' a bonny doggie?"

"Ay, he's bonny. An' ye're a braw laddie no' to fash yersel' aboot what canna be helped."

The wifie took his ragged jacket and mended it, dropped a tear in an impossible hole, and a ha'penny in the one good pocket. And by and by the pale laddie slept there among the bright graves, in the sun. After another false alarm from the gate she asked her gude-mon, as she had asked many times before:

"What'll ye do, Jamie, when the meenister kens aboot Bobby, an' ca's ye up afore kirk sessions for brakin' the rule?"

"We wullna cross the brig till we come to the burn, woman," he invariably answered, with a.s.sumed unconcern. Well he knew that the bridge might be down and the stream in flood when he came to it. But Mr. Traill was a member of Greyfriars auld kirk, too, and a companion in guilt, and Mr. Brown relied not a little on the landlord's fertile mind and daring tongue. And he relied on useful, well-behaving Bobby to plead his own cause.

"There's nae denyin' the doggie is takin' in 'is ways. He's had twa gude hames fair thrown at 'is heid, but the sperity bit keeps to 'is ain mind. An' syne he's usefu', an' hauds 'is gab by the ordinar'." He often reinforced his inclination with some such argument.

With all their caution, discovery was always imminent. The kirkyard was long and narrow and on rising levels, and it was cut almost across by the low ma.s.s of the two kirks, so that many things might be going on at one end that could not be seen from the other. On this Sat.u.r.day noon, when the Heriot boys were let out for the half-holiday, Mr. Brown kept an eye on them until those who lived outside had dispersed. When Mistress Jeanie tucked her knitting-needles in her belt, and went up to the lodge to put the dinner over the fire, the caretaker went down toward Candlemakers Row to trim the gra.s.s about the martyrs' monument.

Bobby dutifully trotted at his heels. Almost immediately a half-dozen laddies, led by Geordie Ross and Sandy McGregor, scaled the wall from Heriot's grounds and stepped down into the kirkyard, that lay piled within nearly to the top. They had a perfectly legitimate errand there, but no mission is to be approached directly by romantic boyhood.

"Hist!" was the warning, and the innocent invaders, feeling delightfully lawless, stole over and stormed the marble castle, where "Bluidy"

McKenzie slept uneasily against judgment day. Light-hearted lads can do daring deeds on a sunny day that would freeze their blood on a dark and stormy night. So now Geordie climbed nonchalantly to a seat over the old persecutor, crossed his stout, bare legs, filled an imaginary pipe, and rattled the three farthings in his pocket.

"I'm 'Jinglin' Geordie' Heriot," he announced.

"I'll show ye hoo a prood goldsmith ance smoked wi' a'." Then, jauntily: "Sandy, gie a crack to 'Bluidy' McKenzie's door an' daur the auld hornie to come oot."