Greyfriars Bobby Part 9

"Doon wi' ye!" was the gruff order. Bobby turned around and around on the hearth, like some little wild dog making a bed in the jungle, before he obeyed. He kept very still during the reading of a chapter and the singing of a Psalm, as he had been taught to do at the farm by many a reminder from Auld Jock's boot. And he kept away from the breakfast-table, although the walls of his stomach were collapsed as flat as the sides of an empty pocket.

It was such a clean, shining little kitchen, with the scoured deal table, chairs and cupboard, and the firelight from the grate winked so on pewter mugs, copper kettle, willow-patterned plates and diamond panes, that Bobby blinked too. Flowers bloomed in pots on the cas.e.m.e.nt sills, and a little brown skylark sang, fluttering as if it would soar, in a gilded cage. After the morning meal Mr. Brown lighted his pipe and put on his bonnet to go out again, when he bethought him that Bobby might be needing something to eat.

"What'll ye gie 'im, Jeanie? At the laird's, noo, the terriers were aye fed wi' bits o' livers an' cheese an' moor fowls' eggs, an' sic-like, fried."

"Havers, Jamie, it's no' releegious to feed a dog better than puir bairns. He'll do fair weel wi' table-sc.r.a.ps."

She set down a plate with a spoonful of porridge on it, a cold potato, some bread crusts, and the leavings of a broiled caller herrin'. It was a generous breakfast for so small a dog, but Bobby had been without food for quite forty hours, and had done an amazing amount of work in the meantime. When he had eaten all of it, he was still hungry. As a polite hint, he polished the empty plate with his pink tongue and looked up expectantly; but the best-intentioned people, if they have had little to do with dogs, cannot read such signs.

"Ye needna lick the posies aff," the wifie said, good humoredly, as she picked the plate up to wash it. She thought to put down a tin basin of water. Bobby lapped a' it so eagerly, yet so daintily, that she added: "He's a weel-broucht-up tyke, Jamie."

"He is so. Noo, we'll see hoo weel he can leuk." In a shamefaced way he fetched from a tool-box a long-forgotten, strong little currycomb, such as is used on s.h.a.ggy Shetland ponies. With that he proceeded to give Bobby such a grooming as he had never had before. It was a painful operation, for his thatch was a stubborn mat of crisp waves and knotty tangles to his plumy tail and down to his feathered toes. He braced himself and took the punishment without a whimper, and when it was done he stood cascaded with dark-silver ripples nearly to the floor.

"The bonny wee!" cried Mistress Jeanie. "I canna tak' ma twa een aff o'

'im."

"Ay, he's bonny by the ordinar'. It wad be grand, noo, gin the meenister'd fancy 'im an' tak' 'im into the manse."

The wifie considered this ruefully. "Jamie, I was wishin' ye didna hae to--"

But what she wished he did not have to do, Mr. Brown did not stop to hear. He suddenly clapped his bonnet on his head and went out. He had an urgent errand on High Street, to buy gra.s.s and flower seeds and tools that would certainly be needed in April. It took him an hour or more of shrewd looking about for the best bargains, in a swarm of little barnacle and cellar shops, to spend a few of the kirk's shillings. When he found himself, to his disgust, looking at a nail studded collar for a little dog he called himself a "doited auld fule," and tramped back across the bridge.

At the kirkyard gate he stopped and read the notice through twice: "No dogs permitted." That was as plain as "Thou shalt not." To the pious caretaker and trained servant it was the eleventh commandment. He shook his head, sighed, and went in to dinner. Bobby was not in the house, and the master of it avoided inquiring for him. He also avoided the wifie's wistful eye, and he busied himself inside the two kirks all the afternoon.

Because he was in the kirks, and the beautiful memorial windows of stained gla.s.s were not for the purpose of looking out, he did not see a dramatic incident that occurred in the kirkyard after three o'clock in the afternoon. The prelude to it really began with the report of the timegun at one. Bobby had insisted upon being let out of the lodge kitchen, and had spent the morning near Auld Jock's grave and in nosing about neighboring slabs and thorn bushes. When the time-gun boomed he trotted to the gate quite openly and waited there inside the wicket.

In such nipping weather there were no visitors to the kirkyard and the gate was not opened. The music bells ran the gamut of old Scotch airs and ceased, while he sat there and waited patiently. Once a man stopped to look at the little dog, and Bobby promptly jumped on the wicket, plainly begging to have it unlatched. But the pa.s.ser-by decided that some lady had left her pet behind, and would return for him. So he patted the attractive little Highlander on the head and went on about his business.

Discouraged by the unpromising outlook for dinner that day, Bobby went slowly back to the grave. Twice afterward he made hopeful pilgrimages to the gate. For diversion he fell noiselessly upon a prowling cat and chased it out of the kirkyard. At last he sat upon the table-tomb. He had escaped notice from the tenements all the morning because the view from most of the windows was blocked by washings, hung out and dripping, then freezing and clapping against the old tombs. It was half-past three o'clock when a tiny, wizened face popped out of one of the rude little windows in the decayed Cunzie Neuk at the bottom of Candlemakers Row.

Crippled Tammy Barr called out in shrill excitement,

"Ailie! O-o-oh, Ailie Lindsey, there's the wee doggie!"

"Whaur?" The la.s.sie's elfin face looked out from a low, rear window of the Candlemakers' Guildhall at the top of the Row.

"On the stane by the kirk wa'."

"I see 'im noo. Isna he bonny? I wish Bobby could bide i' the kirkyaird, but they wadna let 'im. Tammy, gin ye tak' 'im up to Maister Traill, he'll gie ye the shullin'!"

"I couldna tak' 'im by ma lane," was the pathetic confession. "Wad ye gang wi' me, Ailie? Ye could drap ower an' catch 'im, an' I could come by the gate. Faither made me some grand crutches frae an' auld chair back."

Tears suddenly drowned the la.s.sie's blue eyes and ran down her pinched little cheeks. "Nae, I couldna gang. I haena ony shoon to ma feet."

"It's no' so cauld. Gin I had twa guile feet I could gang the bit way wi'oot shoon."

"I ken it isna so cauld," Ailie admitted, "but for a la.s.sie it's no'

respectable to gang to a grand place barefeeted."

That was undeniable, and the eager children fell silent and tearful. But oh, necessity is the mother of makeshifts among the poor! Suddenly Ailie cried: "Bide a meenit, Tammy," and vanished. Presently she was back, with the difficulty overcome. "Grannie says I can wear her shoon. She doesna wear 'em i' the hoose, ava."

"I'll gie ye a saxpence, Ailie," offered Tammy.

The sordid bargain shocked no feeling of these tenement bairns nor marred their pleasure in the adventure. Presently there was a tap-tap-tapping of crutches on the heavy gallery that fronted the Cunzie Neuk, and on the stairs that descended from it to the steep and curving row. The la.s.sie draped a fragment of an old plaid deftly over her thinly clad shoulders, climbed through the window, to the pediment of the cla.s.sic tomb that blocked it, and dropped into the kirkyard. To her surprise Bobby was there at her feet, frantically wagging his tail, and he raced her to the gate. She caught him on the steps of the dining room, and held his wriggling little body fast until Tammy came up.

It was a tumultuous little group that burst in upon the astonished landlord: barking fluff of an excited dog, flying la.s.sie in clattering big shoes, and wee, tapping Tammy. They literally fell upon him when he was engaged in counting out his money.

"Whaur did you find him?" asked Mr. Traill in bewilderment.

Six-year-old Ailie slipped a shy finger into her mouth, and looked to the very much more mature five-year old crippled laddie to answer,

"He was i' the kirkyaird."

"Sittin' upon a stane by 'is ainsel'," added Ailie.

"An' no' hidin', ava. It was juist like he was leevin' there."

"An' syne, when I drapped oot o' the window he louped at me so bonny, an' I couldna keep up wi' 'im to the gate."

Wonder of wonders! It was plain that Bobby had made his way back from the hill farm and, from his appearance and manner, as well as from this account, it was equally clear that some happy change in his fortunes had taken place. He sat up on his haunches listening with interest and lolling his tongue! And that was a thing the bereft little dog had not done since his master died. In the first pause in the talk he rose and begged for his dinner.

"Noo, what am I to pay? It took ane, twa, three o' ye to fetch ane sma'

dog. A saxpence for the laddie, a saxpence for the la.s.sie, an' a bit meal for Bobby."

While he was putting the plate down under the settle Mr. Traill heard an amazed whisper "He's gien the doggie a chuckie bane." The landlord switched the plate from under Bobby's protesting little muzzle and turned to catch the hungry look on the faces of the children. Chicken, indeed, for a little dog, before these ill-fed bairns! Mr. Traill had a brilliant thought.

"Preserve me! I didna think to eat ma ain dinner. I hae so muckle to eat I canna eat it by ma lane."

The idea of having too much to eat was so preposterously funny that Tammy doubled up with laughter and nearly tumbled over his crutches. Mr.

Traill set him upright again.

"Did ye ever gang on a picnic, bairnies?" And what was a picnic? Tammy ventured the opinion that it might be some kind of a cart for lame laddies to ride in.

"A picnic is when ye gang gypsying in the summer," Mr. Traill explained.

"Ye walk to a bonny green brae, an' sit doon under a hawthorntree a'

covered wi' posies, by a babblin' burn, an' ye eat oot o' yer ain hands.

An' syne ye hear a throstle or a redbreast sing an' a saucy blackbird whustle."

"Could ye tak' a dog?" asked Tammy.

"Ye could that, mannie. It's no' a picnic wi'oot a sonsie doggie to rin on the brae wi' ye."

"Oh!" Ailie's blue eyes slowly widened in her pallid little face. "But ye couldna hae a picnic i' the snawy weather."

"Ay, ye could. It's the bonniest of a' when ye're no' expectin' it.

I aye keep a picnic hidden i' the ingleneuk aboon." He suddenly swung Tammy up on his shoulder, and calling, gaily, "Come awa'," went out the door, through another beside it, and up a flight of stairs to the dining-room above. A fire burned there in the grate, the tables were covered with linen, and there were blooming flowers in pots in the front windows. Patrons from the University, and the well-to-do streets and squares to the south and east, made of this upper room a sort of club in the evenings. At four o'clock in the afternoon there were no guests.

"Noo," said Mr. Traill, when his overcome little guests were seated at a table in the inglenook. "A picnic is whaur ye hae onything ye fancy to eat; gude things ye wullna be haein' ilka day, ye mind." He rang a call-bell, and a grinning waiter laddie popped up so quickly the la.s.sie caught her breath.