Scotland -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
In my school-house, however, I seem to see the square most readily
in the Scotch mist which so often filled it, loosening the stones
and choking the drains. There was then no rattle of rain against my
window-sill, nor dancing of diamond drops on the roofs, but blobs of
water grew on the panes of glass to reel heavily down them. Then the
sodden square would have shed abundant tears if you could have taken
it in your hands and wrung it like a dripping cloth. At such a time the
square would be empty but for one vegetable-cart left in the care of a
lean collie, which, tied to the wheel, whined and shivered underneath.
Pools of water gather in the coarse sacks that have been spread over the
potatoes and bundles of greens, which turn to manure in their lidless
barrels. The eyes of the whimpering dog never leave a black close over
which hangs the sign of the Bull, probably the refuge of the hawker. At
long intervals a farmer's gig rumbles over the bumpy, ill-paved square,
or a native, with his head buried in his coat, peeps out of doors,
skurries across the way, and vanishes. Most of the leading shops are
here, and the decorous draper ventures a few yards from the pavement
to scan the sky, or note the effect of his new arrangement in scarves.
Planted against his door is the butcher, Henders Todd, white-aproned,
and with a knife in his hand, gazing interestedly at the draper, for a
mere man may look at an elder. The tinsmith brings out his steps, and,
mounting them, stealthily removes the saucepans and pepper-pots that
dangle on a wire above his sign-board. Pulling to his door he shuts out
the foggy light that showed in his solder-strewn workshop. The square is
deserted again. A bundle of sloppy parsley slips from the hawker's
cart and topples over the wheel in driblets. The puddles in the sacks
overflow and run together. The dog has twisted his chain round a barrel
and yelps sharply. As if in response comes a rush of other dogs. A
terrified fox-terrier tears across the square with half a score of
mongrels, the butcher's mastiff, and some collies at his heels; he is
doubtless a stranger, who has insulted them by his glossy coat. For two
seconds the square shakes to an invasion of dogs, and then again there
is only one dog in sight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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