Bog-Myrtle and Peat: Tales Chiefly of Galloway Gathered from the Years 1889 to 1895Crockett, S. R. (Samuel Rutherford)
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Bog-Myrtle and Peat: Tales Chiefly of Galloway Gathered from the Years 1889 to 1895
Crockett, S. R. (Samuel Rutherford)
Dumfries and Galloway (Scotland) -- Fiction; Short stories
So Jaikie mounted on the platform, and they began to play 'Tiger.' This
is how they played it. Jaikie had a bow and arrow, and he watched and
waited silently up among the green leaves till Jiminy came, crawling as
softly beneath as the tiger goes _pit-pat_ in his own jungles. Then
Jaikie drew the arrow to a head, and shot the tiger square on the back.
With a mighty howl the beast sprang in the air, as though to reach
Jaikie. But brave Jaikie only laughed, and in a moment the tiger fell on
his back, pulled up its trouser-legs, and expired. For that is the way
tigers always do. They cannot expire without pulling up their
trouser-legs. If you do not believe me, ask the man at the Zoo.
Now, as the former story tells, it was Jaikie who used always to do what
Jiminy bade him; but after Jaikie was hurt, helping Jiminy's father to
keep his church and manse, it was quite different. Jiminy used to come
to Jaikie and say, "What shall we do to-day?" And then he used to wheel
his friend in a little carriage the village joiner made, and afterwards
carry him among the orchard trees to the place he wanted to go.
"Jiminy," said Jaikie, "the flowers are bonnie in the plots, but they
are a' prisoners. Let us make a place where they can grow as they like."
Perhaps he thought of himself laid weak and lonely, when the green world
without was all a-growing and a-blowing.
"Bring some of the flowers up to this corner," said Jaikie, the lame
boy. And it was not long till Jiminy brought them. The ground was baked
and dry, however, and soon they would have withered, but that Jaikie
issued his commands, and Jiminy ran for pails upon pails of water from
the little burn where now the water had stopped flowing, and only slept
black in the pools with a little green scum over them.
"I can't carry water all night like this," said Jiminy at last. "I
suppose we must give up this wild garden here in the corner of the
orchard."
"No," said Jaikie, rubbing his lame ankle where it always hurt, "we must
not give it up, for it is our very own, and I shall think about it
to-night between the clock-strikes."
For Jaikie used to lie awake and count the hours when the pain was at
the worst. Jaikie now lived at the manse all the time (did I tell you
that before?), for his father was dead.
So in the little room next to Jiminy's, Jaikie lay awake and hearkened
to the gentle breathing of his friend. Jiminy always said when he went
to bed, "I'll keep awake to-night sure, Jaikie, and talk to you."
And Jaikie only smiled a wan smile with a soul in it, for he knew that
as soon as Jiminy's head touched the pillow he would be in the dim and
beautiful country of Nod, leaving poor Jaikie to rub the leg in which
the pains ran races up and down, and to listen and pray for the next
striking of the clock.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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