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
grass 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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