“We'll gie 'im a grand buryin',” said Tammy. “We'll find a green brae
by a babblin' burn aneath a snawy hawthorn, whaur the throstle sings an'
the blackbird whustles.” For the crippled laddie had never forgotten Mr.
Traill's description of a proper picnic, and that must, indeed, be a wee
dog's heaven.
“Ay, that wull do fair weel.” The collar had come back to him by this
time, and the Lord Provost buckled it securely about Bobby's neck.
X.
The music of bagpipe, fife and drum brought them all out of Haddo's Hole
into High Street. It was the hour of the morning drill, and the soldiers
were marching out of the Castle. From the front of St. Giles, that
jutted into the steep thoroughfare, they could look up to where the
street widened to the esplanade on Castle Hill. Rank after rank of
scarlet coats, swinging kilts and sporrans, and plumed bonnets appeared.
The sun flashed back from rifle barrels and bayonets and from countless
bright buttons.
A number of the older laddies ran up the climbing street. Mr. Traill
called Bobby back and, with a last grip of Glenormiston's hand, set off
across the bridge. To the landlord the world seemed a brave place to be
living in, the fabric of earth and sky and human society to be woven of
kindness. Having urgent business of buying supplies in the markets at
Broughton and Lauriston, Mr. Traill put Bobby inside the kirkyard gate
and hurried away to get into his everyday clothing. After dinner, or
tea, he promised himself the pleasure of an hour at the lodge, to tell
Mr. Brown the wonderful news, and to show him Bobby's braw collar.
When, finally, he was left alone, Bobby trotted around the kirk, to
assure himself that Auld Jock's grave was unmolested. There he turned
on his back, squirmed and rocked on the crocuses, and tugged at the
unaccustomed collar. His inverted struggles, low growlings and furry
contortions set the wrens to scolding and the redbreasts to making
nervous inquiries. Much nestbuilding, tuneful courtship, and masculine
blustering was going on, and there was little police duty for Bobby.
After a time he sat up on the table-tomb, pensively. With Mr. Brown
confined, to the lodge, and Mistress Jeanie in close attendance upon him
there, the kirkyard was a lonely place for a sociable little dog; and
a soft, spring day given over to brooding beside a beloved grave, was
quite too heart-breaking a thing to contemplate. Just for cheerful
occupation Bobby had another tussle with the collar. He pulled it so far
under his thatch that no one could have guessed that he had a collar on
at all, when he suddenly righted himself and scampered away to the gate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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