Stories by English Authors: Scotland (Selected by Scribners) — John Shaqi
Stories by English Authors: Scotland (Selected by Scribners)
General
Stories by English Authors: Scotland (Selected by Scribners)
English literature -- Scottish authors; Scottish literature; Short stories
Produced by Dagny; Emma Dudding; John Bickers
STORIES BY ENGLISH AUTHORS
SCOTLAND
CONTENTS
The Courting of T’nowhead’s Bell J. M. Barrie
“The Heather Lintie” S. R. Crockett
A Doctor of the Old School Ian Maclaren
Wandering Willie’s Tale Sir Walter Scott
The Glenmutchkin Railway Professor Aytoun
Thrawn Janet R. L. Stevenson
THE COURTING OF T’NOWHEAD’S BELL, By J. M. Barrie
For two years it had been notorious in the square that Sam’l Dickie
was thinking of courting T’nowhead’s Bell, and that if Little Sanders
Elshioner (which is the Thrums pronunciation of Alexander Alexander)
went in for her, he might prove a formidable rival. Sam’l was a weaver
in the tenements, and Sanders a coal-carter, whose trade-mark was a bell
on his horse’s neck that told when coal was coming. Being something of
a public man, Sanders had not, perhaps, so high a social position as
Sam’l, but he had succeeded his father on the coal-cart, while the
weaver had already tried several trades. It had always been against
Sam’l, too, that once when the kirk was vacant he had advised the
selection of the third minister who preached for it on the ground that
it became expensive to pay a large number of candidates. The scandal
of the thing was hushed up, out of respect for his father, who was a
God-fearing man, but Sam’l was known by it in Lang Tammas’s circle.
The coal-carter was called Little Sanders to distinguish him from his
father, who was not much more than half his size. He had grown up with
the name, and its inapplicability now came home to nobody. Sam’l’s
mother had been more far-seeing than Sanders’s. Her man had been called
Sammy all his life because it was the name he got as a boy, so when
their eldest son was born she spoke of him as Sam’l while still in the
cradle. The neighbours imitated her, and thus the young man had a better
start in life than had been granted to Sammy, his father.
It was Saturday evening--the night in the week when Auld Licht young men
fell in love. Sam’l Dickie, wearing a blue glengarry bonnet with a
red ball on the top, came to the door of the one-story house in the
tenements, and stood there wriggling, for he was in a suit of tweed for
the first time that week, and did not feel at one with them. When his
feeling of being a stranger to himself wore off, he looked up and down
the road, which straggles between houses and gardens, and then, picking
his way over the puddles, crossed to his father’s hen-house and sat down
on it. He was now on his way to the square.
Eppie Fargus was sitting on an adjoining dyke knitting stockings, and
Sam’l looked at her for a time.
“Is’t yersel’, Eppie?” he said at last.
“It’s a’ that,” said Eppie.
“Hoo’s a’ wi’ ye?” asked Sam’l.
“We’re juist aff an’ on,” replied Eppie, cautiously.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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