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Page 37
In such nipping weather there were no visitors to the kirkyard
and the gate was not opened. The music bells ran the gamut of old
Scotch airs and ceased, while he sat there and waited patiently.
Once a man stopped to look at the little dog, and Bobby promptly
jumped on the wicket, plainly begging to have it unlatched. But
the passer-by decided that some lady had left her pet behind, and
would return for him. So he patted the attractive little
Highlander on the head and went on about his business.
Discouraged by the unpromising outlook for dinner that day, Bobby
went slowly back to the grave. Twice afterward he made hopeful
pilgrimages to the gate. For diversion he fell noiselessly upon a
prowling cat and chased it out of the kirkyard. At last he sat
upon the table-tomb. He had escaped notice from the tenements all
the morning because the view from most of the windows was blocked
by washings, hung out and dripping, then freezing and clapping
against the old tombs. It was half-past three o'clock when a
tiny, wizened face popped out of one of the rude little windows
in the decayed Cunzie Neuk at the bottom of Candlemakers Row.
Crippled Tammy Barr called out in shrill excitement
"Ailie! O-o-oh, Ailie Lindsey, there's the wee doggie!"
"Whaur?" The lassie's elfin face looked out from a low, rear
window of the Candlemakers' Guildhall at the top of the Row.
"On the stane by the kirk wa'."
"I see 'im noo. Isna he bonny? I wish Bobby could bide i' the
kirkyaird, but they wadna let 'im. Tammy, gin ye tak' 'im up to
Maister Traill, he'll gie ye the shullin'!"
"I couldna tak' 'im by ma lane," was the pathetic confession.
"Wad ye gang wi' me, Ailie? Ye could drap ower an' catch 'im, an'
I could come by the gate. Faither made me some grand crutches
frae an' auld chair back."
Tears suddenly drowned the lassie's blue eyes and ran down her
pinched little cheeks. "Nae, I couldna gang. I haena ony shoon to
ma feet."
"It's no' so cauld. Gin I had twa guile feet I could gang the bit
way wi'oot shoon."
"I ken it isna so cauld," Ailie admitted, "but for a lassie it's
no' respectable to gang to a grand place barefeeted."
That was undeniable, and the eager children fell silent and
tearful. But oh, necessity is the mother of makeshifts among the
poor! Suddenly Ailie cried: "Bide a meenit, Tammy," and vanished.
Presently she was back, with the difficulty overcome. "Grannie
says I can wear her shoon. She doesna wear 'em i' the hoose,
ava."
"I'll gie ye a saxpence, Ailie," offered Tammy.
The sordid bargain shocked no feeling of these tenement bairns
nor marred their pleasure in the adventure. Presently there was a
tap-tap-tapping of crutches on the heavy gallery that fronted the
Cunzie Neuk, and on the stairs that descended from it to the
steep and curving row. The lassie draped a fragment of an old
plaid deftly over her thinly clad shoulders, climbed through the
window, to the pediment of the classic tomb that blocked it, and
dropped into the kirkyard. To her surprise Bobby was there at her
feet, frantically wagging his tail, and he raced her to the gate.
She caught him on the steps of the dining room, and held his
wriggling little body fast until Tammy came up.
It was a tumultuous little group that burst in upon the
astonished landlord: barking fluff of an excited dog, flying
lassie in clattering big shoes, and wee, tapping Tammy. They
literally fell upon him when he was engaged in counting out his
money.
"Whaur did you find him?" asked Mr. Traill in bewilderment.
Six-year-old Ailie slipped a shy finger into her mouth, and
looked to the very much more mature five-year old crippled laddie
to answer
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