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Page 57
"Nae, he's fair ill. Gin he doesna keep canny it wull gang to 'is
heart. He'd be aff 'is heid, aboot Bobby. Oh, Tammy, Maister
Traill gaed to gie 'im up! He was wearin' a' 'is gude claes an' a
lang face, to gang to Bobby's buryin'."
This dreadful thought spurred them to instant action. By way of
mutual encouragement they went together through the sculptured
doorway, that bore the arms of the ancient guild of the
candlemakers on the lintel, and into the carting office on the
front.
"Do ye ken Greyfriars Bobby?" Tammy asked, timidly, of the man in
charge.
He glowered at the laddie and shook his head. "Havers, mannie;
there's no' onybody named for an auld buryin' groond."
The children fled. There was no use at all in wasting time on
folk who did not know Bobby, for it would take too long to
explain him. But, alas, they soon discovered that "maist ilka
body" did not know the little dog, as they had so confidently
supposed. He was sure to be known only in the rooms at the rear
that overlooked the kirkyard, and, as one went upward, his
identity became less and less distinct. He was such a wee, wee,
canny terrier, and so many of the windows had their views
constantly shut out by washings. Around the inner courts, where
unkempt women brought every sort of work out to the light on the
galleries and mended worthless rags, gossiped, and nursed their
babies on the stairs, Bobby had sometimes been heard of, but
almost never seen. Children often knew him where their elders did
not. By the time Ailie and Tammy had worked swiftly down to the
bottom of the Row other children began to follow them, moved by
the peril of the little dog to sympathy and eager sacrifice.
"Bide a wee, Ailie!" cried one, running to overtake the lassie.
"Here's a penny. I was gangin' for milk for the porridge. We can
do wi'oot the day."
And there was the money for the broth bone, and the farthing that
would have filled the gude-man's evening pipe, and the ha'penny
for the grandmither's tea. It was the world-over story of the
poor helping the poor. The progress of Ailie and Tammy through
the tenements was like that of the piper through Hamelin. The
children gathered and gathered, and followed at their heels,
until a curiously quiet mob of threescore or more crouched in the
court of the old hall of the Knights of St. John, in the
Grassmarket, to count the many copper coins in Tammy's woolen
bonnet.
"Five shullin's, ninepence, an' a ha'penny," Tammy announced. And
then, after calculation on his fingers, "It'll tak' a shullin'
an' twapenny ha'penny mair."
There was a gasping breath of bitter disappointment, and one wee
laddie wailed for lost Bobby. At that Ailie dashed the tears from
her own eyes and sprang up, spurred to desperate effort. She
would storm the all but hopeless attic chambers. Up the twisting
turnpike stairs on the outer wall she ran, to where the swallows
wheeled about the cornices, and she could hear the iron cross of
the Knights Templars creak above the gable. Then, all the way
along a dark passage, at one door after another, she knocked, and
cried,
"Do ye ken Greyfriars Bobby?"
At some of the doors there was no answer. At others students
stared out at the bairn, not in the least comprehending this wild
crying. Tears of anger and despair flooded the little maid's blue
eyes when she beat on the last door of the row with her doubled
fist.
"Do ye ken Greyfriars Bobby? The police are gangin' to mak' 'im
be deid--" As the door was flung open she broke into stormy
weeping.
"Hey, lassie. I know the dog. What fashes you?"
There stood a tall student, a wet towel about his head, and,
behind him, the rafters of the dormer-lighted closet were as
thickly hung with bunches of dried herbs from the Botanical
Garden as any auld witch wife's kitchen.
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