Bobby knew, as well as any man, that it was the dinner hour.With the time-gun it was Auld Jock's custom to go up to a snug little restaurant; that was patronized chiefly by the decent poor small shopkeepers, clerks, tenant farmers, and medical students living in cheap lodgings--in Greyfriars Place.There, in Ye Olde Greyfriars Dining-Rooms, owned by Mr.John Traill, and four doors beyond the kirkyard gate, was a cozy little inglenook that Auld Jock and Bobby had come to look upon as their own.At its back, above a recessed oaken settle and a table, a tiny paned window looked up and over a retaining wall into the ancient place of the dead.
The view of the heaped-up and crowded mounds and thickets of old slabs and throughstones, girt all about by time-stained monuments and vaults, and shut in on the north and east by the backs of shops and lofty slum tenements, could not be said to be cheerful.
It suited Auld Jock, however, for what mind he had was of a melancholy turn.From his place on the floor, between his master's hob-nailed boots, Bobby could not see the kirkyard, but it would not, in any case, have depressed his spirits.He did not know the face of death and, a merry little ruffian of a terrier, he was ready for any adventure.
On the stone gate pillar was a notice in plain English that no dogs were permitted in Greyfriars.As well as if he could read, Bobby knew that the kirkyard was forbidden ground.He had learned that by bitter experience.Once, when the little wicket gate that held the two tall leaves ajar by day, chanced to be open, he had joyously chased a cat across the graves and over the western wall onto the broad green lawn of Heriot's Hospital.
There the little dog's escapade bred other mischief, for Heriot's Hospital was not a hospital at all, in the modern English sense of being a refuge for the sick.Built and christened in a day when a Stuart king reigned in Holyrood Palace, and French was spoken in the Scottish court, Heriot's was a splendid pile of a charity school, all towers and battlements, and cheerful color, and countless beautiful windows.Endowed by a beruffed and doubleted goldsmith, "Jinglin' Geordie" Heriot, who had "nae brave laddie o' his ain," it was devoted to the care and education of "puir orphan an' faderless boys." There it had stood for more than two centuries, in a spacious park, like the country-seat of a Lowland laird, but hemmed in by sordid markets and swarming slums.The region round about furnished an unfailing supply of "puir orphan an' faderless boys" who were as light-hearted and irresponsible as Bobby.
Hundreds of the Heriot laddies were out in the noon recess, playing cricket and leap-frog, when Bobby chased that unlucky cat over the kirkyard wall.He could go no farther himself, but the laddies took up the pursuit, yelling like Highland clans of old in a foray across the border.The unholy din disturbed the sacred peace of the kirkyard.Bobby dashed back, barking furiously, in pure exuberance of spirits.He tumbled gaily over grassy hummocks, frisked saucily around terrifying old mausoleums, wriggled under the most enticing of low-set table tombs and sprawled, exhausted, but still happy and noisy, at Auld Jock's feet.
It was a scandalous thing to happen in any kirkyard! The angry caretaker was instantly out of his little stone lodge by the gate and taking Auld Jock sharply to task for Bobby's misbehavior.
The pious old shepherd, shocked him self and publicly disgraced, stood, bonnet in hand, humbly apologetic.Seeing that his master was getting the worst of it, Bobby rushed into the fray, an animated little muff of pluck and fury, and nipped the caretaker's shins.There was a howl of pain, and a "maist michty"word that made the ancient tombs stand aghast.Master and dog were hustled outside the gate and into a rabble of jeering slum gamin.
What a to-do about a miserable cat! To Bobby there was no logic at all in the denouement to this swift, exciting drama.But he understood Auld Jock's shame and displeasure perfectly.
Good-tempered as he was gay and clever, the little dog took his punishment meekly, and he remembered it.Thereafter, he passed the kirk yard gate decorously.If he saw a cat that needed harrying he merely licked his little red chops--the outward sign of a desperate self-control.And, a true sport, he bore no malice toward the caretaker.
During that first summer of his life Bobby learned many things.
He learned that he might chase rabbits, squirrels and moor-fowl, and sea-gulls and whaups that came up to feed in plowed fields.
Rats and mice around byre and dairy were legitimate prey; but he learned that he must not annoy sheep and sheep-dogs, nor cattle, horses and chickens.And he discovered that, unless he hung close to Auld Jock's heels, his freedom was in danger from a wee lassie who adored him.He was no lady's lap-dog.From the bairnie's soft cosseting he aye fled to Auld Jock and the rough hospitality of the sheep fold.Being exact opposites in temperaments, but alike in tastes, Bobby and Auld Jock were inseparable.In the quiet corner of Mr.Traill's crowded dining-room they spent the one idle hour of the week together, happily.Bobby had the leavings of a herring or haddie, for a rough little Skye will eat anything from smoked fish to moor-fowl eggs, and he had the tidbit of a farthing bone to worry at his leisure.Auld Jock smoked his cutty pipe, gazed at the fire or into the kirk-yard, and meditated on nothing in particular.
