Greyfriars Bobby by Eleanor Atkinson

Author:Eleanor Atkinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141907130
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2008-10-14T04:00:00+00:00

8

IT was more than eight years after Auld Jock fled from the threat of a doctor that Mr Traill’s prediction, that his tongue would get him into trouble with the magistrates, was fulfilled; and then it was because of the least-considered slip in speaking to a boyhood friend who happened to be a Burgh policeman.

Many things had tried the landlord of Ye Olde Greyfriars Dining-Rooms. After a series of soft April days, in which lilacs budded and birds sang in the kirkyard, squalls of wind and rain came up out of the sea-roaring east. The smoky old town of Edinburgh was so shaken and beaten upon and icily drenched that rattling finials and tiles were torn from ancient gables and whirled abroad. Rheumatic pains were driven into the joints of the elderly. Mr Brown took to his bed in the lodge, and Mr Traill was touchy in his temper.

A sensitive little dog learns to read the human barometer with a degree of accuracy rarely attained by fellowmen and, in times of low pressure, wisely effaces himself. His rough thatch streaming, Bobby trotted in blithely for his dinner, ate it under the settle, shook himself dry, and dozed half the afternoon.

To the casual observer the wee terrier was no older than when his master died. As swift of foot and as sound of wind as he had ever been, he could tear across country at the heels of a new generation of Heriot laddies and be as fresh as a daisy at nightfall. Silvery grey all over, the whitening hairs on his face and tufted feet were not visible. His hazel-brown eyes were still as bright and soft and deep as the sunniest pools of Leith Water. It was only when he opened his mouth for a tiny, pink cavern of a yawn that the points of his teeth could be seen to be wearing down; and his after-dinner nap was more prolonged than of old. At such times Mr Traill recalled that the longest life of a dog is no more than a fifth of the length of days allotted to man.

On that snarling April day, when only himself and the flossy ball of sleeping Skye were in the place, this thought added to Mr Traill’s discontent. There had been few guests. Those who had come in, soaked and surly, ate their dinner in silence and discomfort and took themselves away, leaving the freshly scrubbed floor as mucky as a moss-hag on the moor. Late in the afternoon a sergeant, risen from the ranks and cocky about it, came in and turned himself out of a dripping greatcoat, dapper and dry in his red tunic, pipeclayed belt, and winking buttons. He ordered tea and toast and Dundee marmalade with an air of gay well-being that was no less than a personal affront to a man in Mr Traill’s frame of mind. Trouble brewed with the tea that Ailie Lindsey, a tall lassie of fifteen, but shy and elfish as of old, brought in on a tray from the scullery.

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