In no part of Edinburgh did summer come up earlier, or with more lavish bloom, than in old Greyfriars kirkyard.Sheltered on the north and east, it was open to the moist breezes of the southwest, and during all the lengthening afternoons the sun lay down its slope and warmed the rear windows of the overlooking tenements.Before the end of May the caretaker had much ado to keep the growth in order.Vines threatened to engulf the circling street of sepulchers in greenery and bloom, and grass to encroach on the flower plots.
A half century ago there were no rotary lawnmowers to cut off clover heads; and, if there had been, one could not have been used on these dropping terraces, so populous with slabs and so closely set with turfed mounds and oblongs of early flowering annuals and bedding plants.Mr.Brown had to get down on his hands and knees, with gardener's shears, to clip the turfed borders and banks, and take a sickle to the hummocks.Thus he could dig out a root of dandelion with the trowel kept ever in his belt, consider the spreading crocuses and valley lilies, whether to spare them, give a country violet its blossoming time, and leave a screening burdock undisturbed until fledglings were out of their nests in the shrubbery.
Mistress Jeanie often brought out a little old milking stool on balmy mornings, and sat with knitting or mending in one of the narrow aisles, to advise her gude-mon in small matters.Bobby trotted quietly about, sniffing at everything with the liveliest interest, head on this side or that, alertly.His business, learned in his first summer in Greyfriars, was to guard the nests of foolish skylarks, song-thrushes, redbreasts and wrens, that built low in lilac, laburnum, and flowering currant bushes, in crannies of wall and vault, and on the ground.It cannot but be a pleasant thing to be a wee young dog, full of life and good intentions, and to play one's dramatic part in making an old garden of souls tuneful with bird song.A cry of alarm from parent or nestling was answered instantly by the tiny, tousled policeman, and there was a prowler the less, or a skulking cat was sent flying over tomb and wall.
His duty done, without noise or waste of energy, Bobby returned to lie in the sun on Auld Jock's grave.Over this beloved mound a coverlet of rustic turf had been spread as soon as the frost was out of the ground, and a bonny briar bush planted at the head.
Then it bore nature's own tribute of flowers, for violets, buttercups, daisies and clover blossoms opened there and, later, a spike or so of wild foxglove and a knot of heather.Robin redbreasts and wrens foraged around Bobby, unafraid; swallows swooped down from their mud villages, under the dizzy dormers and gables, to flush the flies on his muzzle, and whole flocks of little blue titmice fluttered just overhead, in their rovings from holly and laurel to newly tasseled firs and yew trees.
The click of the wicket gate was another sort of alarm altogether.At that the little dog slipped under the fallen table-tomb and lay hidden there until any strange visitor had taken himself away.Except for two more forced returns and ingenious escapes from the sheepfarm on the Pentlands, Bobby had lived in the kirkyard undisturbed for six months.The caretaker had neither the heart to put him out nor the courage to face the minister and the kirk officers with a plea for him to remain.
The little dog's presence there was known, apparently, only to Mr.Traill, to a few of the tenement dwellers, and to the Heriot boys.If his life was clandestine in a way, it was as regular of hour and duty and as well ordered as that of the garrison in the Castle.
When the time-gun boomed, Bobby was let out for his midday meal at Mr.Traill's and for a noisy run about the neighborhood to exercise his lungs and legs.On Wednesdays he haunted the Grassmarket, sniffing at horses, carts and mired boots.Edinburgh had so many shaggy little Skye and Scotch terriers that one more could go about unremarked.Bobby returned to the kirkyard at his own good pleasure.In the evening he was given a supper of porridge and broo, or milk, at the kitchen door of the lodge, and the nights he spent on Auld Jock's grave.The morning drum and bugle woke him to the chase, and all his other hours were spent in close attendance on the labors of the caretaker.The click of the wicket gate was the signal for instant disappearance.
A scramble up the wall from Heriot's Hospital grounds, or the patter of bare feet on the gravel, however, was notice to come out and greet a friend.Bobby was host to the disinherited children of the tenements.Now, at the tap-tap-tapping of Tammy Barr's crutches, he scampered up the slope, and he suited his pace to the crippled boy's in coming down again.Tammy chose a heap of cut grass on which to sit enthroned and play king, a grand new crutch for a scepter, and Bobby for a courtier.At command, the little dog rolled over and over, begged, and walked on his hind legs.He even permitted a pair of thin little arms to come near strangling him, in an excess of affection.Then he wagged his tail and lolled his tongue to show that he was friendly, and trotted away about his business.Tammy took an oat-cake from his pocket to nibble, and began a conversation with Mistress Jeanie.
"I broucht a picnic wi' me."
"Did ye, noo? An' hoo did ye ken aboot picnics, laddie?""Maister Traill was tellin' Ailie an' me.There's ilka thing to mak' a picnic i' the kirkyaird.They couldna mak' my legs gude i'
the infairmary, but I'm gangin' to Heriot's.I'll juist hae to airn ma leevin' wi' ma heid, an' no' remember aboot ma legs, ava.
Is he no' a bonny doggie?"
"Ay, he's bonny.An' ye're a braw laddie no' to fash yersel'
aboot what canna be helped."
The wifie took his ragged jacket and mended it, dropped a tear in an impossible hole, and a ha'penny in the one good pocket.And by and by the pale laddie slept there among the bright graves, in the sun.After another false alarm from the gate she asked her gude-mon, as she had asked many times before:
