"Oh--my--dear!, That's the very best part of the story!" The Grand Leddy had a shining look.
The rain had ceased and the sun come out, and the children began to be called away.There was quite a little ceremony of lingering leave-taking with the lady and with Bobby, and while this was going on Ailie had a "sairious"confidence for her old playfellow.
"Tammy, as the leddy says, Bobby's gettin' auld.I ken whaur's a snawy hawthorn aboon the burn in Swanston Dell.The throstles nest there, an' the blackbirds whustle bonny.It isna so far but the bairnies could march oot wi'
posies." She turned to the lady, who had overheard her."We gied a promise to the Laird Provost to gie Bobby a grand funeral.Ye ken he wullna be permittet to be buried i' the kirkyaird.""Will he not? I had not thought of that." Her tone was at once hushed and startled.
Then she was down in the grass, brooding over the little dog, and Bobby had the pathetic look of trying to understand what this emotional talk, that seemed to concern himself, was about.Tammy and Ailie were down, too.
"Are ye thinkin' Bobby wall be kennin' the deeference?" Ailie's bluebell eyes were wide at the thought of pain for this little pet.
"I do not know, my dear.But there cannot well be more love in this world than there is room for in God's heaven."She was silent all the way to the gate, some thought in her mind already working toward a gracious deed.At the last she said: "The little dog is fond of you both.Be with him all you can, for I think his beautiful life is near its end." After a pause, during which her face was lighted by a smile, as if from a lovely thought within, she added: "Don't let Bobby die before my return from London."In a week she was back, and in the meantime letters and telegrams had been flying, and many wheels set in motion in wee Bobby's affairs.When she returned to the churchyard, very early one morning, no less a person than the Lord Provost himself was with her.Five years had passed, but Mr.--no, Sir William--Chambers, Laird of Glenormiston, for he had been knighted by the Queen, was still Lord Provost of Edinburgh.
Almost immediately Mr.Traill appeared, by appointment, and was made all but speechless for once in his loquacious life by the honor of being asked to tell Bobby's story to the Baroness Burdett-Coutts.But not even a tenement child or a London coster could be ill at ease with the Grand Leddy for very long, and presently the three were in close conference in the portico.Bobby welcomed them, and then dozed in the sun and visited with the robin on Auld Jock's grave.Far from being tongue-tied, the landlord was inspired.What did he not remember, from the pathetic renunciation, "Bobby isna ma ain dog," down to the leal Highlander's last, near tragic reminder to men that in the nameless grave lay his unforgotten master.
He sketched the scene in Haddo's Hole, where the tenement bairns poured out as pure a gift of love and mercy and self-sacrifice as had ever been laid at the foot of a Scottish altar.He told of the search for the lately ransomed and lost terrier, by the lavish use of oil and candles; of Bobby's coming down Castle Rock in the fog, battered and bruised for a month's careful tending by an old Heriot laddie.His feet still showed the scars of that perilous descent.He himself, remorseful, had gone with the Biblereader from the Medical Mission in the Cowgate to the dormer-lighted closet in College Wynd, where Auld Jock had died.Now he described the classic fireplace of white freestone, with its boxed-in bed, where the Pentland shepherd lay like some effigy on a bier, with the wee guardian dog stretched on the flagged hearth below.
"What a subject for a monument!" The Grand Leddy looked across the top of the slope at the sleeping Skye."I suppose there is no portrait of Bobby.""Ay, your Leddyship; I have a drawing in the dining rooms, sketched by Mr.
