He started up from his stool saying, 'That's Bob!' but was not sure enough to go to the door: he might be mistaken; it might be the landlord! He heard the feet stop and did not move; but when he heard them begin to go away again, he rushed to the door, and bawled on the chance at the top of his voice, 'Bob! Bob!'
'Eh! ye crater!' said Robert, 'ir ye there efter a'?
'Eh! Bob,' exclaimed Shargar, and burst into tears.'I thocht ye wad come efter me.'
'Of coorse,' answered Robert, coolly.'Come awa' hame.'
'Whaur til?' asked Shargar in dismay.
'Hame to yer ain bed at my grannie's.'
'Na, na,' said Shargar, hurriedly, retreating within the door of the hovel.'Na, na, Bob, lad, I s' no du that.She's an awfu' wuman, that grannie o' yours.I canna think hoo ye can bide wi' her.I'm weel oot o' her grups, I can tell ye.'
It required a good deal of persuasion, but at last Robert prevailed upon Shargar to return.For was not Robert his tower of strength?
And if Robert was not frightened at his grannie, or at Betty, why should he be? At length they entered Mrs.Falconer's parlour, Robert dragging in Shargar after him, having failed altogether in encouraging him to enter after a more dignified fashion.
It must be remembered that although Shargar was still kilted, he was not the less trowsered, such as the trowsers were.It makes my heart ache to think of those trowsers--not believing trowsers essential to blessedness either, but knowing the superiority of the old Roman costume of the kilt.
No sooner had Mrs.Falconer cast her eyes upon him than she could not but be convinced of the truth of Robert's averment.
'Here he is, grannie; and gin ye bena saitisfeed yet--'
'Haud yer tongue, laddie.Ye hae gi'en me nae cause to doobt yer word.'
Indeed, during Robert's absence, his grandmother had had leisure to perceive of what an absurd folly she had been guilty.She had also had time to make up her mind as to her duty with regard to Shargar;and the more she thought about it, the more she admired the conduct of her grandson, and the better she saw that it would be right to follow his example.No doubt she was the more inclined to this benevolence that she had as it were received her grandson back from the jaws of death.
When the two lads entered, from her arm-chair Mrs.Falconer examined Shargar from head to foot with the eye of a queen on her throne, and a countenance immovable in stern gentleness, till Shargar would gladly have sunk into the shelter of the voluminous kilt from the gaze of those quiet hazel eyes.
At length she spoke:
'Robert, tak him awa'.'
'Whaur'll I tak him till, grannie?'
'Tak him up to the garret.Betty 'ill ha' ta'en a tub o' het water up there 'gen this time, and ye maun see that he washes himsel' frae heid to fut, or he s' no bide an 'oor i' my hoose.Gang awa' an'
see till 't this minute.'
But she detained them yet awhile with various directions in regard of cleansing, for the carrying out of which Robert was only too glad to give his word.She dismissed them at last, and Shargar by and by found himself in bed, clean, and, for the first time in his life, between a pair of linen sheets--not altogether to his satisfaction, for mere order and comfort were substituted for adventure and success.
But greater trials awaited him.In the morning he was visited by Brodie, the tailor, and Elshender, the shoemaker, both of whom he held in awe as his superiors in the social scale, and by them handled and measured from head to feet, the latter included; after which he had to lie in bed for three days, till his clothes came home; for Betty had carefully committed every article of his former dress to the kitchen fire, not without a sense of pollution to the bottom of her kettle.Nor would he have got them for double the time, had not Robert haunted the tailor, as well as the soutar, like an evil conscience, till they had finished them.Thus grievous was Shargar's introduction to the comforts of respectability.Nor did he like it much better when he was dressed, and able to go about;for not only was he uncomfortable in his new clothes, which, after the very easy fit of the old ones, felt like a suit of plate-armour, but he was liable to be sent for at any moment by the awful sovereignty in whose dominions he found himself, and which, of course, proceeded to instruct him not merely in his own religious duties, but in the religious theories of his ancestors, if, indeed, Shargar's ancestors ever had any.And now the Shorter Catechism seemed likely to be changed into the Longer Catechism; for he had it Sundays as we'll as Saturdays, besides Alleine's Alarm to the Unconverted, Baxter's Saint's Rest, Erskine's Gospel Sonnets, and other books of a like kind.Nor was it any relief to Shargar that the gloom was broken by the incomparable Pilgrim's Progress and the Holy War, for he cared for none of these things.Indeed, so dreary did he find it all, that his love to Robert was never put to such a severe test.But for that, he would have run for it.Twenty times a day was he so tempted.
At school, though it was better, yet it was bad.For he was ten times as much laughed at for his new clothes, though they were of the plainest, as he had been for his old rags.Still he bore all the pangs of unwelcome advancement without a grumble, for the sake of his friend alone, whose dog he remained as much as ever.But his past life of cold and neglect, and hunger and blows, and homelessness and rags, began to glimmer as in the distance of a vaporous sunset, and the loveless freedom he had then enjoyed gave it a bloom as of summer-roses.
I wonder whether there may not have been in some unknown corner of the old lady's mind this lingering remnant of paganism, that, in reclaiming the outcast from the error of his ways, she was making an offering acceptable to that God whom her mere prayers could not move to look with favour upon her prodigal son Andrew.Nor from her own acknowledged religious belief as a background would it have stuck so fiery off either.Indeed, it might have been a partial corrective of some yet more dreadful articles of her creed,--which she held, be it remembered, because she could not help it.
