; I'm going to tak' him to a
meeting in a braw kirk."

IX

When Ailie wanted to get up unusually early in the morning she made
use of Tammy for an alarm-clock. A crippled laddie who must "mak'
'is leevin' wi' 'is heid" can waste no moment of daylight, and in the
ancient buildings around Greyfriars the maximum of daylight was to be
had only by those able and willing to climb to the gables. Tammy, having
to live on the lowest, darkest floor of all, used the kirkyard for a
study, by special indulgence of the caretaker, whenever the weather
permitted.

From a window he dropped his books and his crutches over the wall. Then,
by clasping his arms around a broken shaft that blocked the casement, he
swung himself out, and scrambled down into an enclosed vault yard.
There he kept hidden Mistress Jeanie's milking stool for a seat; and a
table-tomb served as well, for the laddie to do his sums upon, as it
had for the tearful signing of the Covenant more than two hundred
years before. Bobby, as host, greeted Tammy with cordial friskings and
waggings, saw him settled to his tasks, and then went briskly about his
own interrupted business of searching out marauders. Many a spring dawn
the quiet little boy and the swift and silent little dog had the shadowy
garden all to themselves, and it was for them the song-thrushes and
skylarks gave their choicest concerts.

On that mid-April morning, when the rising sun gilded the Castle turrets
and flashed back from the many beautiful windows of Heriot's Hospital,
Tammy bundled his books under the table-tomb of Mistress Jean Grant,
went over to the rear of the Guildhall at the top of the Row, and threw
a handful of gravel up to Ailie's window. Because of a grandmither,
Ailie, too, dwelt on a low level. Her eager little face, lighted by
sleep-dazzled blue eyes, popped out with the surprising suddenness of
the manikins in a Punch-and-Judy show.

"In juist ane meenit, Tammy," she whispered, "no' to wauken the
grandmither." It was in so very short a minute that the lassie climbed
out onto the classic pediment of a tomb and dropped into the kirkyard
that her toilet was uncompleted. Tammy buttoned her washed-out cotton
gown at the back, and she sat on a slab to lace her shoes. If the fun
of giving Bobby his bath was to be enjoyed to the full there must be no
unnecessary delay. This consideration led Tammy to observe:

"Ye're no' needin' to comb yer hair, Ailie. It leuks bonny eneugh."