ship. When he awoke he lay
there lolling and blinking, following the blue rovings of the titmice
and listening to the foolish squabbles of the sparrows and the shrewish
scoldings of the wrens. He always started when a lark sprang at his feet
and a cataract of melody tumbled from the sky.
But, best of all, Bobby loved a comfortable and friendly robin
redbreast--not the American thrush that is called a robin, but the
smaller Old World warbler. It had its nest of grass and moss and
feathers, and many a silver hair shed by Bobby, low in a near-by thorn
bush. In sweet and plaintive talking notes it told its little dog
companion all about the babies that had left the nest and the new brood
that would soon be there. On the morning of that wonderful day of the
Grand Leddy's first coming, Bobby and the redbreast had a pleasant visit
together before the casements began to open and the tenement bairns
called down their morning greeting:
"A gude day to ye, Bobby."
By the time all these courtesies had been returned Tammy came in at the
gate with his college books strapped on his back. The old Cunzic
Neuk had been demolished by Glenormiston, and Tammy, living in better
quarters, was studying to be a teacher at Heriot's. Bobby saw him
settled, and then he had to escort Mr. Brown down from the lodge. The
caretaker made his way about stiffly with a cane and, with the aid of
a young helper who exasperated the old gardener by his cheerful
inefficiency, kept the auld kirkyard in beautiful order.
"Eh, ye gude-for-naethin' tyke," he said to Bobby, in transparent
pretense of his uselessness. "Get to wark, or I'll hae a young dog in to
gie ye a lift, an' syne whaur'll ye be?"
Bobby jumped on him in open delight at this, as much as to say: "Ye may
be as dour as ye like, but ilka body kens ye're gude-hearted."
Morning and evening numerous friends passed the gate, and the wee
dog waited for them on the wicket. Dr. George Ross and Mr. Alexander
McGregor shook Bobby's lifted paw and called him a sonsie rascal. Small
merchants, students, clerks, factory workers, house servants, laborers
and vendors, all honest and useful people, had come up out of these old
tenements within Bobby's memory; and others had gone down, alas! into
the Cowgate. But Bobby's tail wagged for these unfortunates, too, and
some of them had no other friend in the world beside that uncalculating
little dog.
When the morning stream of auld acquaintance had gone by,
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