A Scots Quair Read Online Free PDF

invented the post office himself and taken out a patent for it. She was a meikle sow of a woman, but aye well-dressed, and with eyes like the eyes of a fish, fair cod-like they were, and she tried to speak English and to make her two bit daughters, Nellie and Maggie Jean, them that went to Stonehaven Academy, speak English as well. And God! they made a right muck of it, and if you met the bit things on the road and said Well, Nellie, and how are your mother’s hens laying? the quean would more than likely answer you Not very meikle the day and look soproud it was all you could do to stop yourself catching the futret across your knee and giving her a bit skelp.
    Though she’d only a dove’s flitting of a family herself you’d think to hear Mistress Gordon speak that she’d been clecking bairns a litter a month since the day she married. It was Now, how I brought up Nellie — or And the special ist in Aberdeen, said about Maggie Jean —till folk were so scunnered they’d never mention a bairn within a mile of Upperhill. But Rob of the Mill, the coarse brute, he fair mocked her to her face and he’d tell a story. Now, when I took my boar to the specialist in Edinburgh, he up and said ‘Mister Rob, this is a gey unusual boar, awful delicate, but so intelligent, and you should send him to the Academy and some day he’ll be a real credit to you. ’ And Mistress Gordon when she heard that story she turned as red as a fire and forget her English and said Rob was an orra tink brute.
    Forbye the two queans there was the son, John Gordon, as coarse a devil as you’d meet, he’d already had two-three queans in trouble and him but barely eighteen years old. But with one of them he’d met a sore stammy-gaster, her brother was a gardener down Glenbervie way and when he heard of it he came over to Upperhill and caught young Gordon out by the cattle-court. You’ll be Jock? he said, and young Gordon said Keep your damned hands to yourself, and the billy said Ay, but first I’ll wipe them on a dirty clout, and with that he up with a handful of sharn and splattered it all over young Gordon and then rolled him in the greip till he was a sight to sicken a sow from its supper. The bothy men heard the ongoing and came tearing out but soon as they saw it was only young Gordon that was being mischieved they did no more than laugh and stand around and cry one to the other that here was a real fine barrow-load of dung lying loose in the greip. So the Drumlithie billy, minding his sister and her shame, wasn’t sharp to finish with his tormenting, young Gordon looked like a half-dead cat and smelt like a whole-dead one for a week after, a sore affront to Upperhill’s mistress. She went tearing round to the bothy and made at the foreman, a dour young devil of a Highlandman, Ewan Tavendale, Why didn’t you help my Johnnie? and Ewan said I was fee’d as the foreman here, not as the nursemaid, he was an impudent brute, calm as you please, but an awful good worker, folk said he could smell the weather and had fair the land in his bones.
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    NOW THE EIGHTH of the Kinraddie places you could call hardly a place at all, for that was Pooty’s, midway along the Kinraddie road between the Mill and Bridge End. It was no more than a butt and a ben, with a rickle of sheds behind it where old Pooty kept his cow and bit donkey that was nearly as old as himself and faith! twice as good-looking; and folk said the cuddy had bided so long with Pooty that whenever it opened its mouth to give a bit bray it started to stutter. For old Pooty was maybe the worst stutterer ever heard in the Mearns and the worst of that worst was that he didn’t know it and he’d clean compel any minister creature organising a concert miles around to give him a platform part. Then up he’d get on the platform, the doitered old fool, and recite Weeeee, ssss - leek - ed , ccccccowering