The House With the Green Shutters Read Online Free PDF Page B

with a full jar of
whisky once, and when he left it he was dead, and it was empty. So, ye
see, that's the reason o't.
    The genus "bodie" is divided into two species—the "harmless bodies" and
the "nesty bodies." The bodies of Barbie mostly belonged to the second
variety. Johnny Coe and Tam Wylie and the baker were decent enough
fellows in their way, but the others were the sons of scandal. Gourlay
spoke of them as a "wheen damned auld wives." But Gourlay, to be sure,
was not an impartial witness.
    The Bend o' the Brae was the favourite stance of the bodies: here they
forgathered every day to pass judgment on the town's affairs. And,
indeed, the place had many things to recommend it. Among the chief it
was within an easy distance of the Red Lion, farther up the street, to
which it was really very convenient to adjourn nows and nans. Standing
at the Bend o' the Brae, too, you could look along two roads to the left
and right, or down upon the Cross beneath, and the three low streets
that guttered away from it. Or you might turn and look up Main Street,
and past the side of the Square, to the House with the Green Shutters,
the highest in the town. The Bend o' the Brae, you will gather, was a
fine post for observation. It had one drawback, true: if Gourlay turned
to the right in his gig he disappeared in a moment, and you could never
be sure where he was off to. But even that afforded matter for pleasing
speculation which often lasted half an hour.
    It was about nine o'clock when Gourlay and Gilmour quarrelled in the
yard, and that was the hour when the bodies forgathered for their
morning dram.
    "Good-moarning, Mr. Wylie!" said the Provost.
    When the Provost wished you good-morning, with a heavy civic eye, you
felt sure it was going to be good.
    "Mornin', Provost, mornin'! Fine weather for the fields," said Tam,
casting a critical glance at the blue dome in which a soft,
white-bosomed cloud floated high above the town. "If this weather hauds,
it'll be a blessing for us poor farming bodies."
    Tam was a wealthy old hunks, but it suited his humour to refer to
himself constantly as "a poor farming bodie." And he dressed in
accordance with his humour. His clean old crab-apple face was always
grinning at you from over a white-sleeved moleskin waistcoat, as if he
had been no better than a breaker of road-metal.
    "Faith ay!" said the Provost, cunning and quick; "fodder should be
cheap"—and he shot the covetous glimmer of a bargain-making eye at Mr.
Wylie.
    Tam drew himself up. He saw what was coming.
    "We're needing some hay for the burgh horse," said the Provost. "Ye'll
be willing to sell at fifty shillings the ton, since it's like to be so
plentiful."
    "Oh," said Tam solemnly, "that's on-possible! Gourlay's seeking the
three pound! and where he leads we maun a' gang. Gourlay sets the tune,
and Barbie dances till't."
    That was quite untrue so far as the speaker was concerned. It took a
clever man to make Tam Wylie dance to his piping. But Thomas, the knave,
knew that he could always take a rise out the Provost by cracking up the
Gourlays, and that to do it now was the best way of fobbing him off
about the hay.
    "Gourlay!" muttered the Provost, in disgust. And Tam winked at the
baker.
    "Losh," said Sandy Toddle, "yonder's the Free Kirk minister going past
the Cross! Where'll
he
be off till at this hour of the day? He's not
often up so soon."
    "They say he sits late studying," said Johnny Coe.
    "H'mph, studying!" grunted Tam Brodie, a big, heavy, wall-cheeked man,
whose little, side-glancing eyes seemed always alert for scandal amid
the massive insolence of his smooth face. "I see few signs of studying
in
him
. He's noathing but a stink wi' a skin on't."
    T. Brodie was a very important man, look you, and wrote "Leather
Mercht." above his door, though he cobbled with his own hands. He was a
staunch Conservative, and down on the Dissenters.
    "What road'th he taking?" lisped Deacon Allardyce, craning past Brodie's
big shoulder to get a