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Still there was no answer. Then, suddenly, Jamie pulled himself half upright and turned. They saw his face then, and fell back, shocked and amazed. "Hurt? Am I hurt?" he choked huskily, flinging out both his hands. "Don't you suppose it hurts to see a thing like that and not be able to do anything? To be tied, helpless, to a pair of sticks? I tell you there's no hurt in all the world to equal it!"
"Little good, little ill, like a spale amang parritch, was that chap Trummle," said Jamie Howison. "I am sorry I have been so short a time in the district, so that I am so imperfectly known to you, but I hope in time to show that I deserve your confidence," said Francis. "But what about the ballot?" asked Jamie Howison. "I have not quite made up my mind about the ballot," said Francis.
"Jamie," said Doctor Joe, "you're the youngest one, and you haven't had much experience tramping through the woods. If you get tired, or find it hard, just come over to the brook and follow it down to camp. If you get there ahead of us you might start a fire in our tent stove and put the kettle over." "I've got plenty o' grit, sir," Jamie boasted. "I can stand un."
I went to Melbourne and saw Sandy Lowrie, and he gave me good accounts of the bairns, as growing in stature, and Tam and Jamie keen of their learning, but the old woman, their grandmother, he said was sore failed, and no likely to be long spared.
"How cud a machine make a boot, Anna?" he asked in bewilderment. "I don't know, dear." Barney McQuillan was the village authority on such things. When he told Jamie, he looked aghast and said, "How quare!" Then makers became menders shoemakers became cobblers.
"Ah, ye would wonder, mother," Jamie said, "when I open my box an' find a'thing tied up wi' strings sae careful, it a' comes back to me wi' a rush wha did it, an' am as fond o' thae strings as though they were a grand present. I get the wifie I lodge wi' to sew to me, but often when I come upon the pocky I sit an' look at it."
Flora Campbell brought a wonderful compound of honey and whisky, much tasted in Auchindarroch, for his cough, and the mother of young Burnbrae filled his cupboard with black jam, as a healing measure. Jamie Soutar seemed to have an endless series of jobs in the doctor's direction, and looked in "juist tae rest himsel" in the kitchen.
"An oul cow put 'er feet in it," he said. Anna took a taste. "She didn't keep it in long aither," was her comment. "D'ye iver mind seein' barley in Gainer's broth?" Jamie asked. "I haave no recollection." "If there isn't a kink in m' power of remembrance," Jamie said, "they've had nothin' but bacon an' nettles since th' big famine." "What did th' haave before that?" Anna asked.
There was only one man who ever complained of the doctor's charges, and that was the new farmer of Milton, who was so good that he was above both churches, and held a meeting in his barn. Jamie Soutar was selling his pig at the time, and missed the meeting, but he hastened to condole with Milton, who was complaining everywhere of the doctor's language.
"John Hughson, indeed!" snorted the old woman, and set her face to the wall. But Jamie did not go near John Hughson. He rambled alone about the city streets, and it was late at night before he came back. Late as it was, there was a light behind Mercedes' window-shade, and he walked across the street and watched it, until a policeman, coming by, stopped and asked him who he was.