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It was twae miles from Wamphray on the Lockerbie road, but they tell me the place is noo just a rickle o' stanes. 'I was wondering, mistress, if I could get a cup of tea in the village. 'Ye'll hae a cup wi' me, she said. 'It's no often we see onybody frae the Borders hereaways. The kettle's just on the boil.
I went therefore to what was known as the Lamb Fair at Lockerbie, and for the first time in my life took a "fee" for the harvest. On arriving at the field when shearing and mowing began, the farmer asked me to bind a sheaf; when I had done so, he seized it by the band, and it fell to pieces!
So it came to pass that by the time I could safely leave Schneider to the others, I found myself unwontedly incarnating the spirit of criticism. They were a motley crowd, coalesced for the moment into a vinous solidarity. Follet spat his words out very sweetly; his poisonous grace grew on him in his cups. Lockerbie, warmed by wine, was as simple and charming as a wart-hog.
James Carlyle hammered on at Ecclefechan, making in his best year L100, till, after the first decade of the century, the family migrated to Mainhill, a bleak farm two miles from Lockerbie, where he so throve by work and thrift that he left on his death in 1832 about L1000.
Follet was there, of course, and Schneider, too, his teeth and his clothes whiter than the rest of ours. I was surprised to see Schneider, for Lockerbie had suspected the Teuton of designs on his very privately and not too authentically owned lagoon. Lockerbie did a fair business in pearls; no great beauties or values among them, but a good marketable cheap product.
If thou art wise, thou wilt make for Lockerbie so soon as thy foot touches dry land, and let the packet find another bearer; at all rates, look it miscarries not." "Nay, madam," replied he "I was born, as I said, the Douglas's servant, and I will be no corbie-messenger in mine old age your message to your son shall be done as truly by me as if it concerned another man's neck.
Lockerbie gave a dinner-party at the end of the week, and Follet got drunk quite early in the evening. I believed it no more the second time than I had believed it the first. Anyhow, she wouldn't have had him. Schneider left us during those days. We hardly noticed his departure. Ching Po still prospers. Except Stires, we are not squeamish on Naapu. By ELLEN GLASGOW
But no one held out very long against any one on Naapu. Schneider was drunk before he ever got to Lockerbie's that night. It was part of the Naapu ritual not to drink just before you reached your host's house, and that ritual, it soon became evident, Schneider had not observed. I saw Lockerbie scowl, and Follet wince, and some of the others stare.
"Perhaps I had better pull out," he said. "But the fellow won't have much trouble in learning which way I've gone." "I'm no' sure o' that. There's a road o' a sort rins west to Annandale and Lockerbie." "But I'm not going west." "Weel," said Pete, "ye might start that way, and I would meet ye where a sheep track rins back up the glen ye'll ken it by the broken dyke where ye cross the burn.
We shall never come into Scotland for the first time again." While we were thus at the fusion point of enthusiasm, the cars stopped at Lockerbie. All was dim and dark outside, but we soon became conscious that there was quite a number of people collected, peering into the window; and with a strange kind of thrill, I heard my name inquired for in the Scottish accent.
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