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"I dinna care a bittie bit. There's mair folk aroond the kirkyaird than there's farthings i' twa, three times seven shullin's. An' maist ilka body kens Bobby. An' we hae a saxpence atween us noo." "Maister Brown wad gie us anither saxpence gin he had ane," Tammy suggested, wistfully. "Nae, he's fair ill. Gin he doesna keep canny it wull gang to 'is heart. He'd be aff 'is heid, aboot Bobby.
The white miller in the doorway of the gray-stone, red-roofed mill laughed, and anxious children ran down from a knot of storybook cottages and gay dooryards. "I'll gie ye ten shullin's for the sperity bit dog," the miller shouted, above the clatter of the' wheel and the swish of the dam. "He isna oor ain dog," Geordie called back. "But he wullna droon.
The laddie dropped his books and his crutches on the pavement, and his head in his helpless arms, and cried. He had small faith in Ailie's suddenly conceived plan to collect the seven shullings among the dwellers in the tenements. "Do ye ken hoo muckle siller seven shullin's wad be? It's auchty-fower pennies, a hundred an' saxty-aucht ha'pennies an' an' I canna think hoo mony farthings."
And suddenly they were all inside, overwrought Ailie on the floor, clasping the little dog and crying hysterically. "Bobby's no' deid! Bobby's no' deid! Oh, Maister Traill, ye wullna hae to gie 'im up to the police! Tammy's got the seven shullin's in 'is bonnet!" And there was small Tammy, crutches dropped and pouring that offering of love and mercy out at the foot of an altar in old St. Giles.
The children gathered and gathered, and followed at their heels, until a curiously quiet mob of threescore or more crouched in the court of the old hall of the Knights of St. John, in the Grassmarket, to count the many copper coins in Tammy's woolen bonnet. "Five shullin's, ninepence, an' a ha'penny," Tammy announced.
Wee Bobby was all that, and so "Gin dizzens an' dizzens o' bairns war kennin' 'im, an' wad fetch seven shullin's i' their ha'pennies to a kirk, they could buy the richt for the braw doggie to be leevin', the care o' them a', i' the auld kirkyaird o' Greyfriars. An' he maun hae the collar so the police wull ken 'im an' no' ever tak' 'im up for a puir, gaen-aboot dog."
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