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Sandy McQuarry was a busy man, and a great money-maker, and did not want any one to think he could afford to spend his evenings in idle gossip on a milkstand, as some folks did. "Oh, yes, indeed, it would be very kind of you to be troubling. You must jist be coming with us to see that poor McIntyre body now, down in your shanty. And what would you be thinking of him?" "He's a dour body.
He was swinging his feet, and singing, in a high, quavering voice, his favorite song, "The March o' the Cameron Men." When Sawed-Off Wilmott started a cheese factory down on the Lake Simcoe road each of his patrons had built, just at the gate, a small platform, called a milkstand, from which the cans were collected.
He had visited the Toronto Exhibition and Niagara Falls one autumn, and ever since had lived in the afterglow of that achievement. Not the most astounding phenomena that the milkstand could produce, either in song or story, but he could far surpass from the wonderful experiences of that visit. The Niagara Falls mill was only half finished when a new arrival interrupted.
The frequenters of the milkstand got on the nail-kegs and packing-boxes of the veranda, and discussed astronomy and enjoyed the music. It was a fine situation for studying the stars, for the house stood at the end of the village, opposite the school, and commanded a view of the pond and the valley and a great stretch of sky.
"Fine night," said a voice with a deep Scottish burr. "Fine," acquiesced the milkstand. "Oh, and it will be you, Sandy?" said Uncle Hughie, making room for the newcomer beside him. "Come away, man, come away." Sandy McQuarry was a thick-set man, with a face like a Skye terrier.
But the next night the village knew how deep was the elder's resentment against the minister, for early in the evening Sandy repaired to the Cameron milkstand, and, to the philosopher's joyful amazement, announced that he had decided, after all, to hire John McIntyre as night watchman.
Spectacle John had met that sort often on his temperance campaigns. So they sent invitations to John McIntyre to join their ranks, all of which he emphatically refused. Spectacle John received little encouragement from the milkstand.
Old lady Cameron's brother-in-law, Uncle Hughie, was the best-known member of the family. He was the village philosopher, and spent his time hobbling about the farm, doing such odd jobs as his rheumatism would permit, and "rastlin'" out the problem of human life. He was sitting on the milkstand just now, his small, stooped body almost covered by his straw hat, his long beard sweeping his knees.
And as he went about his task of relieving pain, day by day, unconsciously he was trying to live up to the high ideal that Elmbrook had placed for him. "Give a dog a bad name and you can be hanging him," quoted old Hughie Cameron one evening when the doctor had joined the company on the milkstand, and the talk was more than usually profound. "That will be a true saying, indeed.
Spectacle John was an Irishman, of a rather frivolous turn of mind, and the philosopher disapproved of him, and discouraged his attendance. Moreover, he and Silas Long were always at variance, and when the two met the milkstand lost its dignity and became a center of futile argument.
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