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"It wad flee nae mair nor a deid deuke i' this weather. It wad be frozen as stiff's a buird." "Ye gowk! Do ye think fowk wash their flags afore they hing them oot, like sarks or sheets? Dinna ye be ower clever, Curly, my man." Whereupon Curly shut up. "What are you in such a state about, Alec?" asked his mother. "Nothing very particular, mamma," answered Alec, ashamed of his want of self-command.
By his side a short-sighted steward bent interminably over his ticket. "The silly gowk!" fumed Ellen. "Can the woman not read? It looks so inefficient, and I want him to think well of the movement." Presently, with a suave and unimpatient gesture, he took his ticket away from the peering woman and read her the number. "I like him!" said Ellen. "There's many would have snapped at her for that."
From a neighbouring tent there rushed forth a portly, middle-aged gentleman in pyjamas, gun in hand. "What is it, Katharine? Where are you, Katharine?" "Where am I? Where but here, ye gowk! Oh, Robert! Robert! I shall be devoured alive." The stout gentleman ran to the door of the tent, lifted the flap, and plunged in. With equal celerity he plunged back again, shouting, "Whatever is all yon?"
She had gone forward with a boy on either side of her, and Susan walking backwards in front, all telling the story of a cuckoo, or gowk, as Sara called it in Purday's language, which they had found in a water-wagtail's nest in a heap of stones; how it sat up, constantly gaping with its huge mouth, while the poor little foster-parents toiled to their utmost to keep it supplied with caterpillars, and the last time it was seen, when full-fledged, were trying to lure it to come out of the nest by holding up green palmers at some little distance before it.
'He promised, did he, 'at he would promise the nicht? Eh, Francie! Francie! ye're no yer father's son! He promised to promise to merry ye! Eh, ye puir gowk o' a bonny lassie! 'Gien I met him the nicht ay, it cam to that. All Kirsty's inborn motherhood awoke. She turned to her, and, clasping the silly thing in her arms, cried out 'Puir wee dauty!
"Some things, I doobt, hae to be forgotten," returned Cosmo, thoughtfully. "Eh!" exclaimed Aggie, "but ye're unco wice for a lad o' yer 'ears." "I wad be an nuco gowk," remarked Cosmo, "gien I kent naething, wi' sic a father as yon o' mine. What wad ye think o' yersel' gien the dochter o' Jeames Gracie war nae mair wice-like nor Meg Scroggie?"
Eh, but sair ye need a sensible mitherly body like mysel' to luik efter ye!" "Tak me, than, an' luik efter me at yer wull, Aggie; I mean what I say!" persisted Cosmo, bewildered with embarrassment and a momentary stupidity. "Ance mair, Cosmo, dinna be a gowk," said Agnes with severity. "Ye loe ME ower little, an' I loe YOU ower muckle for that."
A successful affair of this kind will furnish great amusement to an entire neighborhood for a week at a time, during which time the person who has been victimized can hardly show his face. The Scotch employ the term "gowk" to express a fool in general, but more especially an April fool; and among them the practice which we have described is called "hunting the gowk."
"Ill-fard, crazy, crack-brained gowk, that she is!" exclaimed the housekeeper, as she saw them depart, "to set up to be sae muckle better than ither folk, the auld besom, and to bring sae muckle distress on a douce quiet family! If it hadna been that I am mair than half a gentlewoman by my station, I wad hae tried my ten nails in the wizen'd hide o' her!"
"Ye may say I was a muckle gowk. And ye may lauch at a bairn for greitin' efter the mune; but I doot that same avarice o' the wee man comes frae a something in him that he wad be ill aff wi'oot. Better greit for the mune than no be cawpable o' greetin' for the mune. And weel I wat, I grat for the mune, or a' was dune, and didna get it, ony mair than the lave o' my greedy wee brithers."
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