In the bath on the rear steps of the lodge Bobby swam and splashed, and scattered foam with his excited tail.  He would not stand still to be groomed, but wriggled and twisted and leaped upon the children, putting his shaggy wet paws roguishly in their faces.  But he stood there at last, after the jolliest romp, in which the old kirkyard rang with laughter, and oh! so bonny, in his rippling coat of dark silver.  No sooner was he released than he dashed around the kirk and back again, bringing his latest bone in his mouth.  To his scratching on the stone sill, for he had been taught not to scratch on the panel, the door was opened by snod and smiling Mistress Jeanie, who invited these slum bairns into such a cozy, spotless kitchen as was not possible in the tenements.  Mr. Brown sat by the hearth, bundled in blue and white blankets of wonderfully blocked country weaving.  Bobby put his fore paws on the caretaker’s chair and laid his precious bone in the man’s lap.

“Eh, ye takin’ bit rascal; loup!” Bobby jumped to the patted knee, turned around and around on the soft bed that invited him, licked the beaming old face to show his sympathy and friendliness, and jumped down again.  Mr. Brown sighed because Bobby steadily but amiably refused to be anybody’s lap-dog.  The caretaker turned to the admiring children.

“Ilka morn he fetches ‘is bit bane up, thinkin’ it a braw giftie for an ill man.  An’ syne he veesits me twa times i’ the day, juist bidin’ a wee on the hearthstane, lollin’ ‘is tongue an’ waggin’ ’is tail, cheerfu’-like.  Bobby has mair gude sense in ’is heid than mony a man wha comes ben the hoose, wi’ a lang face, to let me ken I’m gangin’ to dee.  Gin I keep snug an’ canny it wullna gang to the heart.  Jeanie, woman, fetch ma fife, wull ye?”

Then there were strange doings in the kirkyard lodge.  James Brown “wasna gangin’ to dee” before his time came, at any rate.  In his youth, as under-gardener on a Highland estate, he had learned to play the piccolo flute, and lately he had revived the pastoral art of piping just because it went so well with Bobby’s delighted legs.  To the sonsie air of “Bonnie Dundee” Bobby hopped and stepped and louped, and he turned about on his hind feet, his shagged fore paws drooped on his breast as daintily as the hands in the portraits of early Victorian ladies.  The fire burned cheerily in the polished grate, and winked on every shining thing in the room; primroses bloomed in the diamond-paned casement; the skylark fluttered up and sang in its cage; the fife whistled as gaily as a blackbird, and the little dog danced with a comic clumsiness that made them all double up with laughter.  The place was so full of brightness, and of kind and merry hearts, that there was room for nothing else.  Not one of them dreamed that the shadow of the law was even then over this useful and lovable little dog’s head.

A glance at the wag-at-the-wa’ clock reminded Ailie that Mr. Traill might be waiting for Bobby.