Wary of her remembered endearments, Bobby kept a safe distance from the maidie, but he sat up and lolled his tongue, quite willing to pay her a friendly visit.  From that she came to a wrong conclusion:  “Sin’ he cam’ o’ his ain accord he’s like to bide.”  Her eyes were blue stars.

“I wadna be coontin’ on that, lassie.  An’ I wadna speck a door on ’im anither time.  Grin he wanted to get oot he’d dig aneath a floor o’ stane.  Leuk at that, noo!  The bonny wee is greetin’ for Auld Jock.”

It was true, for, on entering the kitchen, Bobby went straight to the bench in the corner and lay down flat under it.  Elsie sat beside him, just as she had done of old.  Her eyes overflowed so in sympathy that the mother was quite distracted.  This would not do at all.

“Lassie, are ye no’ rememberin’ Bobby was fair fond o’ moor-hens’ eggs fried wi’ bits o’ cheese?  He wullna be gettin’ thae things; an’ it wad be maist michty, noo, gin ye couldna win the bittie dog awa’ frae the reekie auld toon.  Gang oot wi’ ‘im an’ rin on the brae an’ bid ’im find the nests aneath the whins.”

In a moment they were out on the heather, and it seemed, indeed, as if Bobby might be won.  He frisked and barked at Elsie’s heels, chased rabbits and flushed the grouse; and when he ran into a peat-darkened tarp, rimmed with moss, he had such a cold and splashy swim as quite to give a little dog a distaste for warm, soapy water in a claes tub.  He shook and ran himself dry, and he raced the laughing child until they both dropped panting on the wind-rippled heath.  Then he hunted on the ground under the gorse for those nests that had a dozen or more eggs in them.  He took just one from each in his mouth, as Auld Jock had taught him to do.  On the kitchen hearth he ate the savory meal with much satisfaction and polite waggings.  But when the bugle sounded from below to form ranks, he pricked his drop ears and started for the door.

Before he knew what had happened he was inside the poultry-house.  In another instant he was digging frantically in the soft earth under the door.  When the lassie lay down across the crack he stopped digging, in consternation.  His sense of smell told him what it was that shut out the strip of light; and a bairn’s soft body is not a proper object of attack for a little dog, no matter how desperate the emergency.  There was no time to be lost, for the drums began to beat the march.  Having to get out very quickly, Bobby did a forbidden thing:  swiftly and noisily he dashed around the dark place, and there arose such wild squawkings and rushings of wings as to bring the gude-wife out of the house in alarm.

“Lassie, I canna hae the bittie dog in wi the broodin’ chuckies!”

She flung the door wide.  Bobby shot through, and into Elsie’s outstretched arms.  She held to him desperately, while he twisted and struggled and strained away; and presently something shining worked into view, through the disordered thatch about his neck.  The mother had come to the help of the child, and it was she who read the inscription on the brazen plate aloud.