"What did it dee o'?" and there followed an argument about the symptoms of swine fever.
An English reader of The House with the Green Shutters would have concluded that these villagers were deliberately trying to put me in my place. By ignoring me might they not be showing their contempt for dominies who have just come from London? Not they. They were glad to see me again, and their method of showing their gladness was to take up our friendship at the point where it left off five years ago.
The only time a Scot distrusts other Scots is when they fuss over him. The story goes in Tarbonny that when young Jim Lunan came home unexpectedly after a ten years' farming in Canada, his mother was washing the kitchen floor.
"Mother!" he cried, "I've come hame!"
She looked over her shoulder.
"Wipe yer feet afore ye come in, ye clorty laddie," she said.
But there is a garrulous type of Scot . . . or rather the type of Scot that tries to make the other fellow garrulous. In our county we call them the speerin' bodie. To speer means to ask questions. The speerin' bodie is common enough in Fife, and I suppose it was a Fifer who entered a railway compartment one morning and sat down to study the only other occupant—an Englishman.
"It's a fine day," said the Scot, and there was a question in his tone.
The Englishman sighed and laid aside his newspaper.
"Aye, mester," continued the inquisitive Fifer, "and ye'll be——"