Later I went to see Dauvit, and found him alone. I asked him to tell me about the Wylies.
"Tarn Wylie is wan o' the stupidest men in a ten mile radius," said Dauvit. "But he's no stupid whaur money is concerned; they tell me that he drinks aboot half his week's wages, and his puir wife has to suffer. That laddie o' theirs, he was born afore the marriage, and they tell me that Tarn wud never ha' married her if he hadna been fell drunk the nicht he put in the banns."
This case of poor Geordie shows what a complexity there is in human affairs. His father has a mental conflict, and he drinks so that he may get away from reality. The father's drinking and the son's reading of romances are fundamentally the same thing; each is trying to get away from a reality he dare not face. No treatment of Geordie could be satisfactory unless at the same time the parents were being treated.
V.
Carrotty Broon, one of my old scholars, came to Dauvit's shop to-night, and he talked about his pigeons . . . his doos he calls them. He keeps a pigeon loft of homers, and he spends a considerable amount in training them.
"Some fowk think," he said, "that a homer will flee hame if ye throw it up five hunder miles awa."
"I've read of flights of seven hundred miles," I said.
Carrotty Broon chuckled.
"I mind o' a homer I had," he went on. "He was a beauty, a reid chequer. His father had flown frae London to Glasgow, and his mither was a flier too. Weel, I took him doon to Monibreck on my bike, and let him off. I never saw him again; five mile, and he cudna find his way hame!"
"He must ha' been shot," said Dauvit, "for thae homers find their way hame by instinct."