"Ou," said Tam Wylie, "dinna be hard on the ministers. Ministers are just like the rest o' folk. They mind me o' last year's early tatties. They're grand when they're gude, but the feck o' them's frostit."
"Ay," said the Deacon, "and young Gourlay's frostit in the shaw already. I doubt it'll be a poor ingathering."
"Weel, weel," said Tam Wylie, "the mair's the pity o' that, Deacon."
"Oh, it'th a grai-ait pity," said the Deacon, and he bowed his body solemnly with outspread hands. "No doubt it'th a grai-ait pity!" and he wagged his head from side to side, the picture of a poignant woe.
"I saw him in the Black Bull yestreen," said Brodie, who had been silent hitherto in utter scorn of the lad they were speaking of—too disgusted to open his mouth. "He was standing drinks to a crowd that were puffing him up about that prize o' his."
"It's alwayth the numskull hath the most conceit," said the Deacon.
"And yet there must be something in him too, to get that prize," mused the ex-Provost.
"A little ability's a dangerous thing," said Johnny Coe, who could think at times. "To be safe you should be a genius winged and flying, or a crawling thing that never leaves the earth. It's the half-and-half that hell gapes for. And owre they flap."
But nobody understood him. "Drink and vanity'll soon make end of him," said Brodie curtly, and snubbed the philosopher.