Young Gourlay came staggering round the corner, "a little sprung" (as they phrase it in Barbie), but not so bad as they had hoped to see him. Webster and the ragman had exaggerated the condition of their fellow-toper. Probably their own oscillation lent itself to everything they saw. John zigzagged, it is true, but otherwise he was fairly steady on his pins. Unluckily, however, failing to see a stone before on the road, he tripped, and went sprawling on his hands and knees. A titter went.
"What the hell are you laughing at?" he snarled, leaping up, quick to feel the slight, blatant to resent it.
"Tyuts, man," Tam Wylie rebuked him in a careless scorn.
With a parting scowl he went swaggering up the street.
"Ay," said Toddle dryly, "that's the Gourlay possibeelity."
CHAPTER XXII.
"Aha, Deacon, my old cock, here you are!" The speaker smote the Deacon between his thin shoulder-blades till the hat leapt on his startled cranium. "No, not a lengthy stay—just down for a flying visit to see my little girl. Dem'd glad to get back to town again—Barbie's too quiet for my tastes. No life in the place, no life at all!"
The speaker was Davie Aird, draper and buck. "No life at all," he cried, as he shot down his cuffs with a jerk, and swung up and down the bar-room of the Red Lion. He was dressed in a long fawn overcoat reaching to his heels, with two big yellow buttons at the waist behind, in the most approved fashion of the horsy. He paused in his swaggering to survey the backs of his long white delicate hands, holding them side by side before him, as if to make sure they were the same size. He was letting the Deacon see his ring. Then pursing his chin down, with a fastidious and critical regard, he picked a long fair hair off his left coat sleeve. He held it high as he had seen them do on the stage of the Theatre Royal. "Sweet souvenir!" he cried, and kissed it, "most dear remembrance!"