"Man, Provost," said Brodie, "d'ye tell me tha-at? I've been over at Fleckie for the last ten days—my brother Rab's dead and won away, as I dare say you have heard—oh yes, we must all go—so, ye see, I'm scarcely abreast o' the latest intelligence. What's Wilson doing here? I thought he had been a pawnbroker in Embro."
"Noat he! It's whispered indeed, that he left Brigabee to go and help in a pawmbroker's, but it seems he married an Aberdeen lass and sattled there after a while, the manager of a store, I have been given to understa-and. He has taken oald Rab Jamieson's barn at the bottom of the Cross—for what purpose it beats even me to tell! And that's his furniture——"
"I declare!" said the astonished Brodie. "He's a smart-looking boy that. Will that be a son of his?"
He pointed to a sharp-faced urchin of twelve who was busy carrying chairs round the corner of the barn, to the tiny house where Wilson meant to live. He was a red-haired boy with an upturned nose, dressed in shirt and knickerbockers only. The cross of his braces came comically near his neck—so short was the space of shirt between the top line of his breeches and his shoulders. His knickers were open at the knee, and the black stockings below them were wrinkled slackly down his thin legs, being tied loosely above the calf with dirty white strips of cloth instead of garters. He had no cap, and it was seen that his hair had a "cow-lick" in front; it slanted up from his brow, that is, in a sleek kind of tuft. There was a violent squint in one of his sharp gray eyes, so that it seemed to flash at the world across the bridge of his nose. He was so eager at his work that his clumsy-looking boots—they only looked clumsy because the legs they were stuck to were so thin—skidded on the cobbles as he whipped round the barn with a chair inverted on his poll. When he came back for another chair, he sometimes wheepled a tune of his own making, in shrill, disconnected jerks, and sometimes wiped his nose on his sleeve. And the bodies watched him.
"Faith, he's keen," said the Provost.
"But what on earth has Wilson ta'en auld Jamieson's house and barn for? They have stude empty since I kenna whan," quoth Alexander Toddle, forgetting his English in surprise.
"They say he means to start a business! He's made some bawbees in Aiberdeen, they're telling me, and he thinks he'll set Barbie in a lowe wi't."
"Ou, he means to work a perfect revolution," said Johnny Coe.
"In Barbie!" cried astounded Toddle.
"In Barbie e'en't," said the Provost.