"Ess?" said the Deacon unpleasantly. He puckered his brow and blinked, pretending not to understand.
"Oh, a cuddy, ye know," said Toddle, colouring.
"Gourlay'th stupid enough," lisped the Deacon; "we all know that. But there'th one thing to be said on hith behalf. He's not such a 'demned ess' as to try and thpeak fancy English!"
When the Deacon was not afraid of a man he stabbed him straight; when he was afraid of him he stabbed him on the sly. He was annoyed by the passing of Gourlay's carts, and he took it out of Sandy Toddle.
"It's extr'ornar!" blurted the Provost (who was a man of brosy speech, large-mouthed and fat of utterance). "It's extr'ornar. Yass, it's extr'ornar! I mean the luck of that man—for gumption he has noan, noan whatever! But if the railway came hereaway I wager Gourlay would go down," he added, less in certainty of knowledge than as prophet of the thing desired. "I wager he'd go down, sirs."
"Likely enough," said Sandy Toddle; "he wouldn't be quick enough to jump at the new way of doing."
"Moar than that!" cried the Provost, spite sharpening his insight, "moar than that—he'd be owre dour to abandon the auld way. I'm talling ye. He would just be left entirely! It's only those, like myself, who approach him on the town's affairs that know the full extent of his stupeedity."
"Oh, he's a 'demned ess,'" said the Deacon, rubbing it into Toddle and Gourlay at the same time.
"A-ah, but then, ye see, he has the abeelity that comes from character," said Johnny Coe, who was a sage philosopher. "For there are two kinds of abeelity, don't ye understa-and? There's a scattered abeelity that's of no use! Auld Randie Donaldson was good at fifty different things, and he died in the poorhouse! There's a dour kind of abeelity, though, that has no cleverness, but just gangs tramping on; and that's——"
"The easiest beaten by a flank attack," said the Deacon, snubbing him.