"Na, na, Bailie," said the sergeant. "It's no to the Black Bull, or ony other bull, ye're to go this afternoon, but back to yir ain hoose. If ye maun taste, would it no have been more respectable to keep indoors, instead of making an exhibeetion of yourself afore the Seminary? It's no becomin' in a magistrate, and it's michty bad for the laddies."
It was the sergeant who delivered the astonishing figure at the blameless home of Bailie MacConachie, although it is right to say that this visit was not at all in the plan, and called forth a vigorous protest from the Bailie's substitute. And to the day of his death, the real and proper Bailie spent odd moments of his spare time in explaining to an incredulous public that he had never "tasted" in his life, and that on the day in question he had been transacting private business in Dundee.
THE TRIUMPH OF THE SEMINARY
XV
As the East is distant from the West, so far was Muirtown Seminary removed in its manners and customs from an English public school; but at one point they met on common ground, and that was the "tuck-shop." It does not matter that an English house master be careful to provide an ample supply of wholesome food for his boys, and even add, on occasion, toothsome dainties, such as jam at Sunday tea, and sausages for a Saturday supper, they will agree unanimously, and declare aloud, that they can hardly recall such a thing as breakfast, so ghostly has it grown, and that they would be ashamed to offer their dinner to the beasts which perish. They will write such descriptions home, and hold such conferences with friends spending the holidays with them, and they will all vie with one another in applying such weird and fearsome adjectives to the butter, milk, coffee, meat, potatoes, and pudding—but at the mention of pudding they will simply look at one another and be silent, despairing of the English language—that their horrified parents will take counsel together by the hour whether their poor boy ought not to be taken from school and surrounded by home comforts. When the emaciated invalid hears of this drastic measure, he protests strongly, and insists that it would ruin him for life; for, to do the ruffians justice, a boy may be half-starved and swished every second day, and bullied between times, till his life is hardy worth living, he will still stand by his school, and prefer it as a place of residence to his home. Neither ample meals, nor the pretty bedroom with white curtains, nor the long lie in the morning, nor a party in the evening, nor all his mother's petting, will make up to this savage for the racket of the dormitories, and the fight at the bathroom, and the babel at the dinner-table, and the recreations which enliven "prep," and the excitement of a house match, and the hazardous delights of football, and the tricks on a new boy, and the buttered eggs—a dozen at least between two at a study supper. It only remains therefore that his father should write a pathetic letter to the Standard, and that other parents should join in, for a fortnight, explaining to the English public that the manhood of the country is being destroyed in its early years, and the boys at school will read the letters aloud with much unction, and declare that "Pater has warmed up old Skinny properly," while their mother sends them generous remittances that they may obtain nourishing food to supplement their starvation rations. This money will be spent rapidly, but also shrewdly, at the "tuck-shop," where some old servant of the school is making a small fortune in providing for the boys such meat as their souls love, and for a fortnight Tom and his friends, for he is not a fellow to see his chums die before his eyes, will live on the fat of the land, which, upon the whole, means cocoa, sardines, sausages, and eggs.
Seminary boys had their meals at home, and were very soundly fed with porridge and milk in the morning, followed by tea and ham, if their conduct had been passably decent. Scots broth and meat for dinner, with an occasional pudding, and a tea in the evening which began with something solid and ended with jam, made fair rations, and, although such things may very likely be done now, when we are all screaming about our rights, no boy of the middle Victorian period wrote to the Muirtown Advertiser complaining of the home scale of diet. Yet, being boys, neither could they be satisfied with the ordinary and civilised means of living, but required certain extra delicacies to help them through the day. It was not often that a Seminary lad had a shilling in his pocket, and once only had gold been seen—when Dr. Manley paid Speug a medical fee for his advice in Bulldog's sickness—but there were few in the Seminary who were not able to rattle some pennies together, and, in the end, every penny found its way to the till of that comprehensive merchant and remarkable woman, Mrs. McWhae. Her shop and the other old houses beside it have been pulled down long ago, to make room for a handsome block of buildings, and I think her exact site is occupied by the plate-glass windows and gorgeous display of the "Breadalbane Emporium," where you can buy everything from a frying pan to a drawing-room suite, but where you cannot get a certain delicacy called "gundy," which Mrs. McWhae alone could make as it ought to be made, and at the remembrance thereof the very teeth begin to water. Mrs. McWhae did not sell books nor clothes, nor any other effeminate luxury of life, but she kept in stock everything that was really necessary to the life of a well-living and high-minded boy. There he could obtain marbles from the common clay, six for a halfpenny, on to the finer "streakies," six for a penny, till you came to large marbles with a red and blue pattern on a white ground, which were a halfpenny each, and climbed to "glassies" at a penny each; and there was one glass leviathian which contained all colours within its sphere, and which was kept only to be handled and admired. Tops were there, too, from polished little beauties with shining steel tips, which were intended only for amusement, and were spun with fine white cord, to unadorned, massive, vicious-looking warriors with sharpened projecting points, which were intended for the battlefield, and were spun with rough, strong twine, and which, dexterously used, would split another top from head to foot as when you slice butter with a knife. Her stock of kites in the season was something to see, and although she did not venture upon cricket-bats, which were sold by the hair-dresser, nor cricket-balls, she had every other kind of ball—solid gutta-percha balls, for hasty games in the "breaks," white skin-covered rounder balls, and hollow india-rubber balls, which you could fill with water at the lade, and then use with much success as a squirt. Girls, we noticed, employed this "softie" in silly games of their own, trying whether they could make it rebound a hundred times from the ground, but we had no doubt about its proper use in the purposes of Creation. And Mrs. McWhae—peace to her ashes!—provided all things in meat and drink which a boy could desire; unless, of course, on some great occasion he wished to revel imperially—then he went to Fenwick's rock-shop, where generations have turned their eager feet, and beyond which nothing is left to desire. Fenwick's, however, was rather for our fathers than for ourselves, and we were almost content with Mrs. McWhae, where you could get ginger-beer of her own making at a penny a bottle, better than that which they sold at the Muirtown Arms at sixpence; and treacle-beer also at a penny, but in this case the bottle was double the size and was enough for two fellows; and halfpenny rolls, if you were fiercely hungry and could not get home to dinner, so tough that only a boy's teeth could tear them to pieces; and tarts, so full that it required long skill to secure every drop of the jam, and your fingers were well worth licking afterwards; and peppermint balls of black and white, one of which would keep your mouth sweet for an hour of Latin—that is, if you only sucked gently and didn't crunch. But the glory of the establishment was the "gundy." There was a room behind the shop where Mrs. McWhae, who was a widow, elderly and not prepossessing, lived and slept, and dressed herself, and cooked her food, and, perhaps, on rare occasions, washed, and there she prepared her tempting meats and drinks for the Seminary. We lived in a pre-scientific age, and did not go curiously into the origin of things, being content to take the Creation as it stood, and to use the gifts of the gods in their finished form. But I believe that "gundy" was made of the coarsest and cheapest sugar, which our hostess boiled to a certain point, and then with her own fair hands, which it was said she wetted with her lips, drew out and out, till at last, by the constant drawing, it came to a light brown colour; after which she cut the finished product into sticks of a foot long, and wrapped it up in evil-looking brown paper, twisting the two ends. And, wonders of wonders! all within that paper, and the paper itself, you could have for one halfpenny! Good! There is no word for it, as the preachers say, "humanly speaking." The flavour thereof so rich, so satisfying, so stimulating, and the amount thereof so full and so tenacious. Why, that "gundy" would so cling to your teeth and hide itself about your mouth, and spread itself out, that he was a clever fellow who had drained its last resources within an hour. Mrs. McWhae was a widow of a military gentleman, who, it was understood, had performed prodigies of valour in the Black Watch, and she was a woman of masculine vigour, who only dealt upon a cash basis, and in any case of dispute was able to use her hands effectively. Like most women she was open to blandishments, and Nestie Molyneux, with his English tongue and pretty ways, could get round the old lady, and she had profound though inexpressed respect for Speug, whom she regarded as a straightforward fighter, and the two friends would sometimes be allowed the highest privilege in her power, to see her make a brew of "gundy." And it is from hints dropped by those two favoured customers that the above theory of the making of this delectable sweet has been formed.
It was possible, with a proper celerity, to visit Mrs. McWhae's during the "breaks," and to spend three minutes in those happy precincts and not be absolutely late for the next class; and during the dinner-hour her shop was crowded, and the steps outside and the very pavement were blocked by the Seminary, waiting for their "gundy" and ginger-beer. Little boys who had been fortunate enough to get their provisions early, and were coming out to enjoy the "gundy" in some secret place, hid their treasure within their waistcoats, lest a bigger fellow should supply himself without the trouble of waiting his turn, and defer payment to the end of the year. And one of the lords of the school would on occasion clear out a dozen of the small fry, in order that he might select his refreshments comfortably. It was indeed the Seminary Club, with its bow-window like other clubs, and the steps on which the members could stand, and from the steps you commanded three streets, so that there were many things to see, and in snowball time many things to do. McWhae's had only one inconvenience, and that was that the line of communication could be cut off by raiding parties from the "Pennies" and other rival schools. When the snow was deep on the ground, and the enemy was strong on the field, it was necessary to bring down supplies under charge of a convoy, and if anything could have added to the flavour of the "gundy," it was that you had fought your way up Breadalbane Street to get it, and your way back to enjoy it, that you had lost your bonnet in a scrimmage, and that the remains of a snow ball were trickling down your back. Precious then was the dainty sweet as the water which the mighty men brought to David from the well of Bethlehem.
"My word!" cried Speug, who was winding up the dinner-hour with Nestie Molyneux, on the upper step of the club-house, "if there isn't the 'Bumbees' driving in a four-in-hand!" and the brake of the Muirtown Arms passed, with a dozen smart and well-set-up lads rejoicing openly, and, wheeling round by the corner of the Cathedral, disappeared up the road which ran to Drumtochty. "And where think ye have their royal highnesses been?"
If the name of a school be St. Columba's, and the boys call themselves Columbians, it is very profane to an absolutely respectable Scots saint, and very rude to a number of well-behaved lads, to call them "Bumbees"; but Speug was neither reverent nor polite, and the Seminary, although mainly occupied with local quarrels, yet harboured a distant grudge against the new public school at St. Columba's, which had been recently started in a romantic part of Perthshire. Its founders were a number of excellent and perhaps slightly superior persons, who were justly aghast at the somewhat rough life and unfinished scholarship of the Scots grammar schools, and who did not desire that Scots lads of the better class should be sent of necessity to the English public schools. Their idea was to establish a public school after the English method in Scotland, and so St. Columba's kept terms, and had dormitories, and a chapel, and playing-fields, and did everything on a smaller scale which was done at Rugby and Harrow. The masters of St. Columba's would have nothing to do with such modest men as the staff of the Seminary. The Columbians occasionally came down to Muirtown and sniffed through the town. Two or three boys had been taken from the Seminary, because it was vulgar, and sent to St. Columba's, in order to get into genteel society. And those things had gradually filtered into the mind of the Seminary, which was certainly a rough school, but at the same time very proud and patriotic, and there was a latent desire in the mind of the Seminary that the Columbians should come down in snow-time and show their contempt for the Muirtown grammar school, when that school would explain to the Columbians what it thought of them and all their works. As this pleasure was denied the Seminary, and the sight of the brake was too much for Speug's uncultured nature, he forgot himself, and yelled opprobrious names, in which the word "Bumbee" was distinct and prominent.