“I’ve come after my laddie,” said the other, hurriedly. “I sent him to your shop hours ago, to—to ask a favour, and he’s never come back.”
“I’m no an hour hame,” said Borland, “and he never came near while I was there. But I’m no in the auld place now, and maybe he’s wandered a bit in lookin’ for the new shop. Man, Geordie,” he added with deep feeling, and wringing the other’s hand with a fervour unmistakable, “is it possible ye’ve been in distress and never let me ken? Come in by and tell me a’ about it.”
Kindness is more overpowering than cruelty. The poor baker staggered, trembled, and then fairly broke down, and was then hurried into the house, planted down by a rousing fire, and there forced to sit at ease, while the stout baker hastened to pile before him half the eatables in the house. While thus busy diving in and out the room as a means of concealing his own emotion, Borland managed to draw from his broken-down visitor an account of his misfortunes, and the state of things in his home; and then he quietly slipped out of the room, roused his wife out of bed, and sent her off in that direction with a bundle and a basket, which she and the servant girl could scarce carry between them. Then he got a pair of boots and a coat and muffler for Mossman, and the two set out to search for Johnny. Borland advised that they should go to the Police Office first, but that Mossman would not hear of, declaring that that was the last place Johnny would go near. When they had spent an hour in the streets they went to Hill Place in full hope that the boy would be there before them. They found some appearance of comfort in the house, but the poor mother was in tears, and the cause of her grief was explained in a few words—
“Johnny said that if he was away there would be ane less to eat, and he said he would run away and be a sailor. He’s away now, and we’ll maybe never see him again.”
“I never thought of that,” gasped Mossman, with a sinking heart. “One less to eat—he’s been craiking aboot that for weeks. We’ll never see him again;” and then in that relieved household there was more of tears than mirth or rejoicing.
“If I had only gone myself!” the father cried in unsparing self-reproach.
“If I had only known an hour or two earlier,” said the kind-hearted master baker.
But the mother was most inconsolable.
“I made him gang—if it hadna been for me he would have been here yet!” she sobbed. “I have done it all.”
“Tuts, the laddie is not out o’ the world surely,” said her husband, with more lightness than he really felt. “I’ve often heard him speak of trying to find out his uncle, who is a fisherman in Kirkcaldy, and of learning under him. Have patience for a day or two, and we’ll hear of him all right.”