“He’ll say to me next mornin’, ‘Man! Erchie, thon’s a thrivin’ place, Coatbrig, but awfu’ bad whisky.’
“There’s a lot like him aboot a Gleska holiday. They’ll be gettin’ up to a late breakfast wi’ no parridge till’t on Monday mornin’, and sayin’, ‘Man! it’s a grand day for Dunoon,’ and then start druggin’ themsel’s wi’ drams. Ye wad think they were gaun to get twa teeth ta’en oot instead o’ gaun on a holiday.
“That’s no’ my notion o’ a holiday, either in the Autumn or the Spring. I’m takin’ Jinnet oot on Monday to Milliken Park to see her kizzen that keeps a gairden. We’ll hae an awfu’ wrastle in the mornin’ catchin’ the train, and it’ll be that crooded we’ll hae to stand a’ the way. The wife’s kizzen’ll be that gled to see us she’ll mak’ tea for us every half-’oor and send oot each time to the grocer’s for mair o’ thon biled ham ye aye get at burials. I’ll get my feet a’ sair walkin’ up and doon the gairden coontin’ the wife’s kizzen’s aipples that’s no’ richt ripe yet, and Jinnet and me’ll hae to cairry hame a big poke o’ rhuburb or greens, or some ither stuff we’re no wantin’, and the train’ll be an ‘oor late o’ gettin’ into Gleska.
“That’s a holiday. The only time ye enjoy a holiday is when it’s a’ bye.”
XII DUFFY’S FIRST FAMILY
More than a year after the King’s visit Erchie and I one day passed, a piano-organ in the street playing “Dark Lochnagar.” The air attracted him; he hummed it very much out of tune for some minutes after.
“Do ye hear that?” said he, “‘Dark Lochnagar’; I used ance to could nearly play’t on the mooth harmonium. I learned it aff Duffy. Him and me was mairried aboot the same time. We lived in the same close up in the Coocaddens—him on the top flet, and Jinnet and me in the flet below. Oor wifes had turn aboot o’ the same credle—and it was kept gey throng, I’m tellin’ ye. If it wasna Duffy up the stair at nicht, efter his wark was done, rockin’ awa’ wi’ a grudge’ter the tune o’ ‘Dark Lochnagar,’ it was me below at no’ ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ but yon ither yin ye ken fine. I daresay it was rockin’ the credle helped to mak’ my feet flet, and it micht hae happened in a far waur cause.
“It was Duffy’s first wife; she dee’d, I think, to get rid o’ him—the cratur! Duffy’s yin o’ thae men wi’ a great big lump o’ a hert that brocht the tear to his ain een when he was singin’ ‘Bonny Annie Laurie’ doon in the Mull o’ Kintyre Vaults, but wad see his wife to bleezes afore he wad brush his ain boots for Sunday, and her no’ weel. She fair adored him, too. She thocht Duffy was jist the ordinar’ kind o’ man, and that I was a kind o’ eccentric peely-wally sowl, because I sometimes dried the dishes, and didna noo an’ then gie Jinnet a beltin’.