“I had the privilege, sir,” said the innkeeper. “Captain Campbell gave the order——”
“Captain Campbell!” said the General, putting down his glass and drinking no more. “I was not aware that he was at the costs of this dregy. Still, no matter, you’ll find the Campbells a good family to have dealings with of any commercial kind, pernick-etty and proud a bit, like all the rest of us, with their bark worse than their bite.”
“I find them quite the gentlemen,” said the innkeeper.
Turner laughed again.
“Man!” said he, “take care you do not put your compliment just exactly that way to them; you might as well tell Dr. Colin he was a surprisingly good Christian.”
Old Brooks, out of sheer custom, sat on the high stool at his desk and hummed his declensions to himself, or the sing-song Arma virumque cano that was almost all his Latin pupils remembered of his classics when they had left school. The noise of the assembly a little distressed him; at times he would fancy it was his scholars who were clamouring before him, and he checked on his lips a high peremptory challenge for silence, flushing to think how nearly he had made himself ridiculous. From his stool he could see over the frosted glass of the lower window sash into the playground where it lay bathed in a yellow light, and bare-legged children played at shinty, with loud shouts and violent rushes after a little wooden ball. The town’s cows were wandering in for the night from the common muir, with their milkmaids behind them in vast wide petticoats of two breadths, and their blue or lilac short-gowns tucked well up at their arms. Behind, the windows revealed the avenue, the road overhung with the fresh leaves of the beeches, the sunlight filtering through in lighter splashes on the shade. Within, the drink was running to its dregs, and piles of oatcake farls lay yet untouched. One by one the company departed. The glen folks solemnly shook hands with the Paymaster, as donor of the feast, and subdued their faces to a sad regret for this “melancholy occasion, Captain Campbell”; then went over to the taverns in the tenements and kept up their drinking and their singing till late in the evening; the merchants and writers had gone earlier, and now but the officers and Brooks were left, and Mr. Spencer, superintending the removal of his vessels and fragments to the inn. The afternoon was sinking into the calm it ever has in this place, drowsing, mellowing; an air of trance lay all about, and even the pensioners, gathered at the head of the schoolroom near the door, seemed silent as his scholars to the ear of Brooks. He lifted the flap of his desk and kept it up with his head while he surveyed the interior. Grammars and copy-books, pens in long tin boxes, the terrible black tawse he never used but reluctantly, and the confiscated playthings of the children who had been guilty of encroaching upon the hours of study with the trifles of leisure, were heaped within. They were for the most part the common toys of the country-side, and among them was a whistle made of young ash, after the fashion practised by children, who tap upon the bark to release it from its wood, slip off the bark entire upon its sap, and cut the vent or blow-hole. Old Brooks took it in his hand and a smile went over his visage.
“General Turner,” he cried up the room, “here’s an oddity I would like to show you,” and he balanced the pipe upon his long fingers, and the smile played about his lips as he looked at it.
Turner came up, and “A whistle,” said he. “What’s the story?”
“Do you know who owns it?” asked Brooks.
“Sandy, I suppose,” said the General, who knew the ingenuities of his only son. “At least, I taught him myself to make an ash whistle, and this may very well be the rogue’s contrivance.” He took the pipe in hand and turned it over and shrilled it at his lip. “Man,” said he, “that makes me young again! I wish I was still at the age when that would pipe me to romance.”