"He's a bonnie laddie to look on," they said to each other as, palm on hip, they stood looking after him. "It's a peety that he is sae feckless!"
Yet Dairsie was always busy. He was no neglecter of duty. He worked with eager strained hopefulness. No matter how deep had been his depression of the evening, the morning found him contemplating a day of work with keen anticipation and unconquerable desire to succeed.
To-day, at last, he would begin to make an impression. He would visit the remainder of Dickson's Row, and perhaps—who knew?—it might be the turning of the tide. So he sat down opposite his mother at breakfast, smiling and rubbing his hands.
"To-day I am going to show them, mother," he would say.
"Show them what, Dairsie dear?"
"That I am a man!"
But within him he was saying, "Work while it is day!" And yet deeper in his heart, so deep that it became almost a prayer for release, he was wont to add—"The night cometh when no man can work!" Then to this he added, as he took his round soft hat and went out, "O Lord, help me to do something worthy before I die—something to make these people respect me."
* * * * *
It was a hot September afternoon. Drowdle was a-drowse from Capersknowe to the Back Raw. Here and there could be heard a dull recurring thud, which was the dunt dunt of the roller on the dough of the bake-board as some housewife languidly rolled out her farles of oatcake. For the rest, there was no sound save the shout of a callant fishing for minnows in the backwaters of Drowdle, and the buzz of casual bluebottles on the dirty window-panes.
Suddenly there arose a cry, dominant and far-reaching. No words were audible, but the tone was enough. Women blenched and dropped the crockery they were carrying. The men of the night-shift, asleep on their backs in the hot and close-curtained wall-beds, tumbled into their grimy moleskins with a single movement.