But Bobby fitted his mop of a
black muzzle into the largest hole of his wicker prison, and set
his useful little nose to gathering news of his whereabouts.
If it should happen to a dog in this day to be taken from Ye Olde
Greyfriars Dining-Rooms and carried southward out of Edinburgh
there would be two miles or more of city and suburban streets to
be traversed before coming to the open country. But a half
century or more ago one could stand at the upper gate of
Greyfriars kirkyard or Heriot's Hospital grounds and look down a
slope dotted with semi-rustic houses, a village or two and
water-mills, and then cultivated farms, all the way to a
stone-bridged burn and a toll-bar at the bottom of the valley.
This hillside was the ancient Burghmuir where King James
of old gathered a great host of Scots to march and fight and
perish on Flodden Field.
Bobby had not gone this way homeward before, and was puzzled by
the smell of prosperous little shops, and by the park-like odors
from college campuses to the east, and from the well-kept
residence park of George Square. But when the cart rattled across
Lauriston Place he picked up the familiar scents of milk and wool
from the cattle and sheep market, and then of cottage dooryards,
of turned furrows and of farmsteads.
The earth wears ever a threefold garment of beauty. The human
person usually manages to miss nearly everything but the
appearance of things. A few of us are so fortunate as to have
ears attuned to the harmonies woven on the wind by trees and
birds and water; but the tricky weft of odors that lies closest
of all, enfolding the very bosom of the earth, escapes us.
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