“Wilson’s eyes flickered over him, hurt and dubious. His mouth opened—then shut—then he decided to speak after all. ‘Oh, I was thinking Barbie would be very quiet,’ said he, ‘compared wi’ places where they have the railway! I was thinking it would need stirring up a bit.’
“‘Oh, ye was thinking that, was ye?’ birred Gourlay, with a stupid man’s repetition of his jibe. ‘Well, I believe there’s a grand opening in the moleskin line, so _there’s_ a chance for ye! My quarrymen wear out their breeks in no time!’
“Wilson’s face, which had swelled with red shame, went a dead white. ‘Good morning!’ he said, and started rapidly away with a vicious dig of his stick upon the wet road.
“Goo-ood mor-r-ning, serr!’ Gourlay birred after him; ‘goo-ood mor-r-ning, serr!’ He felt he had been bright this morning. He had put the branks on Wilson!”
In spite of his smallness and rattiness, Wilson is not without his Scotch feelings, so that he goes away and schemes. And the end of his scheming is that he becomes a trade rival of Gourlay’s in Barbie. Perhaps man never had a more unscrupulous or fiendishly cunning trade rival. The end of it is that Gourlay is brought to the verge of bankruptcy and dies miserably, while Barbie is left to go on its wicked way rejoicing. This fight between two ugly natures is watched by the population of Barbie with great zest; the combatants are continually egged on by the sarcastic comments of the neebors, who practically hate them both as they hate one another. And the result is a picture which rivals in hideousness anything of the kind which has hitherto been attempted. From _The House with the Green Shutters_ one is able to gather what life in a Scotch township really means. One understands, too, how it comes to pass that the Scotchmen one meets in London are so wanting in the qualities which render communication between men possible and tolerable. Persons who have spent their youth in such a township as Barbie must of necessity have altogether wrong views about life and the reason for it. Their hand is against every man; to get and to keep by fair means or foul is their sole ambition, and of the finer feelings which keep existence sweet they know absolutely nothing. It is a squalid picture, and not in the least flattering to Scotland. Yet the Scotch critics have not ventured to deny its authenticity; indeed, they admit that there is a great deal in it. Mr. Douglas, the author of _The House with the Green Shutters_, is himself a Scotchman, and to malign his country is about the last thing you may expect from a Scotch writer; his tendency usually is the other way. To put Thrums, Drumtochty, and Barbie into one vessel, as it were, to mix them and make a blend of them is probably to get at the truth about the Scot as he lives and moves in his native element. And when one has done this, one can only imagine that the average Scotchman is a compound of two things,—to wit, the knave and the fool.