Ma purses her lips.

I rehearse quickly in my head: The wee thing will eat scraps and sleep in the lean-to and I will do the gathering and shelling and reddin’ just the same and go to school just the same and it won’t get underfoot of anyone and when it’s strong and big ye’ll never know it’s there and I will wash all Da’s ganseys and seaboot stockings when he gets back for Hogmanay and the boys’ too, all the smelly ones, and I will carry the heaviest murlin and the biggest creel … and … and … But it’s a funny thing about dogs: they know a true heart. The pup looks straight at Ma and speaks for itself.

And that’s how it comes to be that Granda Jeemsie finds us by the fire that night, me on my knees on the sooty rug, the dog licking at a bit of old fish head.

He stands in the frame of the door, furrowing and frowning. What foolery has come to this house?

I know better than to speak. Ma is knitting in the chair. She says nothing, too.

I give no leave for no fulpie. Take it out an’ away! he growls, a scowl on me.

Ma carries on with her knitting. I gave Meggie leave for her wee whelp, Da. I see no harm.

Have ye stones in your head, quinie? Cloth in your lugs? Granda’s punchy hands are jumping and twitching. Out an’ away, I said, out an’ away now!

I look at Ma, then back at Granda.

I don’t see the harm, Da, Ma repeats and puts her knitting down. An’ I don’t think Weelim will stoop to bother about a whelp.

Mild enough, Ma, but if Granda had shifted his thundery eyes from me, he would have seen the Look, and maybe it wouldn’t have changed what happened next but he wouldn’t have been so surprised about it.

I’ll not tell ye again, he threatens, reaching for a block of peat in the pail by the door. But Ma is on her feet and her hand grips the upswing of his arm.

I gather up the dog and hug him to me, both of us shivering from the chill in the room as Granda flings open the door, rattling the hinges, and stumps off into the howl of the night.

~

So proud I was, lambsie, to have a wee doggie of my own. I couldn’t say what kind of dog it was—a bit gingerish, like me, with a white blaze on his side the shape of a wing. I called him Crusoe. Like Dick Varley’s brave-hearted dog in that book Miss Birnie had read to us and I’d borrowed to read again myself.