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How Mackechnie Bumped a Borrower

(By “Fishplate”)

After the war, when Mackechnie came back to Inverell station to his old job as a porter, wearing the ribbon of a D.S.O., the rest of the staff, from the office boy to the Station-master, were very proud of him, and made so much of him that Jock, to put it in his own heathen lingo, “begoud to mak' nae sma' swats o' himsel'.” After a bit, however, the thing began to pall on us all, and we would refer to the porter as “the blanky ‘D.S.O.,’” till Mackechnie, in disgust, took the ribbon off his breast and laid it away in his “wee kist” with his medals, to be worn, like them, only on high days and holidays.

That, by way of introduction. While Mackechnie was away beating the Germans, we had a “medically unfit” reject added to the staff at the station, and some of us soon found to our cost that it wasn't for any deficiency in “cheek,” or thinness of “hide,” that he was rejected for service abroad. Of all the coves to borrow he was the very dizzy limit of my thirty odd years' railway experience— and of these same the “service” can show some most excellently seasoned samples. But “Slippy,” as we nicknamed him, could give points to any of those I had ever met, and then beat them some. Well, some weeks after Mackechnie had resumed duty, “Slippy” confessed to his cobber that he was in a tight corner and sorely in need of a loan of five quid to put him even. “Sorry, old chap,” was the reply to the delicately insinuated request, “but I haven't a bean. Rent too high an' tucker too dear to have anything left over out of a porter's wages these times. Indeed, speaking only for your own private ear, ‘Slippy,’ I've mortgaged our next rise for twelve months to keep things going as it is.” Then an idea seemed to strike him, “But I say,” he added, “why not ‘put the nips’ into the blanky ‘D.S.O.,’—Mackechnie, you know? He got a tidy lump sum on coming home, an' he doesn't smoke, nor bet, an' his wife won't let him taste the boose. He's a good chap, is Mac., an' if you ‘gentle’ him nicely he'll part up with a smile, I know he will, for before he went away, Mac. was often ‘our refuge an' our help in time of trouble,’ as Shakespeare or some other poetic bloke says. Try ‘im!”

Now, the truth was that Mackechnie, except when he was in the way of “takin' a tot,” as he called it, was as close as—a—as close as a—Scot……and what could be closer? But “Slippy” didn't know this—not just yet. So, full of hope, as he was of cheek, he bowled down the platform an' breasted up to Jock. After a little preliminary palaver, he quite casually, like, remarked, “Oh, Mac., would you lend me five quid for a week, old man?”

“I dinna ken,” replied Jock. “Ye'd better tell the weak auld man to understudy John Alden, an' speak for hissel'.”

Jock's literary allusion was completely lost on “Slippy,” who, quite unabashed, explain-atorily replied, “You don't seem to understand me, Mac. I said ‘week,’ w-e-e-k, not w-e-a-k, but ‘week,’ meaning the length of time.”

“But, gin he is only a bit ‘week auld,’ hoo cam' ye to ca' him a ‘man?’” asked Jock, suspiciously.

“Dear, dear, dear!” exclaimed the somewhat confused “Slippy,” a little irritably: “the ‘old man’ applied to you.”

“Ye're a dagont leear!” rapped out Jock, apparently losing his “wool.” “He did naethin' o' the kin.' I dinna ken him; never saw him—the auld buffer!”

“Grapes an' gooseberries!” cried “Slippy,” in a final despairing effort to get that bone-head of a close-fisted Scot to comprehend. “I mean you are the ‘old man.’ See?”

“Ay, of coorse, I see!” snapped Mackechnie, aggressively. “Did ye kid yersel' I was blin'? A' the same, if I'm the ‘auld man,’ I canna for the life o' me see whit wey ye're sae anxious to get me to len' mysel' five pounds. I dinna want five pounds—that is, I hinna got it, an' gin I had it I wadnae want it. Naw, naw, naw! I mean I wadnae need it. Naw! no' that aither, I wad need it; but I wad ha'e nae need to ha'e you gang roun' sketchin' for it for me. D'ye get me?” he concluded almost biting the point off of “Slippy's” too inquisitive proboscis.

“Cheese an' Crust!” muttered “Slippy,” as he turned away dejectedly, “‘get’ him? I ‘get’ him right enough; but it wasn't him I wanted. It was his five flamin' flimsies!”

* * *

Great men are meteors that consume themselves to light the earth.—Thomas Hardy.

There are two things that men should never weary of—goodness and humility.

—R. L. Stevenson.