Читать книгу Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters - Daniel Stashower, Исмаил Шихлы - Страница 101

That Miss Fullerton is an awful brick; we have just been settling with her for our last week’s grub, and she would only take 6/ for a loaf of bread every day, potatoes at dinner, cream, two pots of jam and numerous other little treats. So we paid her £1 in all for last weeks food and next weeks lodging; I never knew such polite nice people as the real Arran aborigines. For example we took a boat the other day, and got for 6d an hour not only the boat but also the use of two deep sea fishing lines. While out we managed to lose the hooks and weights from each of the lines, but the owner would not hear of taking any recompense, and only laughed at our disaster.

Miss Fullerton rejoices in the use of nervous energetic English; she was in here this morning to confide to us some ill deeds of her servant girl. Her oration began ‘Och, that gal, that gal, the divil tak’ her skin!’ The Arran dialect is more akin to the Irish than Scotch. She informed us yesterday that her lodger, in the front, who is a beastly cad, got as ‘fre’ as the Baltic’.

I hope this may reach you in good time before Cony starts. I think after all we need a little butter, as the non-appearance of the store jam made us rather heavy on it. Also I think you could not do better than send a dozen or so of saveloys. They would be grand for excursions. Also some coffee. We need something in the meat line. We make a tin last us two days, which is, I think, a very moderate allowance. We have a tin of Australian and a tin of corned beef left.

[P.S.] Though the house is very clean the sandy beach is a desperate place for fleas. We have occasion to sing with Watts of pious memory

How doth the little busy flea, / Improve each shining hour.*

While his mother stayed home with the youngest children, Conan Doyle cheerfully took on the care of not only Lottie but the even younger Connie, during his stay on Arran. It was a pattern of looking out for his younger siblings that would continue his entire life.