WHATS IN A NAME?
Thomas Scott, the miller of Babbie’s Mill, slunk off a sulky, crestfallen man. From that day he was nicknamed “the dabbit turkey,” and turkeys became known in the district as “babbies,”—not a little to the confusion of those who did not know the above incident, for it was not uncommon to hear about “a slice of a good fat babbie;” that Mrs. Graham had killed twenty babbies and sent them in to Edinburgh for Christmas; and, what was perhaps more puzzling still, that Mrs. Clark “had gotten seven babbies killed by rats in one night, but it didna pit her very sair about, for she had as mony left as she cared for.”
I will have occasion to fill in some of the “lights” of Dan’s character before I finish these “Bits;” meantime I must leave him in shadow, and proceed in the next chapter to a widely different subject.