But aince they're too
old to be seeking joes, they a' set up to be apotecaries. Why?
What do I ken? They'll be just the way God made them, I suppose.
But I think a man would be a gomeral that didnae give his attention
to the same."
And here, the luckie coming back, he turned from me as if with
impatience to renew their former conversation. The lady had
branched some while before from Alan's stomach to the case of a
goodbrother of her own in Aberlady, whose last sickness and demise
she was describing at extraordinary length. Sometimes it was
merely dull, sometimes both dull and awful, for she talked with
unction. The upshot was that I fell in a deep muse, looking forth
of the window on the road, and scarce marking what I saw.
Presently had any been looking they might have seen me to start.
"We pit a fomentation to his feet," the good-wife was saying, "and
a het stane to his wame, and we gied him hyssop and water of
pennyroyal, and fine, clean balsam of sulphur for the hoast. . . "
"Sir," says I, cutting very quietly in, "there's a friend of mine
gone by the house.
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