nd pace, we travelled to Cockenzie. Though they were building
herring-busses there at Mrs. Cadell's, it seemed a desert-like,
back-going town, about half full of ruined houses; but the ale-house was
clean, and Alan, who was now in a glowing heat, must indulge himself
with a bottle of ale, and carry on to the new luckie with the old story
of the cold upon his stomach, only now the symptoms were all different.

I sat listening; and it came in my mind that I had scarce ever heard him
address three serious words to any woman, but he was always drolling and
fleering and making a private mock of them, and yet brought to that
business a remarkable degree of energy and interest. Something to this
effect I remarked to him, when the good wife (as chanced) was called
away.

"What do ye want?" says he. "A man should aye put his best foot forrit
with the womenkind; he should aye give them a bit of a story to divert
them, the poor lambs! It's what ye should learn to attend to, David; ye
should get the principles, it's like a trade. Now, if this had been a
young lassie, or onyways bonnie, she would never have heard tell of my
stomach, Davie. 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 goodwife 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."

"Is that e'en sae?" replies Alan, as though it were a thing of
small-account. And then, "Ye were saying, mem?" says he; and the
wearyful wife went on.

Presently, however, he paid her with a half-crown piece, and she must go
fo