a vex yourself for an auld wife's tears; tears are a
blessin', lad, I shall assure ye. Mony's the time I hae prayed for them,
and could na hae them Sit ye doon! sit ye doon! I'll no let ye gang fra
my door till I hae thankit ye--but gie me time, gie me time. I canna
greet a' the days of the week."

Flucker, _aetat._ 14, opened his eyes, unable to connect ten shillings
and tears.

Lord Ipsden sat down, and felt very sorry for her.

And she cried at her ease.

If one touch of nature make the whole world kin, methinks that sweet and
wonderful thing, sympathy, is not less powerful. What frozen barriers,
what ice of centuries, it can melt in a moment!

His bare mention of her troubles had surprised the widowed woman's
heart, and now she looked up and examined his countenance; it was soon
done.

A woman, young or old, high or low, can discern and appreciate
sensibility in a man's face, at a single glance.

What she saw there was enough. She was sure of sympathy. She recalled
her resolve, and the tale of her sorrows burst from her like a flood.

Then the old fishwife told the young aristocrat how she had borne twelve
children, and buried six as bairns; how her man was always unlucky; how
a mast fell on him, and disabled him a whole season; how they could
but just keep the pot boiling by the deep-sea fishing, and he was not
allowed to dredge for oysters, because his father was not a Newhaven
man. How, when the herring fishing came, to make all right, he never
had another man's luck; how his boat's crew would draw empty nets, and
a boat alongside him would be gunwale down in the water with the fish.
How, at last, one morning, the 20th day of November, his boat came in to
Newhaven Pier without him, and when he was inquired for, his crew said,
"He had stayed at home, like a lazy loon, and not sailed with them
the night before." How she was anxious, and had all the public houses
searched. "For he took a drop now and then, nae wonder, and him aye
in the weather." Poor thing! when he was alive she used to call him a
drunken scoundrel to his face. How, when the tide went down, a mad wife,
whose husband had been drowned twenty years ago, pointed out something
under the pier that the rest took for sea-weed floating--how it was the
hair of her man's head, washed about by the water, and he was there,
drowned without a cry or a struggle, by his enormous boots, that
kept him in an upright position, though he was dead; there he
sto