Eli's Children: The Chronicles of an Unhappy Family

“Eh? What?”
“I say, why don’t you give it up quietly?”
“Speak up; I’m a little hard of hearing.”
“I say, why don’t you give it up quietly?” roared the speaker to a little bent old man, with a weak, thin, piping voice, and a sharp look that gave him somewhat the air of a very attenuated sparrow in a severe frost, his shrunken legs, in tight yellow leather leggings, seeming to help the idea.
“Don’t shout at me like that, Master Portlock. I arn’t deaf, only a trifle hard of hearing when I’ve got a cowd—just a trifle, you know.”
“Have you got a cold?” asked the man addressed, a sturdy-looking, fresh-coloured, middle-aged man, with a very bluff manner, and a look of prosperity in his general appearance that made him seem thoroughly adapted to his office. In fact, he was just the man that a country clergyman would be glad to elect at a vestry meeting for vicar’s churchwarden. “Eh?”
“I—say—have—you—got—a—cold? Hang him, how deaf he is!”
“Oh, no! oh, no!” chirped the little old man, sharply; “I’m not deaf. Just a little thick i’ the ears. Yes; I’ve got a cowd. It’s settled here—just here,” he piped, striking himself upon his thin chest with the hand that held his stick. “A bad cowd—a nasty cowd as keeps me awake all night, doing nowt but cough. It’s that stove, that’s what it is, Master Portlock.”
“Nonsense, man! It would keep the cold off.”
“Eh?”
“I say it would keep the cold off.”