‘“Now, ma’am, do let me cook you a bit of something nice, for you’ve eaten nothing since yesterday, and you’ll bring yourself down to death’s door at this rate.”
‘And she’d answer,—
‘“No, thank you, Mrs Browser: I couldn’t touch it. I feel sometimes as if I’d never care to eat or drink again.”
‘And Mr Greenslade, he was just as bad. They didn’t eat enough to keep a well-grown child between the two of them.’
‘What-aged people were they?’ I asked.
‘Well, sir, I can hardly say; they weren’t young nor yet old. Mr Greenslade, he may have been about fifty, and his lady a year or two younger; but I never took much count of that. But the gentleman looked much the oldest of the two, by reason of a stoop in his shoulders and a constant cough that seemed to tear his chest to pieces. I’ve known him shut himself up in the parlour the whole night long, coughing away fit to keep the whole house awake. And his breathing, sir—you could hear it half a mile off.’
‘He was assmatical, poor man! that’s where it was,’ interposed Mr Browser.
‘Well, I don’t know what his complaint was called, Browser; but he made noise enough over it to wake the dead. But don’t you go interrupting me no more after that fashion, or the gentleman and lady will never understand the half of my story, and I’m just coming to the cream of it.’
‘I assure you we are deeply interested in what you are telling us,’ I said, politely.