“Why, now when I recollect, yes,” replied he. “About a week ago she had an ounce. I had really forgotten that, when last night I touched her on a tender part.”
With my additional information I left the shop, meditating as I went up the High Street on the strangeness of the affair, small though it was—for a little animal is just as curious in its organization as a big one, and I’ve heard of some great man who lost his eyesight by peering too closely into these small articles of nature’s workmanship. I didn’t intend to lose mine, and yet I couldn’t give over thinking, though it is just as sure as death that I saw no connexion between what I had heard noticed and the larder affair, neither then nor afterwards, during the entire day. Besides, another business took the subject out of my head, so that I thought no more of it.
Next morning, as I was proceeding to the Office, my attention was again called to the mystery of the mustard-blister, by encountering the lady of Ballynagh carrying a stoup of water from the Fountain Well, and I couldn’t resist a few words as I passed.
“Well, Mrs Riddel,” said I, with true official gravity, “how is your darling’s throat after the blister?”
“And it’s you that has the impidence to ask it?” replied she; “are you a docthor?”
“Yes, I sometimes try to mend people when they’re bad.”
“To kill them, you mane, and the heart ov many a dacent widdow besides,” was the reply.
“But I didn’t make Bill’s throat sore this time.”
“No more ye did; but small thanks to ye, for wouldn’t ye hang him, if yez could? and, shure, to hang a man wid the proud flesh in his throat would be a mighty plaisant thing to the likes ov ye; and didn’t I look down it wid me own eyes?”
“But Bill says he never had a sore throat in his life.”