"What might your tale be, Master David?"
"My tale? Now I only say this to ye, Master Coupland. Just ye look at me.... Aye—be sure!—I should ha' said, feel hold of my arm.... There now!—where do ye find th' hospital pa'atient in that? Towerned o' ninety-nine year, last Whitsuntide! What'll your doctors ma'ak of that?"
"Won't they give you a clean bill, Master David?"
"Couldn't roightly say, Master Coupland, without consooltin' of 'em. And I can tell ye this much, they'll have to make shift without me; you may tell 'em so! Now, you hearken to me, not to they." The voice of the old boy, so nearly a centenarian, rose quite to vigour as he worked up his indignation against leechcraft. "That little maid of yowern, she has a bit o' cough o' nights?"
"Aye, aye!—a fair sort of a cough—comes and goes by the season."
"Ah!—and I lay, now and again o' nights, she'll sweat like to sop a flannel shirt through, like a spoonge?"
"And that's true, too!"
"And happen she's thinned doon a bit?—happen she hasn't...?"
"To the touch o' my hand, belike! But I'm an onsartain judge—and that's the truth."
"Now I'm telling ye this." The old man stood still to make his tale the more impressive, his thousand wrinkles and his few grey hairs all fraught with emphasis that was lost on his hearer; though the sight of them in the afterglow might have held a passer-by, and made him listen. He repeated: "I'm tellin' ye this, Master Coupland. If ye could have handled me when I was a yoong lad of mebbe fowerteen year, or fifteen, you would just have felt through to th' boans. And the cough, night and mowerning—my word! You might well ha' thowt yower little maiden's just a gay trifle.... What said th' doctor?" The old man laughed scornfully, if toothlessly. "Said to my moother she might let the oonderta'aker measure me for my coffin. And she was that simple she took his word for it, and vairy nigh did ... ah!—you may be laughin'—but vairy nigh she did! And there was I the while, just turned off my food and drink for a spell! Groo-wun I was, I ta'ak it. And to hear doctor cha-atterin', cha-atterin'! Such a maze o' wo'ords, it passes thinkin' where he could have gotten so ma-any. Ha—ha—ho!" And the old man resumed his walk with, "Eighty-fower year agone, Master Coupland, and me here, hale and hearty, to tell the tale!"