"There's a great clumsy sneeze! Why can't ye have
better manners, you young dog!" said Coggan, with-
drawing the flagon.
"The cider went up my nose!" cried Cainy, as soon
as he could speak; "and now 'tis gone down my neck,
and into my poor dumb felon, and over my shiny
buttons and all my best cloze!"
"The poor lad's cough is terrible unfortunate." said
Matthew Moon. "And a great history on hand, too.
Bump his back, shepherd."
"'Tis my nater." mourned Cain. "Mother says I
always was so excitable when my feelings were worked
up to a point!"
"True, true." said Joseph Poorgrass. "The Balls
were always a very excitable family. I knowed the
boy's grandfather -- a truly nervous and modest man,
even to genteel refinery. 'Twas blush, blush with him,
almost as much as 'tis with me -- not but that 'tis a
fault in me!"
"Not at all, Master Poorgrass." said Coggan. "'Tis
a very noble quality in ye."
"Heh-heh! well, I wish to noise nothing abroad --
nothing at all." murmured Poorgrass, diffidently. "But
we be born to things -- that's true. Yet I would rather
my trifle were hid; though, perhaps, a high nater is a
little high, and at my birth all things were possible to
my Maker, and he may have begrudged no gifts.
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