We left Musselburgh before the first ninepenny coach was due from Edinburgh, for (as Alan said) that was a rencounter we might very well avoid.  The wind, although still high, was very mild, the sun shone strong, and Alan began to suffer in proportion.  From Prestonpans he had me aside to the field of Gladsmuir, where he exerted himself a great deal more than needful to describe the stages of the battle.  Thence, at his old round pace, we travelled to Cockenzie.  Though they were building herring-busses there at Mrs. Cadell’s, it seemed a desert-like, back-going town, about half full of ruined houses; but the ale-house was clean, and Alan, who was now in a glowing heat, must indulge himself with a bottle of ale, and carry on to the new luckie with the old story of the cold upon his stomach, only now the symptoms were all different.

I sat listening; and it came in my mind that I had scarce ever heard him address three serious words to any woman, but he was always drolling and fleering and making a private mock of them, and yet brought to that business a remarkable degree of energy and interest.  Something to this effect I remarked to him, when the good wife (as chanced) was called away.

“What do ye want?” says he.  “A man should aye put his best foot forrit with the womenkind; he should aye give them a bit of a story to divert them, the poor lambs!  It’s what ye should learn to attend to, David; ye should get the principles, it’s like a trade.  Now, if this had been a young lassie, or onyways bonnie, she would never have heard tell of my stomach, Davie.  But aince they’re too old to be seeking joes, they a’ set up to be apotecaries.  Why?  What do I ken?  They’ll be just the way God made them, I suppose.  But I think a man would be a gomeral that didnae give his attention to the same.”

And here, the luckie coming back, he turned from me as if with impatience to renew their former conversation.  The lady had branched some while before from Alan’s stomach to the case of a goodbrother of her own in Aberlady, whose last sickness and demise she was describing at extraordinary length.  Sometimes it was merely dull, sometimes both dull and awful, for she talked with unction.  The upshot was that I fell in a deep muse, looking forth of the window on the road, and scarce marking what I saw.  Presently had any been looking they might have seen me to start.

“We pit a fomentation to his feet,” the goodwife was saying, “and a het stane to his wame, and we gied him hyssop and water of pennyroyal, and fine, clean balsam of sulphur for the hoast....”

“Sir,” says I, cutting very quietly in, “there’s a friend of mine gone by the house.”

“Is that e’en sae?” replies Alan, as though it were a thing of small-account.  And then, “Ye were saying, mem?” says he; and the wearyful wife went on.

Presently, however, he paid her with a half-crown piece, and she must go forth after the change.