which for a moment hung in the sunny air like a small exhalation.
"There's a great clumsy sneeze! Why can't ye have better manners, you young dog!" said Coggan, withdrawing 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 refinement. '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 are born to things—that's true. Yet I would rather my trifle were hid; though, perhaps, a high nature is a little high,
