And I cough so, that, put my
matches where I may, I never find 'em there. They jump and start,
as I cough and cough, like live things. Are you off a voyage,
deary?'
'No.'
'Not seafaring?'
'No.'
'Well, there's land customers, and there's water customers. I'm a
mother to both. Different from Jack Chinaman t'other side the
court. He ain't a father to neither. It ain't in him. And he
ain't got the true secret of mixing, though he charges as much as
me that has, and more if he can get it. Here's a match, and now
where's the candle? If my cough takes me, I shall cough out twenty
matches afore I gets a light.'
But she finds the candle, and lights it, before the cough comes on.
It seizes her in the moment of success, and she sits down rocking
herself to and fro, and gasping at intervals: 'O, my lungs is
awful bad! my lungs is wore away to cabbage-nets!' until the fit is
over. During its continuance she has had no power of sight, or any
other power not absorbed in the struggle; but as it leaves her, she
begins to strain her eyes, and as soon as she is able to
articulate, she cries, staring:
'Why, it's you!'
'Are you so surprised to see me?'
'I thought I never should have seen you again, deary. I thought
you was dead, and gone to Heaven.'
'Why?'
'I didn't suppose you could have kept away, alive, so long, from
the poor old soul with the real receipt for mixing it. And you are
in mourning too! Why didn't you come and have a pipe or two of
comfort? Did they leave you money, perhaps, and so you didn't want
comfort?'
' No.
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