No More Learning

There, now, is another that I have shaped. Andrew used to be a bit wild
in his talk and in his ways, wanting to go rambling, not content to
settle in the place where he was reared. But I kept a guard over him;
I watched the time poverty gave him a nip, and then I settled him into
the business. He never was so good a worker as Martin, he is too fond
of wasting his time talking vanities. But he is middling handy, and
he is always steady and civil to customers. I have no complaint worth
while to be making this last twenty years against Andrew.

[_ANDREW comes in. _]

ANDREW.

Beggars there outside going the road to the Kinvara fair. They were
saying there is news that Johnny Gibbons is coming back from France on
the quiet; the king's soldiers are watching the ports for him.

THOMAS.

Let you keep now, Andrew, to the business you have in hand. Will the
doctor be coming himself or did he send a bottle that will cure Martin?

ANDREW.

The doctor can't come, for he's down with the lumbago in the back.
He
questioned me as to what ailed Martin, and he got a book to go looking
for a cure, and he began telling me things out of it, but I said I
could not be carrying things of that sort in my head. He gave me the
book then, and he has marks put in it for the places where the cures
are . . . wait now. . . . [_Reads_] 'Compound medicines are usually taken
inwardly, or outwardly applied; inwardly taken, they should be either
liquid or solid; outwardly, they should be fomentations or sponges wet
in some decoctions. '

THOMAS.

He had a right to have written it out himself upon a paper. Where is
the use of all that?

ANDREW.

I think I moved the mark maybe . . .