the old beaten way of friendship

Robert Burns: Letters MY DEAR COUNTRYWOMAN,—I am so impatient to show you that I am once more at peace with you, that I send you the book I mentioned, directly, rather than wait the uncertain time of my seeing you. ... I know you will laugh at it when I tell you that your piano and you together have played the deuce somehow about my heart. I have one miserable bad symptom,—when you whisper, or look kindly to another, it gives me a draught of damnation. You may perhaps give yourself airs of distance on this, and that will completely cure me; but I wish you would not; just let us meet, if you please, in the old beaten way of friendship.