‘I don’t feel very well,’ Mrs. Mountain confessed. ‘Not a wink o’ sleep have I had iver since Samson came home last night. Nor him nayther, for the matter o’ that, though he tried to desave me by snorin’, whinever I spoke to him; an’ as for any sympathy—well, you know him aforetime, Jenny—I might as well talk to that theer poker.’
Then Jenny was fluent in condolence, and at last got the old lady out of the room.
‘When did you take your medicine last, my dear?’ she asked the patient ‘Ain’t it time as you had another drop?’
‘It doesn’t do me any good,’ said the patient fretfully. She knew better herself what was wrong with her than anybody else could guess, and only longed passionately to be alone and free to think and cry over her lost love and broken hopes.
‘Why, my dear, you’ve on’y took one dose yit,’ said Machiavel. ‘You must give it time. I’ll pour you out another.’ Her back was towards the patient as she clattered about among the glasses on the table with a shaking hand. She poured out the wizard’s potion, the phial clinking against the edge of the glass like a castanet, and her heart beating so that she almost feared Julia would hear it The girl at first pettishly refused the draught, but Mrs. Jenny, in her guilty agitation, made short work of her objections, and poured it down her throat almost by main force.
‘Maids must do as their elders bid ‘em,’ she said, as she returned the glass to its place.
‘It doesn’t taste the same,’ moaned the patient
‘You’re like all th’ other sick folk I iver nursed. As fall o’ fancies as you can stick,’ said Mrs. Jenny. ‘Lie quiet, and try an’ go to sleep.’
The girl lay silent, and Mrs. Jenny, more than half wishing the whole business had never been begun, sat and listened to her breathing. She stirred and sighed once or twice, but after a while lay so utterly still that the old lady ventured to approach the bed. Julia’s face was almost as white as her pillow, and her breath was so light that it hardly stirred the coverlet above her bosom.
‘It’s a-workin,’ said Mrs. Rusker.