"But your mother said yesterday that your tongue was coated."
"So it was. I had been breaking a pan of cream. Mother don't like to have her cream disturbed after it is set. I licked the cream off my lips, but left it on my tongue."
"I think your mother'll have the best of it if she gives you salts and senna. She thinks highly of assafœtida, and may give you that."
"I never will take that; I'll leave home first."
The next evening, as Rich was passing through the kitchen with an armful of wood for his evening fire, he noticed Mrs. Clemens seated before the fire, in her lap a pair of old-fashioned kitchen bellows, on a chair beside her a skillet full of hot coals, a roll of sheep-skin, a junk of Burgundy pitch, and a knife. After cutting from the skin a piece of the right size for a plaster, she placed on it a piece of the pitch, put both on the flat side of the bellows, made the knife hot in the coals, and spread the plaster; while Dan, with no very joyous expression of countenance, sat awaiting the result.
"I am going to put this plaster between Daniel's shoulders, Mr. Richardson," said she; "it is a sovereign remedy for a cold; doesn't open the pores like a sweat, and expose one to take more cold."
The next morning the good lady declared the plaster had worked wonders; that Daniel's cold was very much better, and would soon be well.
"Perhaps I had better take it off, my son, wipe it, and wipe the perspiration from your back. The plaster will draw better, and it will prevent its itching and annoying you in school."
"O, no, mother; I shall be late. It don't itch one mite."
And he rushed from the house.