“Doctor, darling,” whined Mrs. Doolan, “don’t be saying the like of that.”
“Biddy Doolan,” said the sergeant, sternly, “will you let go of the doctor? I’d be sorry to arrest you, so I would, but arrested you’ll be if you don’t get along home out of that and keep quiet.”
Mrs. Doolan loosed her hold on the doctor’s arm, but she did not go home. She followed Lovaway up the street, moving, for so old a woman, at a surprising pace.
“Doctor, dear,” she said, “don’t be giving medicine to them childer. Don’t do it now. You’ll only anger them that’s done it, and it’s a terrible thing when them ones is angry.”
“Get away home out of that, Biddy Doolan,” said the sergeant.
“Don’t be hard on an old woman, now, sergeant,” said Mrs. Doolan. “It’s for your own good and the good of your child I’m speaking. Doctor, dear, there’s no cure but the one. A cup of water from the well of Tubber Neeve, the same to be drawn up in a new tin can that never was used. Let the child or the man, or it might be the cow, or whatever it is, let it drink that, a cup at a time, and let you——”
Lovaway followed by the sergeant, entered the barrack. He needed no guiding to the room in which Molly lay. Her shrieks would have led a blind man to her bedside.
Mrs. Doolan was stopped at the door by a burly constable. She shouted her last advice to the doctor as he climbed the stairs.
“Let you take a handful of rowan berries and lay them on the stomach or wherever the pain might be, and if you wrap them in a yellow cloth it will be better; but they’ll work well enough without that, only not so quick.”
Driven off by the constable Mrs. Doolan went back to Flanagan’s shop. She was quite calm and did not any longer appear to be the worse for the porter she had drunk.