When the doctor came, he felt of Lucy’s pulse, and looked at her tongue, and listened to her breathing.
“Will she take ipecacuanha?” said the doctor to Lucy’s mother.
“She will take anything you prescribe, doctor,” said her father, in reply.
“Well, that’s clever,” said the doctor. “The old rule is, that the child that will take medicine is half cured already.”
So the doctor sat down at the table, and opened his saddle-bags, and took out a bottle filled with a yellowish powder, and began to take some out.
“Is it good medicine?” said Lucy, in a low voice, to her mother. She was now sitting in her mother’s lap, who was rocking her in a rocking-chair.
“Yes,” said the doctor; for he overheard Lucy’s question, and thought that he would answer it himself. “Yes, ipecacuanha is a very good medicine,—an excellent medicine.”
As he said this, he looked around, rather slyly, at Miss Anne and Lucy’s father.
“Then I shall like to take it,” said Lucy.
“He means,” said her mother, “that it is a good medicine to cure the sickness with; the taste of it is not good. It is a very disagreeable medicine to take.”