As Doctor and Mrs. Taggess departed, Grace said to her husband:—
"That is the highest compliment that I ever had." And Philip replied:—
"I hope 'tis good for chills."
X—SHE WANTED TO KNOW
GRACE'S malarial attack was soon repulsed, but the memory of that Sunday chill remained vivid. So Grace followed the Doctor's instructions as carefully as if she were an invalid on the brink of the grave, and she compelled Philip also to heed the counsel of precaution which Doctor Taggess had given to both. From that time forward she took personal sympathetic interest in all malarial victims of whom she heard, especially in those who purchased from the great stock of proprietary medicines in Somerton's store. Not infrequently a farmer or villager would be seized by a chill while talking or transacting business in the store, and Grace, despite her own experience in a warm room and under many woollen coverings, could scarcely help begging him to accept the loan of heavy shawls from the store's stock, and to sit undisturbed by the fire in the back room. When she planned a Sunday dinner, at which Doctor Taggess and his wife were to be guests, it was partly for the purpose of questioning the Doctor about the origin of malaria, and of its peculiarities, which seemed almost as numerous as cases; but Philip assured her that busy doctors, like other men of affairs, hated nothing so much as to "talk shop" out of business hours.
Fortunately she gradually became too busy to have time in which to become a monomaniac on malaria. The specimen organ arrived, and was placed in the church, to the great edification of the people. Grace was for a time the only performer, but to prepare relief for herself, improve the quality of the congregational singing, and not without an eye to business, she organized an evening music class, and quickly trained several young women to play some of the simpler hymn-tunes,—and also to purchase organs on the instalment plan.
From music lessons to dress-making is a far cry, but the fame of the purple and "Scare-Cow" dress had pervaded the county, and all the girls wanted dresses like it, which was somewhat embarrassing after the stock of the two calicoes had been exhausted. Then there arose a demand for something equally lovely, pretty, nice, sweet, or scrumptious, according to the vocabulary of the demander, and Eastern jobbers of calicoes and other prints and cheap dress-goods were one day astonished to receive from "Philip Somerton, late Jethro Somerton," a request for a full line of samples—the first request of the sort from that portion of the state. To be able to ask in a store, "How would you make this up?" and to get a satisfying answer, was a privilege which not even the most hopeful women of Claybanks had ever dared to expect, so the "truck trade" of the town and county—the business that came of women carrying eggs, butter, chickens, feathers, etc., to the stores to barter for goods—drifted almost entirely to Somerton's store, and caused John Henry Bustpodder, a matter-of-fact German merchant on the next block, to say publicly that if his wife should die he would shut up the store and leave it shut till he could get to New York and marry a shopgirl.
By midspring Grace had quite as few idle moments as her husband or Caleb; for between housekeeping, music-teaching, talking with commercial travellers, and selling goods, she seldom found time to enjoy the horse and buggy that Philip had bought for her, and she often told her husband, in mock complaint, that she worked longer hours than she had ever done in New York, and that she really must have an advance of pay if he did not wish her to transfer her abilities and customers to some rival establishment. Yet she enjoyed the work; she had a keen sense of humor, which sharpened the same sense in others, and when women were at the counter, she frequently found excuse to start a chorus of laughter. To her husband, a customer was merely a customer; to Grace he was frequently a character, and she had seen so few characters in the course of her New York experiences that she rejoiced in the change. She was sympathetic, too, so the younger women talked to her of much besides "truck" and goods. When one day a country matron rallied her on being without children, another matron exclaimed, "She's second mother to half the gals in the county"—a statement which Grace repeated to Philip in great glee, following it with a demure question as to the advisability of living up to her new dignity by taking to spectacles and sun-bonnets.