Making Over Martha

by Julie M. Lippmann

"Well?"

"There's that big place, 'way along up the little side street, I mean road, past the cimiterry. You can't but just see the house, it's so far back, an'——

"He means old lady Crewe's, I reckon," explained Mrs. Peckett. "She's one of the summer folks, I've just been telling you about. Rolling in money, but as hard and close as a clinched fist. Nobody knows how much she's worth."

"P'raps she's the kind that don't let her right hand know what her left hand's got."

"Well, I don't know about that, but she has considerable of a place. Enough to keep a whole regiment of regular hired help busy, an' every summer she comes up from the city, with just her young gran'-daughter, and they make out to get along, as best they can, trusting to get hold of parties, hereabouts, willing to accommodate. That's no proper way to do."

Martha smoothed back the hair from Sammy's damp forehead, making it out, somehow, that he had more to say, and calming his impatience to say it.

"An', mother-r-r, I was walkin' along the road, an' a awful pretty lady, she called out to me from the garden, an' I went, an' she said her gran'ma was took sick, or somethin', an' there wasn't nobody she could send to get the doctor, but 'ceptin' me, coz I was goin' along, an', I said I'd tell the doctor, an' she said——"

"I don't envy you your job," Mrs. Peckett interposed. "It'll be like hunting a needle in a haystack to find Dr. Driggs, this time of day. He may be 'most anywheres out in the open kentry. But one thing's pretty certain, he won't be home."

"Is he the one lives down in the village, on the main street, with a office which the door is 'round the corner as you go to the station?" Martha inquired. "We're such a husky crowd, the lot of us, we don't ever need a doctor, and I wouldn'ta knew, except I happened to notice oncet, passin', he had such a funny doormat. There was Salve done into it—white pebbles stuck in the wire nettin'. Now, what do you think o' that! It didn't say what kind, either. Just Salve. Wouldn't you think Pills woulda been better? There's more pills used, any day in the year, 'n salve. But, if he's stuck on salve, why, he's the doctor! Only—that don't help us get him, does it? You won't mind my runnin' off, an' leavin' you, Mis' Peckett? But I guess I better be movin' in the direction o' the Crewe place. An', father, s'pose you get a move on, like a good fella, an' see if you can't scare up somethin' somewheres that'll answer to the name o' doctor, when you call it. If you use the auta, you'll make better time, an' you might overtake me, walkin'."

Mrs. Peckett laid a restraining hand on Martha's shoulder. "Now don't you stir a step," she admonished. "It's full two miles to walk to the Crewe place, and the traveling's heavy, on account of the dry spell. By the time you get there, most likely somebody else will have passed with a team, and you'll have your trouble for your pains. It won't hurt them a mite to go out of their way, if they're driving. That's what I say to Mr. P. 'Don't be too quick offering. Give other folks a chance.' Now, here were you, not half an hour back, saying you'd like I should improve you. Well, this is your first lesson. Stay where you are, and let some one nearer to, do the helping."