Nothing more could be done that evening in the flower gardens, so Norma joined the other girls when they came from the barn yard talking about the fence they had built. As Janet had forgotten the pig’s extra meal of milk that morning, the milk had soured, and Rachel had made sour-milk pancakes of it for supper.
These were a favorite dish with all the girls, and Rachel mixed an extra lot of batter. Smeared thickly with butter and with white clover honey poured over them, they were so delicious that the hungry girls did full justice to them. But Rachel still had so much batter left, after the girls had finished supper, that she baked it into cakes for herself. She, too, was overfond of sour-milk pancakes with pure honey on them.
She ate and ate, until she could hardly breathe, and then she sighed because the last pancake had to be put away on the pantry shelf. She sought for a safe corner in which to hide it from Mrs. James’s searching eye, for fear of being laughed at for saving it for her breakfast.
In pushing the plate in the corner, Rachel found the pill box, and always having enough curiosity to cause her useless trouble, she carried the box to the kitchen window to see what it said on the cover. Then she carried it back and placed it on the shelf.
The supper dishes were washed and put away where they belonged, but Rachel found it hard to finish her tasks, because she was taken with such indigestion pains. She drank a glass of hot water, hoping to relieve her difficulty in breathing. But it got worse. She sat down every few moments until a cramp had passed, and every time she began again to do the dishes, she had to gasp for breath.
Suddenly she remembered the pill box that said: “Pepsin pills for indigestion.”
“Dat means despepsy like what I got so bad,” muttered Rachel, going for the box.
She brought it out to the daylight and laboriously read the directions: “Take two pills, if attack is severe. If not relieved, repeat dose in half hour.”
“Humph! I’se got it so bad, I reckon I’d better take all foh at one time—like it say, repeat dose.” So Rachel took four of the six rare seeds. She replaced the box on the shelf and in a short time the gas disappeared and she felt better. She sat on the stoop for a time to enjoy the cool breezes, and then finding she was feeling as well as ever again, she walked out on the lawn to meet the girls who had spent the evening at Solomon’s Seal Camp.
They told Rachel all about the stories of the stars and the legends of the constellations that the scouts had told them, and so interested in some of these myths was Rachel that she forgot to speak of the pills she had taken from the box in the pantry.