“That’s it! Every one after me wanting to see them cut into me. I’ve heard of those doctors before, thank you. Mrs. Todd came in to see me yesterday and she said to me: ‘Mrs. Horton, don’t you let those doctors experiment on you.’ She told me some things that were terrible. And she told me, too, about a new thing they’re getting out that has helped lots of women—just a kind of tonic that they say makes the trouble disappear in two months.”
“That’s just quack stuff. You know that. If there were any such thing the good doctors would be using it.”
Mrs. Horton laughed, the high querulous laugh of the invalid who has already become suspicious and opinionated.
“I know what I know, Flissy. All those high-toned doctors want to do is to experiment on me and get Matthew’s money. I know them. You don’t let yourself get taken in by them.”
Fliss sat still watching her mother as she lay on the couch, a sodden heap of misery that would make no constructive effort. She looked baffled. Then she rose and unpacked the luxuries which she had brought with her: choice food, invalid comforts, a black satin negligee.
“Black!” shrilled the mother. “I’m not dead yet, thank you! Take it away, Flissy. It gives me the creeps.”
Fliss went back to the kitchen.
“It’s such a comfort to think that you are here, Ellen,” she said, drawing on her gloves. “There’s not a thing I can do to please her. She’s so changed. All that she used to want was a movie and a bridge game. Now the only thing she wants is to talk over her symptoms with some old hag who recommends patent medicines and tells her not to let any one knife her. But it’s rotten for you here, I suppose.”
“It’s only temporary. I told the doctor to send a nurse and I’d try to train her in—one of those practical nurses who can do housework and is sort of companionable. I have to get back to Mrs. Harrison, of course.”
“Going back there? Why do you, Ellen? Please stick by us now.”