“Don't ye do it,” almost sobbed the young farmer. “It costs us a dollar every time he comes so far, an' he'll say right off, the way he did about mother that last time she was sick—when she broke her hip—that he'd take up a little piece of land beforehand; it would jest pay his bill. He'll do that, an' I tell ye I 'ain't got 'nough land now to support me. I 'ain't got 'nough land now, J'rome.”
The poor young wife was weeping almost like a child. “Do let him call the doctor, do let him, Henry,” she pleaded.
“There's another thing, J'rome,” half whispered the young man, turning his back on his wife and fastening mysterious bright eyes on Jerome's—“there's another thing. Laura, she'll have to have the doctor before long, you can see that, an'—there'll be another mouth to fill, an' I've been savin' up a little, an' it ain't goin' for me—I tell ye it ain't goin' for me, J'rome.”
All the while poor Henry Leeds, in spite of hot red spots on his cheeks, was shivering violently, but stiffly, like a tree in a freezing wind. The doctor had whirled quite out of sight over the hill. “He's gone,” wailed the wife—“he's gone, and Henry 'll die—oh, I know he'll die!”
Then Jerome, who had been standing bewildered, not knowing whether he should or should not run and call after the doctor, and listening first to one, then to the other, collected himself. “No, he isn't going to die, either,” he said to the poor girl, who was very young; and he said it quite sharply, because he so pitied her in her innocent helplessness, and would give her courage even in a bitter dose. He asked her, furthermore, as brusquely as Doctor Prescott himself could have done, what medicine she had in the house. Then he bade her hasten, if she wished to help and not hurt her husband, to the nearest neighbor and beg some sweat-producing herbs—thoroughwort or sage or catnip—all of which he had heard were good for fever.
She went away, wrapped in the thick shawl which Jerome had found in a closet, and himself pinned over the wild fair head, under the quivering chin, while he quieted her with grave admonitions, as if he were her father. Then he led poor Henry Leeds—still crying out that he would not have the doctor—into his house and his bedroom, and got him to bed, though it was a hard task.
“I tell you, Henry,” pleaded Jerome, struggling with him to loosen his neck-band, “you shall not have the doctor; I'll doctor you myself.”
“You don't know how—you don't know how, J'rome! She'll say you don't know how; she'll send for him, an' then, when he's got all my land, how am I goin' to get them a livin'?”
“I tell you, Doctor Prescott sha'n't darken your doors, Henry Leeds, if you'll behave yourself,” said Jerome, stoutly; “and I can break up a fever as well as he can, if you'll only let me. Mother broke up one for me, and I never forgot it. You let me get your clothes off and get you into bed, Henry.”
Jerome had had some little experience through nursing his mother, but, more than that, had the natural instinct of helpfulness, balanced with good sense and judgment, which makes a physician. Moreover, he worked with as fiery zeal as if he were a surgeon in a battle-field. Soon he had Henry Leeds in his feather bed, with all the wedding quilts and blankets of poor young Laura piled over him. The fire was almost out, for the girl was a poor house-keeper, and not shod by nature for any of the rough emergencies of life. Jerome had the fire blazing in short space, and some hot water and hot bricks in readiness.