“Hook’s Kurepain,” said she, “never failed yet.”
“’Tis wonderful!” said Jim Grimm.
She spread the newspaper on the table and placed her finger at that point of the list where the cure of rheumatism was promised.
“Read that,” said she, “an’ you’ll find ’tis all true.”
Jim Grimm’s eye ran up to the top of the page. His wife waited, a smile on her lips. She was anticipating a profound impression.
“‘Beauty has wonderful charms,’” Jim Grimm read. “‘Few men can withstand the witchcraft of a lovely face. All hearts are won–––’”
“No, no!” the mother interrupted, hastily. “That’s the marvellous Oriental Beautifier. I been readin’ that, too. But ’tis not that. ’Tis lower down. Beginnin’, ‘At last the universal remedy of Biblical times.’ Is you got it yet?” 37
“Ay, sure!”
And thereupon Jim Grimm of Buccaneer Cove discovered that a legion of relieved and rejuvenated rheumatics had without remuneration or constraint sung the virtues of the Kurepain and the praises of Hook. Poor ignorant Jim Grimm did not for a moment doubt the existence of the Well-Known Traveller, the Family Doctor, the Minister of the Gospel, the Champion of the World. He was ready to admit that the cure had been found.
“I’m willin’ t’ believe,” said he, solemnly, the while gazing very earnestly into his wife’s eyes, “that ’twould do Jimmie a world o’ good.”