HARD PRACTICE
I bore him no grudge—the chastisement had been fairly deserved: for then, being loosed from parental restraint, I was by half too fond of aping the ways and words of full-grown men; and I was not unaware of the failing. However, the prediction on the tip of my tongue—that he would live to do many another good deed—would have found rich fulfillment had it been spoken. It was soon noised the length of the coast that a doctor dwelt in our harbour—one of good heart and skill and courage: to whom the sick of every station might go for healing. In short space the inevitable came upon us: punts put in for the doctor at unseasonable hours, desperately reckless of weather; schooners beat up with men lying ill or injured in the forecastles; the folk of the neighbouring ports brought their afflicted to be miraculously restored, and ingenuously quartered their dying upon us. A wretched multitude emerged from the hovels—crying, “Heal us!” And to every varied demand the doctor freely responded, smiling heartily, God bless him! spite of wind and weather: ready, active, merry, untiring—sad but when the only gift he bore was that of tender consolation.
One night there came a maid from Punch Bowl Harbour. My sister sent her to the shop, where the doctor was occupied with the accounts of our business, myself to keep him company. ’Twas a raw, black night; and she entered with a gust of wind, which fluttered the doctor’s papers, set the lamp flaring, and, at last, escaped by way of the stove to the gale from which it had strayed.
“Is you the doctor?” she gasped.
She stood with her back against the door, one hand still on the knob and the other shading her eyes—a slender slip of a girl, her head covered with a shawl, now dripping. Whisps of wet black hair clung to her forehead, and rain-drops lay in the flushed hollows of her cheeks.
“I am,” the doctor answered, cheerily, rising from his work.
“Well, zur,” said she, “I’m Tim Hodd’s maid, zur, an’ I’m just come from the Punch Bowl in the bait-skiff, zur—for healin’.”
“And what, my child,” asked the doctor, sympathetically, “may be the matter with you?”
Looking back—with the added knowledge that I have—it seems to me that he had no need to ask the question. The flush and gasp told the story well enough, quite well enough: the maid was dying of consumption.