“Ay,” said my father, looking away, “I s’pose ’tis great folly in me t’ think it. But they isn’t no one else t’ turn to.”
And that was unanswerable.
“There seems to be no one else,” my mother admitted. “But, David—the doctor-woman?”
“They does work cures,” my father pursued. “I’m not knowin’ how they does; but they does, an’ that’s all I’m sayin’. Tim Budderly o’ the Arm told me—an’ ’twas but an hour ago—that she charmed un free o’ fits.”
“I have heard,” my mother mused, “that they work cures. And if——”
“They’s no knowin’ what she can do,” my father broke in, my mother now listening eagerly. “An’ I just wish you’d leave me go fetch her. Won’t you, lass? Come, now!”
“’Tis no use, David,” said my mother. “She couldn’t do anything—for me.”
“Ay, but,” my father persisted, “you’re forgettin’ that she’ve worked cures afore this. I’m fair believin’,” he added with conviction, “that they’s virtue in some o’ they charms. Not in many, maybe, but in some. An’ she might work a cure on you. I’m not sayin’ she will. I’m only sayin’ she might.”
My mother stared long at the white washed rafters overhead. “Oh,” she sighed, plucking at the coverlet, “if only she could!”
“She might,” said my father. “They’s no tellin’ till you’ve tried.”