“Ha!” she snorted, triumphantly. “I was thinkin’ I was a better man than he!”
“’Tis a shame,” said I, “t’ scare un so!”
Whereat, without uttering a sound, she laughed until the china clinked and rattled on the shelves, and I thought the pots and pans would come clattering from their places. And then she strutted the floor for all the world like a rooster once I saw in the South.
VIII
THE BLIND and The BLIND
Ah, well! at once she set about the cure of my mother. And she went tripping about the house—and tripping she went, believe me, stout as she was, as lightsome as one of Skipper Tommy’s fairies—with a manner so large and confident, a glance so compelling, that ’twas beyond us to doubt her power or slight her commands. First of all she told my mother, repeating it with patience and persuasive insistence, that she would be well in six days, and must believe the words true, else she would never be well, at all. And when my mother had brightened with this new hope, the woman, muttering words without meaning, hung a curious brown object about her neck, which she said had come from a holy place and possessed a strange and powerful virtue for healing. My mother fondled it, with glistening eyes and very tenderly, and, when the doctor-woman had gone out, whispered to me that it was a horse-chestnut, and put her in mind of the days when she dwelt in Boston, a little maid.
“But ’tis not healin’ you,” I protested, touching a tear which had settled in the deep hollow of her cheek. “’Tis makin’ you sad.”
“Oh, no!” said she. “’Tis making me very happy.”