“Oh, will you?” she cried, shrilly. “He’ll pay, says he. Oh, my! He’ll pay! Oh, dear!”
“Come, now, woman!” said my father, indignantly. “I’ve had you come, an’ I’ll stand by what you does. I’ll get the lump-fish; but ’tis the last cure you’ll try. If it fails, back you go t’ Wolf Cove.”
“Oh, my!” said she, taken aback. “Back I goes, does I! An’ t’ Wolf Cove? Oh, dear!”
My father sent word to the masters of the cod-traps, which were then set off the heads, that such sculpin as got in the nets by chance must be saved for him. He was overwrought, as I have said, by sorrow, overcome, it may be, by the way this woman had. And soon he had for her four green, prickly-skinned, jelly-like, big-bellied lump-fish, which were not appetizing to look upon, though I’ve heard tell that starving folk, being driven to it, have eaten them. My sister would not be driven from the kitchen, though the woman was vehement in anger, but held to it that she must know the character of the dose my mother was to take. So they worked together—the doctor-woman scowling darkly—until the medicine was ready: which was in the late evening of that day. Then they went to my mother’s room to administer the first of it.
“’Tis a new medicine,” my mother said, with a smile, when she held the glass in her hand.
“Ay,” crooned the doctor-woman, “drink it, now, my dear.”
My mother raised the glass to her lips. “And what is it?” she asked, withdrawing the glass with a shudder.
“Tut, tut!” the doctor-woman exclaimed. “’Tis but a soup. ’Twill do you good.”
“I’m sure it will,” my mother gently said. “But I wonder what it is.”
Again she raised the glass with a wry face. But my sister stayed her hand.