"I suppose you were out looking for Ducharme?" the doctor asked, in a severe tone.
"It was the last time," the woman pleaded, her eyes downcast. "Come in here. Miss Preston ain't got back from school,—she's late to-day."
Sommers walked into the bare sitting room and sat down, while Mrs. Ducharme leaned against the door-post, fingering her apron in an embarrassed manner.
"I've got cured," she blurted out at last. "My eye was awful bad, and it's been most a week since you sent me here."
"Did you follow my treatment?"
"No! I was out one afternoon—after Mrs. Preston came back from school—and I had walked miles and miles. Comin' home I passed a buildin' down here a ways on the avenue where there were picter papers pasted all over the windows; the picters were all about healin' folks, heaps and heaps in great theaters, a nice white-haired old preacher doin' the healin'. While I was lookin' at the picters, a door opened and a young feller came along and helped 'em carry in a cripple in his chair. He turns to me arter finishin' with the cripple and says, 'Come in, lady, and be healed in the blood of the lamb.' In I went, sure enough, and there was a kind of rough church fitted up with texts printed in great show-bills, and they was healin' folks. The little feller was helpin' em up the steps to the platform, and the old feller was prayin', and at last the young feller comes to me and says, 'Want ter be healed?' and I just got up, couldn't help it, and walked to the platform, and they prayed over me—you aren't mad, are you?" she asked suspiciously.
Sommers laughed.
"Mrs. Preston said you'd be very angry with such nonsense. But at any rate the old fellow—Dr.—Dr.—Po—"
"Dr. Potz," Sommers suggested.
"That's him. He cured me, and I went back again and told him about Ducharme. And he says that he's got a devil, and he will cast it out by prayin'. But he wants money."