“Why, no, of co’se not—not less’n I’d taste it, an’ you can do that ez well ez I can. If it’s quinine, it’ll be bitter; an’ ef it’s soggy an’—”
“Don’t explain no mo’, doctor. I can’t stand it. I s’pose it’s jest ez foolish to investigate the inwardness of a pill a person is bound to take ez it would be to try to lif’ the veil of the future in any other way. When I’m obligated to swaller one of ‘em, I jest take a swig o’ good spring water and repeat a po’tion of Scripture and commit myself unto the Lord. I always seem foreordained to choke to death, but I notice thet ef I recover from the first spell o’ suffocation, I always come through. But I ain’t never took one yet thet I didn’t in a manner prepare to die.”
“Then I wouldn’t take it, Enoch. Don’t do it.” The doctor cleared his throat again, but this time he had no trouble to keep the corners of his mouth down. His sympathy robbed him for the time of the humor in the situation. “No, I wouldn’t do it; d—doggone ef I would.”
The deacon looked into the palm of his hand and sighed. “Oh, yas, I reckon I better take it,” he said, mildly. “Ef I don’t stand in need of it now, maybe the good Lord ‘ll sto’e it up in my system, some way, ‘g’inst a future attackt.”
“Well”—the doctor reached for his whip—”well, I wouldn’t do it—steer or no steer!”
“Oh, yas, I reckon you would, doctor, ef you had a wife ez worrited over a wash-tub ez what mine is. An’ I had a extry shirt in wash this week too. One little pill ain’t much when you take in how she’s been tantalized.”
The doctor laughed outright.
“Tell you what to do, Enoch. Fling it away and don’t let on. She don’t question you, does she?”
“No, she ain’t never to say questioned me, but—Well, I tried that once-t. Sampled a bitter white capsule she give me, put it down for quinine, an’ flung it away. Then I chirped up an’ said I felt a heap better—and that wasn’t no lie—which I suppose was on account o’ the relief to my mind, which it always did seem to me capsules was jest constructed to lodge in a person’s air-passages. Well, I taken notice that she’d look at me keen now an’ agin, an’ then glance at the clock, an’ treckly I see her fill the gou’d dipper an’ go to her medicine-cabinet, an’ then she come to me an’ she says, says she, ‘Open yore mouth!’ An’ of co’se I opened it. You see that first capsule, ez well ez the one she had jest adminstered, was mostly morphine, which she had give me to ward off a ‘tackt o’ the neuraligy she see approachin’, and here I had been tryin’ to live up to the requi’ements of quinine, an’ wrastlin’ severe with a sleepy spell, which, ef I’d only knew it, would o’ saved me. Of co’se, after the second dose-t, I jest let nature take its co’se, an’ treckly I commenced to doze off, an’ seemed like I was a feather bed an’ wife had hung me on the fence to sun, an’ I remember how she seemed to be a-whuppin’ of me, but it didn’t hurt. That was on account of it bein’ goose-pickin’ time, an’ she was werrited with windy weather, an’ she tryin’ to fill the feather beds. No, I won’t never try to deceive her again. It never has seemed to me that she could have the same respect for me after ketchin’ me at it, though she ‘ain’t never referred to it but once-t, an’ that was the time I was elected deacon, an’ even then she didn’t do it outspoke. She seemed mighty tender over it, an’ didn’t no mo’n remind me thet a officer in a Christian church ought to examine hisself mighty conscientious an’ be sure he was free of deceit, which, seemed to me, showed a heap o’ consideration. She ‘ain’t got a deceitful bone in her body, doctor.”