She walked straight on, as if her
burden lightened, and into her own cave-like house and her little neat
bedroom.
"Lay him down jest as he is," she said to Jacob. "We won't try to shift
him to-day. Let him get over this."
Jacob stretched himself, after his load, put his hands in his pockets,
and made up his mouth into a soundless whistle.
"Yes! well!" said he. "Guess I better finish milkin'."
Mary put her patient "to-rights," and set some herb drink on the back
of the stove. Presently the little room was filled with the steamy odor
of a bitter healing, and she was on the battlefield where she loved to
conquer. In spite of her heaven-born instinct, she knew very little
about doctors and their ways of cure. Earth secrets were hers, some of
them inherited and some guessed at, and luckily she had never been
involved in those greater issues to be dealt with only by an exalted
science. Later in her life, she was to get acquainted with the young
doctor, down in Tiverton Street, and hear from him what things were
doing in his world. She was to learn that a hospital is not a slaughter
house incarnadined with writhing victims, as some of us had thought.
She was even to witness the magic of a great surgeon; though that was
in her old age, when her attitude toward medicine had become one of
humble thankfulness that, in all her daring, she had done no harm.
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