She stepped about the house,
setting it in order, watching her charge, and making delicate possets
for him to take. When the "herb-man" came, she turned him away from the
door with a regal courtesy. It was not so much that she despised his
knowledge, as that he knew no more than she, and this was her patient.
The young doctor in Tiverton told her afterwards that she had done a
dangerous thing in not calling in some accredited wearer of the cloth;
but Mary did not think of that. She went on her way of innocence,
delightfully content. And all those days, Johnnie Veasey, as soon as he
came out of his fever, lay there and watched her with eyes full of a
listless wonder. He was still in that borderland of helplessness where
the unusual seems only a part of the new condition of things. Neighbors
called, and Mary refused them entrance, with a finality which admitted
no appeal.
"I've got sickness here," she would say, standing in the doorway
confronting them. "He's too weak to see anybody; I guess I won't ask
you in."
But one day, the minister appeared, his fat gray horse climbing
painfully up from the Gully Road. It was a warm afternoon; and as soon
as Mary saw him, she went out of her house, and closed the door behind
her.
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