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Updated: October 12, 2025
"'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.
For many days, thereafter, the doctor-woman possessed our house, and I've no doubt she was happy in her new estate at table, at any rate, for there she was garrulent and active, and astoundingly active, with less of garrulence, on feast days, when my father had pork provided.
And my dear sister whose heart and hands God fashioned with kind purpose gave full measure of tenderness for both; and my mother was grateful for that, as she ever was for my sister's loving kindness to her and to me and to us all. One night, being overwrought by sorrow, it may be, my father said that he would have the doctor-woman from Wolf Cove to help my mother.
"Out you go!" she cried. "I'm not afeared o' you!" I stood aghast while the doctor-woman backed through the door. Never before had I known my gentle sister to flash and flush with angry passion. Nor have I since.
My mother fondled it, with glistening eyes and very tenderly, and, when the doctor-woman had gone out, whispered to me that it was a horse-chestnut, and put her in mind of the days when she dwelt in Boston, a little maid. "But 'tis not healin' you," I protested, touching a tear which had settled in the deep hollow of her cheek. "'Tis makin' you sad." "Oh, no!" said she.
I marvelled that the punt should make headway so poor in the quiet water and that she should be so much by the stern and that Skipper Tommy should be bent near double until, by and by, the doctor-woman came waddling up the path, the skipper at her heels: whereupon I marvelled no more, for the reason was quite plain.
"For," said he, "I been thinkin' a deal about she, o' late, an' they's no tellin' that she wouldn't do you good." My mother raised her eyebrows. "The doctor-woman!" cried she. "Why, David!" "Ay," said my father, looking away, "I s'pose 'tis great folly in me t' think it. But they isn't no one else t' turn to." And that was unanswerable. "There seems to be no one else," my mother admitted.
Germains; how Lady Oglethorpe had taken charge of the Queen's diamonds when she fled from Whitehall and safely returned them three years later, travelling as an old doctor-woman in a riding-hood, selling powders and plasters in a little basket. To this careless chatter Fanny Shaftoe added exaggerations and backstairs gossip, and an astounding statement which lived as the feeblest lie can live.
And the doctor-woman would not even have us ask what use she made of them: nor have I since sought to know; 'tis best, I think, forgotten. But my mother got no better. "Skipper David," said the doctor-woman, at last, "I'm wantin' four lump-fish." "Four lump-fish!" my father wondered. "Is you?" "Oh, my!" she answered, tartly. "Is I? Yes, I is. An' I'll thank you t' get un an' ask no questions.
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