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Updated: June 12, 2025
Ethan, from motives of economy, had always been glad that Zeena was of the latter faction. In the agitation caused by the gravity of her announcement he sought a consolatory short cut. "What do you know about this doctor anyway? Nobody ever told you that before." He saw his blunder before she could take it up: she wanted sympathy, not consolation.
Zeena always went to bed as soon as she had had her supper, and the shutterless windows of the house were dark.
"I was just taking a look round that's all," she answered, with a wavering smile. They went back into the kitchen without speaking, and Ethan picked up her bag and shawl. "Where's Zeena?" he asked. "She went upstairs right after dinner. She said she had those shooting pains again, and didn't want to be disturbed." "Didn't she say good-bye to you?" "No. That was all she said."
Zeena, who had at her fingers' ends the pathological chart of the whole region, had cited many cases of the kind while she was nursing his mother; and he himself knew of certain lonely farm-houses in the neighbourhood where stricken creatures pined, and of others where sudden tragedy had come of their presence. At times, looking at Zeena's shut face, he felt the chill of such forebodings.
"There was a mouse round the kitchen all last evening." Zeena continued to look from one to the other; then she emitted her small strange laugh. "I knew the cat was a smart cat," she said in a high voice, "but I didn't know he was smart enough to pick up the pieces of my pickle-dish and lay 'em edge to edge on the very shelf he knocked 'em off of."
As he reached the door he met Zeena coming back into the room, her lips twitching with anger, a flush of excitement on her sallow face. The shawl had slipped from her shoulders and was dragging at her down-trodden heels, and in her hands she carried the fragments of the red glass pickle-dish. "I'd like to know who done this," she said, looking sternly from Ethan to Mattie.
All the while he felt as if he were still kissing her, and yet dying of thirst for her lips. "Ethan, what has happened? Is Zeena mad with me?" Her cry steadied him, though it deepened his wrath and pity. "No, no," he assured her, "it's not that. But this new doctor has scared her about herself. You know she believes all they say the first time she sees them.
"If there's going to be any trouble I want to be there," was his vague reflection, as he threw to Jotham the unexpected order to unhitch the team and lead them back to the barn. It was a slow trudge home through the heavy fields, and when the two men entered the kitchen Mattie was lifting the coffee from the stove and Zeena was already at the table. Her husband stopped short at sight of her.
She seldom abbreviated the girl's name, and when she did so it was always a sign of affability. "I've a good mind to go and hunt up those stomach powders I got last year over in Springfield," she continued. "I ain't tried them for quite a while, and maybe they'll help the heartburn." Mattie lifted her eyes. "Can't I get them for you, Zeena?" she ventured. "No.
Then his mother got queer and dragged along for years as weak as a baby; and his wife Zeena, she's always been the greatest hand at doctoring in the county. Sickness and trouble: that's what Ethan's had his plate full up with, ever since the very first helping."
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