h, and a
small mirror in the kitchen. Tooth-brushes, she had learned, were
almost unknown in the neighborhood, nearly every one of more than
seventeen years wearing "store-teeth." It was a matter of much
speculation to her that these people, who thought it so essential to
keep their houses, especially their front porches, immaculately
scrubbed, should never feel an equal necessity as to their own persons.
The doctor came to the door and told Sammy he was ready. "I wouldn't do
it to go such a muddy night like what this is," he ruefully declared to
Miss Margaret, "if I didn't feel it was serious; Jake Getz wouldn't
spend any hirin' a doctor, without it was some serious. I'm sorry I got
to go."
"Good-night, Sammy," said Miss Margaret. "Give Tillie my love; and if
she is not able to come to school to-morrow, I shall go to see her."
V
"NOVELS AIN'T MORAL, DOC!"
Tillie still lay on the kitchen settee, her father sitting at her side,
when the doctor and Sammy arrived. The other children had all been put
to bed, and Mrs. Getz, seated at the kitchen table, was working on a
pile of mending by the light of a small lamp.
The doctor's verdict, when he had examined his patient's tongue, felt
her pulse, and taken her temperature, was not clear.
"She's got a high fever. That's 'a all the fu'ther I can go now. What
it may turn to till morning, I can't tell TILL morning. Give her these
powders every hour, without she's sleeping. That's the most that she
needs just now."
"Yes, if she can keep them powders down," said Mr. Getz, doubtfully.
"She can't keep nothin' with her."
"Well, keep on giving them, anyhow. She's a pretty sick child."
"You ain't no fears of smallpox, are you?" Mrs. Getz inquired. "Mister
was afraid it might mebbe be smallpox," she said, indicating her
husband by the epithet.
"Not that you say that I sayed it was!" Mr. Getz warned the doctor. "We
don't want no report put out! But is they any symptoms?"
"Och, no," the doctor reassured them. "It ain't smallpox. What did you
give her that she couldn't keep with her?"
"I fed some boiled milk to her."
"Did she drink tea?" he inquired, looking profound.
"We don't drink no store tea," Mrs. Getz answered him. "We drink
peppermint tea fur supper, still. Tillie she didn't drink none this
evening. Some says store tea's bad fur the nerves. I ain't got no
nerves," she went on placidly. "Leastways, I ain't never felt none, so
fur. Mister he li
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