bara's disease has three words in it, Roger," she explained, "and
mine has only one, but it's more painful. You're to go immediately with
this piece of paper and get it full of the medicine he's written on it.
I've been lookin' at it, but I don't get no sense out of it. He said to
take two every four hours--two what?"

"Pills, probably, or capsules."

"Pills? Now, Roger, you know that no pill small enough to swallow could
cure a big pain like this in my back. The postmaster's wife had the
rheumatiz last Winter, and she took over five quarts of Old Doctor
Jameson's Pain Killer, and it never did her a mite of good. What do you
think a paper that size, full of pills, can do for a person that ain't
able to stand up without screechin'?"

"Well, we'll try it anyway, Mother. Just sit still until I come back
with the medicine."

He went out and returned, presently, with a red box containing forty or
fifty capsules. Miss Mattie took it from him and studied it carefully.
"This box ain't more'n a tenth as big as the pain," she observed
critically.

Roger brought a glass of water and took out two of the capsules. "Take
these," he said, "and at half past two, take two more. Let's give Doctor
Conrad a fair trial. It's probably a more powerful medicine than it
seems to be."

[Sidenote: A Difficulty]

Miss Mattie had some difficulty at first, as she insisted on taking both
capsules at once, but when she was persuaded to swallow one after the
other, all went well. "I suppose," she remarked, "that these long narrow
pills have to be took endways. If a person went to swallow 'em
crossways, they'd choke to death. I was careful how I took 'em, but
other people might not be, and I think, myself, that round pills are
safer."

"I went to the office," said Roger, "and told the Judge I wouldn't be
down to-day. I have some work I can do at home, and I'd rather not leave
you."

"It's just come to my mind now," mused Miss Mattie, ignoring his
thoughtfulness, "about the minister's sermon Sunday. He said that
everything that came to us might teach us something if we only looked
for it. I've been thinkin' as I set here, what a heap I've learned about
my back this mornin'. I never sensed, until now, that it was used in
walkin'. I reckoned that my back was just kind of a finish to me and
was to keep the dust out of my vital organs more'n anything else. This
mornin' I see that the back is entirely used in walkin'. What gets me is
that Barbara