ake! Right by the Darters, too; and Emmy
seeing her!"

"What is the matter with Mrs. Darter?"

"Well, old Dr. Potter says she's 'neurotic,' if you know what _that_ is.
I call it jest notions. What the doctors in my time called a hypo,
that's what she is! She's always been the greatest hand to dose. Mr.
Conner will have it she kep' old Captain Darter poor buying patent
medicines. And she run after every new cure-all going. It was
electricity one year, and 'nother year it was blue glass, and one time I
remember she had a woman come of the sort that used to call themselves
bone-doctors when I was a girl and this country wasn't much settled, but
now they're osteologists, or some sech funny name, and give out they can
rub everything on earth out of you. Mrs. Darter had _her_ for a long
spell, till she got pneumonia, and nigh died, and sickened of the
osteologist; and I give her mustard plasters, good strong ones, myself.
All this time Emmy was engaged to Albert Glenn; but the old captain was
real feeble, and Emmy wouldn't leave him to git married. I will say Mrs.
Darter was real devoted to him, though Emmy done all the night work and
spared her all she could, give up her school, and spent every cent of
the money she'd laid by school-teaching and working art embroidery for
her clothes, when she'd be married--spent every cent on her pa. Got him
a wheel chair, and if ever a man set the world by his daughter the
captain done it. He liked Albert, too. I guess if captain had lived,
sick's he was, he'd have found a way so's Emmy and Albert could git
married. But he died. Then you'd 'a' s'posed they could marry, for his
life was _well_ insured, and they got enough for the widder to be
comfortable and keep a girl. But the minnit he died poor Mrs. Darter
got nervous prostration, and she was a nervous prostrate for a year,
and they had to spend money traveling, and of course Emmy couldn't git
married. Mrs. Darter went to Hot Springs, Arkansas, and she went to a
sanitarium, and last she come home saying she was cured. But on the cars
she made the acquaintance of a woman--well, I don't want to jedge--jedge
not, and you won't git jedged, you know--and I know 'tis hard for a
woman to make a living, but I guess that woman was a crank, and a
designing one at that. But she went to Mrs. Darter's to board, and she
never paid no board, but she preached to Mrs. Darter 'bout how all the
diseases that we have come from eating wrong things; and she