Johnny Ludlow, Second Series. Henry Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      HESTER REED’S PILLS

      We were at our other and chief home, Dyke Manor: and Tod and I were there for the short Easter holidays, which were shorter in those days than they are in these.

      It was Easter Tuesday. The Squire had gone riding over to old Jacobson’s with Tod. I, having nothing else to do, got the mater to come with me for a practice on the church organ; and we were taking the round home again through the village, Church Dykely.

      Easter was very late that year. It was getting towards the end of April: and to judge by the weather, it might have been the end of May, the days were so warm and glorious.

      In passing the gate of George Reed’s cottage, Mrs. Todhetley stopped.

      “How are the babies, Hester?”

      Hester Reed, sunning her white cap and clean cotton gown in the garden, the three elder children around, watering the beds with a doll’s watering-pot, and a baby hiding its face on her shoulder, dropped a curtsy as she answered—

      “They be but poorly, ma’am, thank you. Look up, Susy,” turning the baby’s face upwards to show it: and a pale mite of a face it was, with sleepy eyes. “For a day or two past they’ve not seemed the thing; and they be both cross.”

      “I should think their teeth are troubling them, Hester.”

      “Maybe, ma’am. I shouldn’t wonder. Hetty, she seems worse than Susy. She’s a-lying there in the basket indoors. Would you please spare a minute to step in and look at her, ma’am?”

      Mrs. Todhetley opened the gate. “I may as well go in and see, Johnny,” she said to me in an undertone: “I fear both the children are rather sickly.”

      The other baby, “Hetty,” lay in the kitchen in a clothes-basket. It had just the same sort of puny white face as its sister. These two were twins, and about a year old. When they were born, Church Dykely went on finely at Hester Reed, asking her if she would not have had enough with one new child but she must go and set up two.

      “It does seem very poorly,” remarked Mrs. Todhetley, stooping over the young mortal (which was not cross just now, but very still and quiet), and letting it clasp its little fist round one of her fingers. “No doubt it is the teeth. If the children do not get better soon, I think, were I you, Hester, I should speak to Mr. Duffham.”

      The advice seemed to strike Hester Reed all of a heap. “Speak to Dr. Duffham!” she exclaimed. “Why, ma’am, they must both be a good deal worse than they be, afore we does that. I’ll give ’em a dose o’ mild physic apiece. I dare say that’ll bring ’em round.”

      “I should think it would not hurt them,” assented Mrs. Todhetley. “They both seem feverish; this one especially. I hear you have had Cathy over,” she went on, passing to another subject.

      “Sure enough us have,” said Mrs. Reed. “She come over yesterday was a week and stayed till Friday night.”

      “And what is she doing now?”

      “Well, ma’am, Cathy’s keeping herself; and that’s something. She has got a place at Tewkesbury to serve in some shop; is quite in clover there, by all accounts. Two good gownds she brought over to her back; and she’s pretty nigh as lighthearted as she was afore she went off to enter on her first troubles.”

      “Hannah told me she was not looking well.”

      “She have had a nasty attack of—what was it?—neuralgy, I think she called it, and been obliged to go to a doctor,” answered Hester Reed. “That’s why they gave her the holiday. She was very well while she was here.”

      I had stood at the door, talking to the little ones with their watering-pot. As the mater was taking her final word with Mrs. Reed, I went on to open the gate for her, when some woman whisked round the corner from Piefinch Lane, and in at the gate.

      “Thank ye, sir,” said she to me: as if I had been holding it open for her especial benefit.

      It was Ann Dovey, the blacksmith’s wife down Piefinch Cut: a smart young woman, fond of fine gowns and caps. Mrs. Todhetley came away, and Ann Dovey went in. And this is what passed at Reed’s—as it leaked out to the world afterwards.

      The baby in the basket began to cry, and Ann Dovey lifted it out and took it on her lap. She understood all about children, having been the eldest of a numerous flock at home, and was no doubt all the fonder of them because she had none of her own. Mrs. Dovey was moreover a great gossip, liking to have as many fingers in her neighbours’ pies as she could conveniently get in.

      “And now what’s amiss with these two twins?” asked she in confidential tones, bending her face forward till it nearly touched Mrs. Reed’s, who had sat down opposite to her with the other baby. “Sarah Tanken, passing our shop just now, telled me they warn’t the thing at all, so I thought I’d run round.”

      “Sarah Tanken looked in while I was a-washing up after dinner, and saw ’em both,” assented Mrs. Reed. “Hetty’s the worst of the two; more peeky like.”

      “Which is Hetty?” demanded Ann Dovey; who, with all her neighbourly visits, had not learnt to distinguish the two apart.

      “The one that you be a-nursing.”

      “Did the mistress of the Manor look at ’em?”

      “Yes; and she thinks I’d better give ’em both some mild physic. Leastways, I said a dose might bring ’em round,” added Hester Reed, correcting herself, “and she said it might.”

      “It’s the very thing for ’em, Hester Reed,” pronounced Mrs. Dovey, decisively. “There’s nothing like a dose of physic for little ones; it often stops a bout of illness. You give it to the two; and don’t lose no time. Grey powder’s best.”

      “I’ve not got any grey powder by me,” said Mrs. Reed. “It crossed my mind to try ’em with one o’ them pills I had from Abel Crew.”

      “What pills be they?”

      “I had ’em from him for myself the beginning o’ the year, when I was getting the headache so much. They’re as mild as mild can be; but they did me good. The box is upstairs.”

      “How do you know they’d be the right pills to give to babies?” sensibly questioned Mrs. Dovey.

      “Oh, they be right enough for that! When little Georgy was poorly two or three weeks back, I ran out to Abel Crew, chancing to see him go by the gate, and asked whether one of his pills would do the child harm. He said no, it would do him good.”

      “And did it get him round?”

      “I never gave it. Georgy seemed to be so much pearter afore night came, that I thought I’d wait till the morrow. He’s a rare bad one to take physic, he is. You may cover a powder in treacle that thick, Ann Dovey, but the boy scents it out somehow, and can’t be got to touch it. His father always has to make him; I can’t. He got well that time without the pill.”

      “Well, I should try the pills on the little twins,” advised Ann Dovey. “I’m sure they want something o’ the sort. Look at this one! lying like a lamb in my arms, staring up at me with its poor eyes, and never moving. You may always know when a child’s ill by its quietness. Nothing ailing ’em, they worry the СКАЧАТЬ