Dr. Breen's Practice. William Dean Howells
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no doubt that he had often a humorous intention. It was Barlow, the man-of-all-work, who killed and plucked the poultry, peeled the potatoes and picked the peas, pulled the sweet-corn and the tomatoes, kindled the kitchen fire, harnessed the old splayfooted mare,—safe for ladies and children, and intolerable for all others, which formed the entire stud of the Jocelyn House stables,—dug the clams, rowed and sailed the boat, looked after the bath-houses, and came in contact with the guests at so many points that he was on easy terms with them all. This ease tended to an intimacy which he was himself powerless to repress, and which, from time to time, required their intervention. He now wore a simple costume of shirt and trousers, the latter terminated by a pair of broken shoes, and sustained by what he called a single gallows; his broad-brimmed straw hat scooped down upon his shoulders behind, and in front added to his congenital difficulty of getting people in focus. “How do you do, this morning, Mrs. Maynard?” he said.
“Oh, I'm first-rate, Mr. Barlow. What sort of day do you think it's going to be for a sail?”
Barlow came out to the edge of the piazza, and looked at the sea and sky. “First-rate. Fog's most burnt away now. You don't often see a fog at Jocelyn's after ten o'clock in the mornin'.”
He looked for approval to Mrs. Maynard, who said, “That's so. The air's just splendid. It 's doing everything for me.”
“It's these pine woods, back o' here. Every breath on 'em does ye good. It's the balsam in it. D' you ever try,” he asked, stretching his hand as far up the piazza-post as he could, and swinging into a conversational posture,—“d' you ever try whiskey—good odd Bourbon whiskey—with white-pine chips in it?”
Mrs. Maynard looked up with interest, but, shaking her head, coughed for no.
“Well, I should like to have you try that.”
“What does it do?” she gasped, when she could get her breath.
“Well, it's soothin' t' the cough, and it builds ye up, every ways. Why, my brother,” continued the factotum, “he died of consumption when I was a boy,—reg'lar old New England consumption. Don't hardly ever hear of it any more, round here. Well, I don't suppose there's been a case of reg'lar old New England consumption—well, not the old New England kind—since these woods growed up. He used to take whiskey with white-pine chips in it; and I can remember hearin 'em say that it done him more good than all the doctor's stuff. He'd been out to Demarary, and everywheres, and he come home in the last stages, and took up with this whiskey with whitepine chips in it. Well, it's just like this, I presume it's the balsam in the chips. It don't make any difference how you git the balsam into your system, so 's 't you git it there. I should like to have you try whiskey with white-pine chips in it.”
He looked convincingly at Mrs. Maynard, who said she should like to try it. “It's just bronchial with me, you know. But I should like to try it. I know it would be soothing; and I've always heard that whiskey was the very thing to build you up. But,” she added, lapsing from this vision of recovery, “I couldn't take it unless Grace said so. She'd be sure to find it out.”
“Why, look here,” said Barlow. “As far forth as that goes, you could keep the bottle in my room. Not but what I believe in going by your doctor's directions, it don't matter who your doctor is. I ain't sayin' nothin' against Miss Breen, you understand?”
“Oh, no!” cried Mrs. Maynard.
“I never see much nicer ladies than her and her mother in the house. But you just tell her about the whiskey with the white-pine chips in it. Maybe she never heard of it. Well, she hain't had a great deal of experience yet.”
“No,” said Mrs. Maynard. “And I think she'll be glad to hear of it. You may be sure I'll tell her, Mr. Barlow. Grace is everything for the balsamic properties of the air, down here. That's what she said; and as you say, it doesn't matter how you get the balsam into your system, so you get it there.”
“No,” said the factotum, in a tone of misgiving, as if the repetition of the words presented the theory in a new light to him.
“What I think is, and what I'm always telling Grace,” pursued Mrs. Maynard, in that confidential spirit in which she helplessly spoke of her friends by their first names to every one, “that if I could once get my digestion all right, then the cough would stop of itself. The doctor said—Dr. Nixon, that is—that it was more than half the digestion any way. But just as soon as I eat anything—or if I over-eat a little—then that tickling in my throat begins, and then I commence coughing; and I'm back just where I was. It's the digestion. I oughtn't to have eaten that mince pie, yesterday.”
“No,” admitted Barlow. Then he said, in indirect defence of the kitchen, “I think you had n't ought to be out in the night air,—well, not a great deal.”
“Well, I don't suppose it does do me much good,” Mrs. Maynard said, turning her eyes seaward.
Barlow let his hand drop from the piazza post, and slouched in-doors; but he came out again as if pricked by conscience to return.
“After all, you know, it did n't cure him.”
“What cure him?” asked Mrs. Maynard.
“The whiskey with the white-pine chips in it.”
“Cure who?”
“My brother.”
“Oh! Oh, yes! But mine's only bronchial. I think it might do me good. I shall tell Grace about it.”
Barlow looked troubled, as if his success in the suggestion of this remedy were not finally a pleasure; but as Mrs. Maynard kept her eyes persistently turned from him, and was evidently tired, he had nothing for it but to go in-doors again. He met Grace, and made way for her on the threshold to pass out.
As she joined Mrs. Maynard, “Well, Grace,” said the latter, “I do believe you are right. I have taken some more cold. But that shows that it does n't get worse of itself, and I think we ought to be encouraged by that. I'm going to be more careful of the night air after this.”
“I don't think the night air was the worst thing about it, Louise,” said Grace bluntly.
“You mean the damp from the sand? I put on my rubbers.”
“I don't mean the damp sand,” said Grace, beginning to pull over some sewing which she had in her lap, and looking down at it.
Mrs. Maynard watched her a while in expectation that she would say more, but she did not speak. “Oh—well!” she was forced to continue herself, “if you're going to go on with that!”
“The question is,” said Grace, getting the thread she wanted, “whether you are going on with it.”
“Why, I can't see any possible harm in it,” protested Mrs. Maynard. “I suppose you don't exactly like my going with Mr. Libby, and I know that under some circumstances it would n't be quite the thing. But did n't I tell you last night how he lived with us in Europe? And when we were all coming over on the steamer together Mr. Libby and Mr. Maynard were together the whole time, smoking and telling stories. They were the greatest friends! Why, it isn't as if he was a stranger, or an enemy of Mr. Maynard's.”
Grace dropped her sewing into her lap. “Really, Louise, you're incredible!” She looked sternly at the invalid; but broke into a laugh, on which Mrs. Maynard waited with a puzzled face. As Grace said nothing more, she helplessly resumed:—
“We did n't expect to go down the cliff when he first called in the evening. But he said he would help me up again, and—he did, nicely. I was n't exhausted a bit; and how I took more cold I can't understand; I was wrapped up warmly. I think I took the cold when I was sitting there after our game of croquet, with my shawl off. Don't you think so?” she wheedled.
“Perhaps,” said Grace.
“He did nothing but talk about you, Grace,” said Mrs. Maynard, with a sly look at the other. “He's awfully afraid of you, and he kept asking about you.”
“Louise,”