[Illustration: "'I've come to take care of you'"]
Charlotte laid back some of the bedclothes whose weight was a
torture, and straightened the others. She worked about the house
noiselessly and swiftly. She was skilful in the care of the sick; she
had had considerable experience. Soon everything was clean and in
order; there was a pleasant smell of steeping herbs through the
house. Charlotte had set an old remedy of her mother's steeping over
the fire--a harmless old-wives' decoction, with which to supplement
the doctor's remedies, and give new courage to the patient's mind.
Barney came to think that this remedy which Charlotte prepared was of
more efficacy than any which the doctor mixed in his gallipots. That
is, when he could think at all, and his mind and soul was able to
reassert itself over his body. He had a hard illness, and after he
was out of bed he could only sit bent miserably over in a
quilt-covered rocking-chair beside the fire. He could not straighten
himself up without agonizing pain. People thought that he never
would, and he thought so himself. His grandfather, his mother's
father, had been in a similar condition for years before his death.
People called that to mind, and so did Barney. "He's goin' to be the
way his grandfather Emmons was," the men said in the store. Barney
could dimly remember that old figure bent over almost on all-fours
like a dog; its wretched, grizzled face turned towards the earth with
a brooding sternness of contemplation.
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