"Feel better now?" she asked calmly.

"Yes," I answered. "The ache has gone some."

"I was powwowin' agin!" she said. "Couldn't you hear me saying Dutch
words? Them was the charm."

"I guess I was sleeping," I returned a bit irritably.

How the store would have smiled could it have seen me there on the bed,
in that bare little room in John Shadrack's widow's clutches! Many a
night, around the stove, Isaac Bolum, and Henry Holmes and I had had it
tooth and nail over the power of the powwow. In the store there was
not always an outspoken belief in the efficacy of the charm, but there
was an undercurrent of sentiment in favor of the supernatural. Against
this I had fought. Perhaps it was merely for the joy of the argument
that so often I had turned a fire of ridicule on the dearest traditions
of the valley. Time and again, when some credulous one had lifted his
voice in honest support of a silly superstition, I had jeered him into
a grumbled, shamefaced disavowal. Once I sat in the graveyard at
midnight, in the full of the moon, just to convince Ira Spoonholler
that his grandfather was keeping close to his proper plot. And here I
was, prone and helpless, being powwowed not for one ailment, but for
all the diseases known in Happy Valley. How I blessed Tip! When we
started he should have told me of the powers of our hostess. I would
rather have undergone a hundred runaways than one week with that old
woman muttering her Dutch over my senseless form. But I liked the good
soul. Her intentions were so excellent. She was so cheery. Even now
she was offering me a piece of gingerbread.