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