me. When I got back from the funeral and had laid the baby on the
bed Mis' Jim Petway come a-running up the road crying that Ellen,
her youngest child, were a-choking to death with croup. I never had
a thought but to take his saddle-bags and follow her, and somehow
the good Lord guided my hand amongst his medicines, and with what I
had learned from him and Pa I fought a good fight and saved the
little thing's life, though it took the night to do it. And in one
of them dark hours a sister-to-woman sense was born in me what I
ain't never lost. A neighbor took Tom and they brought my baby to me
and I stayed by Mis' Petway until they weren't no more danger. Next
day it were Squire Tutt's first wife tooken down with the fever and
not the week passed before that very Sam Mosbey were borned. We was
too poor to have a doctor come and live here and they was a doctor
over to Springfield took up my husband's county practice, so I jest
naturally had to do the healing myself, only a-sending for him in
the worst cases. They was a heap of teethers that summer and it kept
me busy looking after 'em. I expect I made mistakes but I kept up me
and the patients' courage by sympathizing and heartening. It didn't
cost nobody nothing and we wasn't so prosperous then that it wasn't
a help for me to do the doctoring when I could, and I mostly were
able. I were glad of the work and did it with a thankful mind; not
as they wasn't times when I felt sick at heart, and in danger of
questioning why, but I tried to steady myself with prayer until I
could find the Everlasting Arm to lean on that is always held out to
the widow and the fatherless. And so a-leaning I have got me and Tom
Mayberry along until now."

"And the whole rest of the world leaning on you," said the lovely
lady as she drew nearer and caught Mother Mayberry's strong hand in
her own slender fingers.