and they had played there for several days in great peace before the
unfortunate accident of the June baby's falling in and being brought
back looking like a green and speckled frog herself, revealed where it
was they had persuaded Seraphine to let them spend their mornings. Then
there was woe and lamentation, for I was sure they would all have
typhoid fever, and I put them mercilessly to bed, and dosed them, as a
preliminary, with castor oil--that oil of sorrow, as Carlyle calls it.
It was no use sending for the doctor because there is no doctor within
reach; a fact which simplifies life amazingly when you have children.
During the time we lived in town the doctor was never out of the house.
Hardly a day passed but one or other of the Three had a spot, or, as the
expressive German has it, a _Pickel_, and what parent could resist
sending for a doctor when one lived round the corner? But doctors are
like bad habits--once you have shaken them off you discover how much
better you are without them; and as for the babies, since they inhabit a
garden, prompt bed and the above-mentioned simple remedy have been all
that is necessary to keep them robust. I admit I was frightened when I
heard where they had been playing, for when the wind comes from that
quarter even sitting by my rose beds I have been reminded of the
existence of the pond; and I kept them in bed for three days, anxiously
awaiting symptoms, and my head full of a dreadful story I had heard of a
little boy who had drunk seltzer water and thereupon been seized with
typhoid fever and had died, and if, I asked myself with a power of
reasoning unusual in a woman, you die after seltzer water, what will you
not do after frog-pond? But they did nothing, except be uproarious, and
sing at the top of their voices, and clamour for more dinner than I felt
would be appropriate for babies who were going to be dangerously ill in
a few hours; and so, after due waiting, they were got up and dressed and
turned loose again, and from that day to this no symptoms have appeared.
The pond was at first strictly forbidden as a playground, but afterwards