health--sence Dr. Brown sent that blessed child to me. She has a gift,
if ever any one had. Dr. Brown had ought to give her half of what he
makes doctorin'; she's more help than all the medicine ever _he_
gives. I never saw a doctor so dretful stingy with his stuff. Why,
I've ben perishin' sometimes for want o' doctorin', and all he'd give
me was a little pepsin, or tell me to take as much sody as would lay
on the p'int of a penknife, or some such thing,--not so much as you'd
give to a canary-bird. I do sometimes wish we had a doctor who knew
the use o' medicine, 'stead of everlastin'ly talkin' about the laws o'
health, and hulsome food, and all them notions. Why, there's old Dr.
Jalap, over to the Corners. He give Beulah Pegrum seven Liver Pills at
one dose, and only charged her fifty cents, over 'n' above the cost of
the pills. Now _that's_ what I call doctorin',--not but what I like
Dr. Brown well enough. But Mel'dy--well, there! and now to have her
took off so suddin, and never to know whether she's buried
respectable, or buried at all! You hear awful stories of city ways,
these times. Now, this is for this room only, and don't you ever tell
a soul! It's as true as I live, they have a furnace where they burn
folks' bodies, for all the world as if they was hick'ry lawgs. My
cousin Salome's nephew that lives in the city saw one once. He thought
it was connected with the gas-works, but he didn't know for sure. Mis'
Penny, if Rejoice Dale was to know that Mel'dy was made into gas--"

Martha Penny clutched the speaker's arm, and laid her hand over her
mouth, with a scared look. The door of the bedroom had swung open in
the breeze, and in the stress of feeling Mandy Loomis had raised her
voice higher and higher, till the last words rang through the house
like the wail of a sibyl. But above the wail another sound was now
rising, the voice of Rejoice Dale,--not calm and gentle, as they had
always heard it, but high-pitched, quivering with intense feeling.