"You can't be too careful," said the red-faced woman; "we never know
what a chill mayn't bring forth. My cousin's sister-in-law, she had
twins, and her aunt come in and says she, 'You're a bit stuffy here,
ain't you?' and with that she opens the window a crack,--not meaning
no harm, Miss,--as it might be you. And within a year that poor
unfortunate woman she popped off, when least expected. Gas ulsters,
the doctor said. Which it's what you call chills, if you're a doctor
and can't speak plain."

"My poor grandmother come to her end the same way," said Mrs. Smith,
"only with her it was the Bible reader as didn't shut the door through
being so set on shewing off her reading. And my granny, a clot of
blood went to her brain, and her brain went to her head and she was a
corpse inside of fifty minutes."

Every woman in the room was waiting, feverishly alert, for the pause
that should allow her to begin her own detailed narrative of disease.

Mrs. James was easily first in the competition.

"Them quick deaths," she said, "is sometimes a blessing in disguise to
both parties concerned. My poor husband--years upon years he lingered,
and he had a bad leg--talk of bad legs, I wish you could all have seen
it," she added generously.

"Was it the kind that keeps all on a-breaking out?" asked Mrs. Symes
hastily, "because my youngest brother had a leg that nothing couldn't
stop. Break out it would do what they might. I'm sure the bandages
I've took off him in a morning--"