The next day, when he carried some finished shoes to Dale, he bought a few old medical books, the remnant of a departed doctor's library, which had been stowed away for years in a dusty corner of the great country store. This same store included in its stock such heterogeneous objects, so utterly irrelevant to one another and at such tangents of connection, that it seemed sometimes like a very mad-house of trade.

It was of this store that the story was told for miles around how one day Lawyer Means, having driven over with Colonel Lamson from Upham Corners, made a bet with him that he could not ask for anything not included in its stock of trade; and the Colonel had immediately gone in and asked for a skeleton; for he thought that he was thereby sure of winning his bet, and of putting to confusion his friend and the storekeeper. The latter, however, who was not the Bill d.i.c.key of this time, but an unkempt and shrewd old man of an earlier date, had conferred with his own recollection for a minute, and asked, reflectively, of his clerk, "Lemme see, we've got a skeleton somewheres about, 'ain't we, Eph?" And had finally unearthed--not adjacent to the old doctor's medical books, for that would have been to much method in madness, but in some far-removed nook--a ghastly box, containing a reasonably complete little skeleton. Then was the laugh all on Colonel Jack Lamson, who had his bet to pay, and was put to hard shifts to avoid making his grewsome purchase, the article being offered exceedingly cheap on account of its unsalable properties.

"It's been here a matter of twenty-five year, ever sence the old doctor died. Them books, an' that, was cleaned out of his office, an'

brought over here," the old storekeeper had said. "Let ye have it cheap, Colonel; call it a shillin'."

"Guess I won't take it to-day."

"Call it a sixpence."

"What in thunder do you suppose I want a skeleton for?" asked the Colonel, striding out, while the storekeeper called after him, with such a relish of his own wit that it set all the loafers to laughing and made them remember it:

"Guess ye'd find out if ye didn't have one, Colonel; an' I guess, sence natur's gin ye all the one she's ever goin' to, ye'll never have a chance to git another as cheap as this."

That same little skeleton was yet for sale when Jerome purchased his medical books at the price of waste-paper, and might possibly have been thrown into the bargain had he wished to study anatomy.

Jerome sought only to gain an extension of any old wife's knowledge of healing roots and herbs and the treatment of simple and common maladies. Surgery he did not meddle with, until one night, about a year later, when Jake Noyes, Doctor Prescott's man, came over secretly with a little whimpering dog in his arms.

"We run over this little fellar," he said to Jerome, when he had been summoned to the door, "an' his leg's broke, an' the doctor told me I'd better finish him up; guess he's astray; but"--Jake's voice dropped to a whisper--"I've heard what you're up to, an' I've brought a splint, an', if you say so, I'll show you how to set a bone."

So up in his little chamber, with his mother and Elmira listening curiously below, and a little whining, trembling dog for a patient, Jerome learned to set a bone. His first surgical case was nearly a complete success, moreover, for the little dog abode with him for many a year after that, and went nimbly and merrily on his four legs, with scarcely a limp.

Later on, Jake Noyes, this time with Jerome himself as ill.u.s.tration, gave him a lesson in bleeding and cupping, which was considered indispensable in the ordinary practice of that day. "Dun'no' what the doctor would say," Jake Noyes told Jerome, "an' I dun'no' as I much care, but I'd jest as soon ye'd keep it dark. Rows ain't favorable to the action of the heart, actin' has too powerful stimulants in most cases, an' I had an uncle on my mother's side that dropped dead. But I feel as if the doctor had ground the face of the poor about long enough; it's about time somebody dulled his grindstone a little. He's just foreclosed that last mortgage on John Upham's place, an' they've got to move. Mind ye, J'rome, I ain't sayin' this to anybody but you, an' I wouldn't say it to you if I didn't think mebbe you could do something to right what he'd done wrong. If he won't do it himself, somebody ought to for him. Tell ye what 'tis, J'rome, one way an'

another, I think considerable of the doctor. I've lived with him a good many years now. I've got some books I'll let ye take any time. I calculate you mean to do your doctorin' cheap."

"Cheap!" replied Jerome, scornfully. "Do you think I would take any pay for anything I could do? Do you think _that's_ what I'm after?"

Jake Noyes nodded. "Didn't s'pose it was, J'rome. Well, there'll be lots of things you can't meddle with; but there's no reason why you can't doctor lots of little ails--if folks are willin'--an' save 'em money. I'll learn ye all I know, on the doctor's account. I want it to balance as even as he thinks it does."

The result of it all was that Jerome Edwards became a sort of free medical adviser to many who were too poor to pay a doctor's fees, and had enough confidence in him. Some held strenuously to the opinion that "he knew as much as if he'd studied medicine." He was in requisition many of the hours when he was free from his shoemaker's bench; and never in the Uphams was there a sick man needing a watcher who did not beg for Jerome Edwards.

Chapter XIX

In these latter years Ann Edwards regarded her son Jerome with pride and admiration, and yet with a measure of disapproval. In spite of her fierce independence, a lifetime of poverty and struggle against the material odds of life had given a sordid taint to her character.

She would give to the utmost out of her penury, though more from pride than benevolence; but when it came to labor without hire, that she did not understand.

"I 'ain't got anything to say against your watchin' with sick folks, an' nursin' of 'em, if you've got the spare time an' strength," she said to Jerome; "but if you do doctorin' for nothin' n.o.body 'll think anything of it. Folks 'll jest ride a free horse to death, an' talk about him all the time they're doin' of it. You might just as well be paid for your work as folks that go ridin' round in sulkies chargin'

a dollar a visit. You want to get the mortgage paid up."

"It is almost paid up now, you know, mother," Jerome replied.

"How?" cried his mother, sharply. "By nippin' an' tuckin' an'

pinchin', an' Elmira goin' without things that girls of her age ought to have."

"I don't complain, mother," said Elmira, with a sweet, bright glance at her brother, as she gave a nervous jerk of her slender arm and drew the waxed thread through the shoe she was binding.

"You'd ought to complain, if you don't," returned her mother. Then she added, with an air of severe mystery, "It might make a difference in your whole life if you did have more; sometimes it does with girls."

Jerome did not say anything, but he looked in a troubled way from his sister to his mother and back again. Elmira blushed hotly, and he could not understand why.

It was very early in a spring morning, not an hour after dawn, but they had eaten breakfast and were hurrying to finish closing and binding a lot of shoes for Jerome to take to his uncle's for finishing. They all worked smartly, and nothing more was said, but Ann Edwards had an air of having conclusively established the subject rather than dropped it. Jerome kept stealing troubled glances at his sister's pretty face. Elmira was a mystery to him, which was not strange, since he had not yet learned the letters of the heart of any girl; but she was somewhat of a mystery to her mother as well.

Elmira was then twenty-two, but she was very small, and looked no more than sixteen. She had the dreams and questioning wonder of extreme youth in her face, and something beyond that even, which was more like the wide-eye brooding and introspection of babyhood.

As one looking at an infant will speculate as to what it is thinking about, so Ann often regarded her daughter Elmira, sitting sewing with fine nervous energy which was her very own, but with bright eyes fixed on thoughts beyond her ken. "What you thinkin' about, Elmira?"

she would question sharply; but the girl would only start and color, and look at her as if she were half awake, and murmur that she did not know. Very likely she did not; often one cannot remember dreams when suddenly recalled from them; though Elmira had one dream which was the reality of her life, and in which she lived most truly, but which she would always have denied, even to her own mother, to guard its sacredness.

When the shoes were done Jerome loaded himself with them, and, watching his chance, beckoned his sister slyly to follow him as he went out. Standing in the sweet spring sunlight in the door-yard, he questioned her. "What did mother mean, Elmira?" he said.

"Nothing," she replied, blushing shyly.

"What is it you want, Elmira?"

"Nothing. I don't want anything, Jerome."

"Do you want--a new silk dress or anything?"

"A new silk dress? No." Elmira's manner, when fairly aroused and speaking, was full of vivacity, in curious contrast to her dreaming att.i.tude at other times.

"I tell you what 'tis, Elmira," said Jerome, soberly. "I want you to have all you need. I don't know what mother meant, but I want you to have things like other girls. I wish you wouldn't put any more of your earnings in towards the mortgage. I can manage that alone, with what I'm earning now. I can pay it up inside of two years now. I told you in the first of it you needn't do anything towards that."

"I wasn't going to earn money and not do my part."

"Well, take your earnings now and buy things for yourself. There's no reason why you shouldn't. I can earn enough for all the rest. There's no need of mother's working so hard, either. I can't charge for mixing up doses of herbs, as she wants me to, for I don't do it for anybody that isn't too poor to pay the doctor, but I earn enough besides, so neither of you need to work your fingers to the bone or go without everything. I'll give you some money. Get yourself a blue silk with roses on it; seems to me I saw one in meeting last Sunday."

Elmira laughed out with a sweet ring. Her black hair was tossing in the spring wind, her whole face showed variations and under-meanings of youthful bloom and brightness in the spring light.

"'Twas Lucina Merritt wore the blue silk with roses on it; it rustled against your knee when she pa.s.sed our pew," she cried. "She is just home from her young ladies' school, and she's as pretty as a picture.

I guess you saw more than the silk dress, Jerome Edwards."

With that Elmira blushed, and dropped her eyes in a curious sensitive fashion, as if she had spoken to herself instead of her brother, who looked at her quite gravely and coolly.

"I saw nothing but the silk," he said, "and I thought it would become you, Elmira."

"I am too dark for blue," replied Elmira, fairly blushing for her own blushes. At that time Elmira was as a shy child to her own emotions, and Jerome's were all sleeping. He had truly seen nothing but the sweep of that lovely rose-strewn silk, and never even glanced at the fair wearer.

"Why not have a red silk, then?" he asked, soberly.

"I can't expect to have things like Squire Merritt's daughter,"

returned Elmira. "I don't want a new silk dress; I am going to have a real pretty one made out of mother's wedding silk; she's had it laid by all these years, and she says I may have it. It's as good as new.

I'm going over to Granby this morning to get it cut. When Imogen and Sarah Lawson came over last week they told me about a mantua-maker there who will cut it beautifully for a shilling."

"Mother don't want to give up her wedding-dress."