VISITORS AT THE MILL.—A WINDMILLER OF THE THIRD GENERATION.—CURE FOR
WHOOPING-COUGH.—MISS AMABEL ADELINE AMMABY.—DOCTORS DISAGREE.
ONE of the earliest of Jan’s remembrances—of those remembrances, I mean,
which remained with him when childhood was past—was of little Miss
Amabel, from the Grange, being held in the hopper of the windmill for
whooping cough.
Jan was between three and four years old at this time, the idol of his
foster-mother, and a great favorite with his adopted brothers and
sisters. A quaint little fellow he was, with a broad,
intellectual-looking face, serious to old-fashionedness, very fair, and
with eyes “like slans.”
He was standing one morning at Mrs. Lake’s apron-string, his arms clasped
lovingly, but somewhat too tightly, round the waist of a sandy kitten,
who submitted with wonderful good-humor to the well-meant strangulation,
his black eyes intently fixed upon the dumplings which his foster-mother
was dexterously rolling together, when a strange footstep was heard
shuffling uncertainly about on the floor of the round-house just outside
the dwelling-room door. Mrs. Lake did not disturb herself. Country folk
were constantly coming with their bags of grist, and both George and the
miller were at hand, for a nice breeze was blowing, and the mill ground
merrily.
After a few seconds, however, came a modest knock on the room-door, and
Mrs. Lake, wiping her hands, proceeded to admit the knocker. She was a
smartly dressed woman, who bore such a mass of laces and finery, with a
white woollen shawl spread over it, apparently with the purpose of
smothering any living thing there might chance to be beneath, as, in Mrs.
Lake’s experienced eyes, could be nothing less than a baby of the most
genteel order.
The manners of the nurse were most genteel also, and might have quite
overpowered Mrs. Lake, but that the windmiller’s wife had in her youth
been in good service herself, and, though an early marriage had prevented
her from rising beyond the post of nursemaid, she was fairly familiar
with the etiquette of the nursery and of the servants’ hall.
“Good morning, ma’am,” said the nurse, who no sooner ceased to walk than
she began a kind of diagonal movement without progression, in which one
heel clacked, and all her petticoats swung, and the baby who, head
downwards, was snorting with gaping mouth under the woollen coverlet, was
supposed to be soothed. “Good morning, ma’am. You’ll excuse my
intruding”—
“Not at all, mum,” said Mrs. Lake. By which she did not mean to reject
the excuse, but to disclaim the intrusion.
When the nurse was not speaking, she kept time to her own rocking by a
peculiar click of her tongue against the roof of her mouth; and indeed it
sometimes mingled, almost confusingly, with her conversation. “You’re
very obliging, ma’am, I’m sure,” said she, and, persuaded by Mrs. Lake,
she took a seat. “You’ll excuse me for asking a singular question,
ma’am, but _was your husband’s father and grandfather both millers_?”
“They was, mum,” said Mrs. Lake. “My husband’s father’s father built
this mill where we now stands. It cost him a deal of money, and he died
with a debt upon it. My husband’s father paid un off; and he meant to
have built a house, mum, but he never did, worse luck for us. He allus
says, says he,—that’s my husband’s father, mum,—’I’ll leave that to
Abel,’—that’s my maester, mum. But nine year ago come Michaelmas”—
Mrs. Lake’s story was here interrupted by a frightful outburst of
coughing from the unfortunate baby, who on the removal of the woollen
shawl presented an appearance which would have been comical but for the
sympathy its condition demanded.
A very red and utterly shapeless little face lay, like a crushed
beet-root, in a mass of dainty laces almost voluminous enough to have
dressed out a bride. As a sort of crowning satire, the face in
particular was surrounded by a broad frill, spotted with bunches of pink
satin ribbon, and farther encased in a white satin hood of elaborate
workmanship and fringes.
[Picture: A very red and utterly shapeless little face lay, like a
crushed beet-root, in a mass of dainty laces almost voluminous enough to
have dressed out a bride]
The contrast between the natural red of the baby’s complexion and its
snowy finery was ludicrously suggestive of an over-dressed nigger, to
begin with; but when, in the paroxysms of its cough, the tiny creature’s
face passed by shades of plum-color to a bluish black, the result was
appalling to behold.
Mrs. Lake’s experienced ears were not slow to discover that the child had
got whooping-cough, which the nurse confessed was the case. She also
apologized for bringing in the baby among Mrs. Lake’s children, saying
that she had “thought of nothing but the poor little chirrub herself.”
“Don’t name it, mum,” replied the windmiller’s wife. “I always say if
children be to have things, they’ll have ’em; and if not, why they
won’t.” A theory which seems to sum up the views of the majority of
people in Mrs. Lake’s class of life upon the spread of disease.
“I’m sure I don’t know what’s coming to my poor head,” the nurse
continued: “I’ve not so much as told you who I am, ma’am. I’m nurse at
the Grange, ma’am, with Mr. Ammaby and Lady Louisa. They’ve been in
town, and her ladyship’s had the very best advice, and now we’ve come to
the country for three months, but the dear child don’t seem a bit the
better. And we’ve been trying every thing, I’m sure. For any thing I
heard of I’ve tried, as well as what the doctor ordered, and rubbing it
with some stuff Lady Louisa’s mamma insisted upon, too,—even to a frog
put into the dear child’s mouth, and drawed back by its legs, that’s
supposed to be a certain cure, but only frightened it into a fit I
thought it never would have come out of, as well as fetching her ladyship
all the way from her boudoir to know what was the matter—which I no more
dared tell her than fly.”
“Dear, dear!” said the miller’s wife; “have you tried goose-grease, mum?
’Tis an excellent thing.”
“Goose-grease, ma’am, and an excellent ointment from the bone-setter’s at
the toll-bar, which the butler paid for out of his own pocket, knowing it
to have done a world of good to his sister that had a bad leg, besides
being a certain cure for coughs, and cancer, and consumption as well.
And then the doctor’s _imprecation_ on its little chest, night and
morning, besides; but nothing don’t seem to do no good,” said the poor
nurse. “And so, ma’am,—her ladyship being gone to the town,—thinks I,
I’ll take the dear child to the windmill. For they do say,—where I came
from, ma’am,—that if a miller, that’s the son of a miller, and the
grandson of a miller, holds a child that’s got the whooping-cough in the
hopper of the mill whilst the mill’s going, it cures them, however bad
they be.”
The reason of the nurse’s visit being now made known, Mrs. Lake called
her husband, and explained to him what he was asked to do for “her
ladyship’s baby.” The miller scratched his head.
“I’ve heard my father say that his brother that drove a mill in Cheshire
had had it to do,” said he, “but I never did it myself, ma’am, nor ever
see un done. And a hopper be an ackerd place, ma’am. We’ve ground many
a cat in this mill, from getting in the hopper at nights for warmth.
However,” he added, “I suppose I can hold the little lady pretty tight.”
And finally, though with some unwillingness, the miller consented to try
the charm; being chiefly influenced by the wish not to disoblige the
gentlefolk at the Grange.
The little Jan had watched the proceedings of the visitors with great
attention. During the poor baby’s fit of coughing, he was so absorbed
that the sandy kitten slipped through his arms and made off, with her
tail as stiff as a sentry’s musket; and now that the miller took the baby
into his arms, Jan became excited, and asked, “What daddy do with un?”
“The old-fashioned little piece!” exclaimed the nurse, admiringly. And
Mrs. Lake added, “Let un see the little lady, maester.”
The miller held out the baby, and the nurse, removing a dainty
handkerchief edged with Valenciennes lace from its face, introduced it as
“Miss Amabel Adeline Ammaby;” and Mrs. Lake murmured, “What a lovely
little thing!” By which, for truth’s sake, it is to be hoped she meant
the lace-edged handkerchief.
In the exchange of civilities between the two women, the respective
children in their charge were admonished to kiss each other,—a feat which
was accomplished by Jan’s kissing the baby very tenderly, and with all
his usual gravity.
As this partly awoke the baby from a doze, its red face began to crease,
and pucker, and twist into various contortions, at which Jan gazed with a
sort of solemn curiosity in his black eyes.
“Stroke the little lady’s cheeks, love,” said Mrs. Lake, irrepressibly
proud of the winning ways and quaint grace which certainly did
distinguish her foster-child.
Jan leaned forward once more, and passed his little hand softly down the
baby’s face twice or thrice, as he was wont to stroke the sandy kitten,
as it slept with him, saying, “Poor itta pussy!”
“It’s not a puss-cat, bless his little heart!” said the matter-of-fact
nurse. “It’s little Miss Amabel Adeline Ammaby.”
“Say it, love!” said Mrs. Lake, adding, to the nurse, “he can say any
thing, mum.”
“Miss _Am—abel Ad—e—line Am—ma—by_,” prompted the nurse.
“Amabel!” said the little Jan, softly. But, after this feat, he took a
fit of childish reticence, and would say no more; whilst, deeply
resentful of the liberties Jan had taken, Miss Amabel Adeline Ammaby
twisted her features till she looked like a gutta-percha gargoyle, and
squalled as only a fretful baby can squall.
She was calmed at last, however, and the windmiller took her once more
into his arms, and Mrs. Lake carrying Jan, they all climbed up the narrow
ladder to the next floor.
Heavily ground the huge stones with a hundred and twenty revolutions a
minute, making the chamber shake as they went round.
They made the nurse giddy. The simplest machinery has a bewildering
effect upon an unaccustomed person. So has going up a ladder; which
makes you feel much less safe in the place to which it leads you than if
you had got there by a proper flight of stairs. So—very often—has
finding yourself face to face with the accomplishment of what you have
been striving for, if you happen to be weak-minded.
Under the combined influences of all these causes, the nurse listened
nervously to Master Lake, as he did the honors of the mill.
“Those be the mill-stones, ma’am. Pretty fastish they grinds, and they
goes faster when the wind’s gusty. Many a good cat they’ve ground as
flat as a pancake from the poor gawney beasts getting into the hopper.”
“Oh, sir!” cried the nurse, now thoroughly alarmed, “give me the young
lady back again. Deary, deary me! I’d no notion it was so dangerous.
Oh, don’t, sir! don’t!”
“Tut, tut! I’ll hold un safe, ma’am,” said the windmiller, who had all a
man’s dislike for shirking at the last moment what had once been decided
upon; and, as the nurse afterwards expressed it, before she had time to
scream, he had tucked Miss Amabel Adeline Ammaby’s finery well round her,
and had dipped her into the hopper and out again.
In that moment of suspense both the women had been silent, and the little
Jan had gazed steadily at the operation. As it safely ended, they both
broke simultaneously into words.
“You might have knocked me down with a feather, mum!” gasped Mrs. Lake.
“I couldn’t look, mum. I couldn’t have looked to save my life. I turned
my back.”
“I’d back ’ee allus to do the silliest thing as could be done, missus,”
said the miller, who had a pleasant husbandly way of commenting upon his
wife’s conversation to her disparagement, when she talked before him.
“As for me, ma’am,” the nurse said, “I couldn’t take my eyes off the dear
child’s hood. But move,—no thank you, ma’am,—I couldn’t have moved hand
or foot for a five-pound note, paid upon the spot.”
The baby got well. Whether the mill charm worked the cure, or whether
the fine fresh breezes of that healthy district made a change for the
better in the child’s state, could not be proved.
Nor were these the only possible causes of the recovery.
The kind-hearted butler blessed the day when he laid out three and
eightpence in a box of the bone-setter’s ointment, to such good purpose.
Lady Louisa’s mamma triumphantly hoped that it would be a lesson to her
dear daughter never again to set a London doctor’s advice (however
expensive) above a mother’s (she meant a grandmother’s) experience.
The cook said, “Goose-grease and kitchen physic for her!”
And of course the doctor very properly, as well as modestly, observed
that “he had confidently anticipated permanent beneficial results from a
persevering use of the embrocation.”
And only to the nurse and the windmiller’s family was it known that Miss
Amabel Adeline Ammaby had been dipped in the mill-hopper.