When the doctor told them about his system, Hannah did not like the sound
of it at all. Not a drop of "sut tea" or herb-drink was mentioned, but the
invalid was to eat all the hearty food Hannah could earn for her. Then, so
far from sleeping in a decently tight room, their bed was to stand in a
little old shed, set up against Master Necronsett's house. One side of the
shed was gone entirely, so that the wind and the sun would come right in
on poor, delicate Ann Mary, and there was only an awning of woven
bark-withes to let down when it rained.
But even that was not the worst. Hannah listened with growing suspicion
while Master Necronsett explained the rest of it. All his magic consisted
in the use of a "witch plant," the whole virtue of which depended on one
thing. The sick person must be the only one to handle or care for it, from
the seed up to the mature plant.
He took them up to his garret, where row after row of dried plants hung,
heavy with seed-pods, and with the most careful precautions to avoid
touching them himself, or having Hannah do so, he directed Ann Mary to fill
a two-quart basin with the seed.
"That will plant a piece of ground about six paces square," he said. "That
will raise enough seed for you."
"But who is to dig the ground, and plant, and weed, and water, and all?"
asked Hannah. "If I am to be earning all day, when--"
"The sick person must do all," said the herb-doctor.
Hannah could not believe her senses. Her Ann Mary, who could not even
brush her own hair without fatigue, she to take a spade in her--
"Oh, Master Doctor," she cried, "can I not do it for her?"
The old Indian turned his opaque black eyes upon her.
"Nay," he said dryly, "you cannot."
And with that he showed them where the witch garden was to be, close
before their little sleeping-hut. That was why, he explained, the patient
must spend all her time there, so that by night, as well as by day, she
could absorb the magical virtues of the growing plant Hannah thought those
were the first sensible words she had heard him say.
She had promised the minister's wife to be back at a certain hour to see
about employment, so she dared not stay longer, though it was with a
sinking heart that she left her sister to that grim old savage, with his
brusque lack of sympathy. However, the minister's wife reassured her with
stories of all the other girls from far and near whom he had cured by that
same foolish, silly method; so Hannah turned all her energies upon the
spinning which a neighbor-woman had set her to do.
Hired workers have been the same from the days of the Psalmist down to our
own, and Hannah, putting her whole heart into her work, accomplished, so
her surprised employer told her, twice as much spinning as any
serving-girl she had ever hired.
"And excellent good thread, too!" she said, examining it.
If Hannah kept up to _that_, she added, she could have all the work she
had time for. She gave the little girl two pennies--two real pennies, the
first money Hannah had ever earned. With a head spinning with triumph, she
calculated that at that rate she could earn fourpence a day!
She spent a farthing for some fish a little boy brought up from the river,
and a halfpenny for some fresh-baked bread, and a part of her precious
four-shilling piece for an iron fry-pan, or "spider." Laden with these,
she hurried back to see how Ann Mary had endured the old doctor's
roughness. She found her sister very tired, but, proudly anxious to show a
little spot, perhaps six feet; square, which she had spaded up with
intervals of rest.
"The herb-doctor says that I have done well, and that I will finish the
spading in a week, or perhaps even less," she said: "and I _like_ Master
Necronsett! He is a good old man, and I know that he will cure me. He
makes me feel very rested when he comes near."
Hannah felt a little pang to think that her sister should not miss her own
brooding care, but when Ann Mary cried out joyfully at the sight of the
food, "Oh, how hungry I am!" everything but pleasure was immediately
swept away from the little sister's loyal heart.
They cooked their supper--Hannah still had some of the cornmeal and the
flitch of bacon their Hillsboro friends had given them--and went to bed
directly on the queer, hard bed, with a straw tick and no feathers, which
Dr. Necronsett had prescribed, warmly wrapped up in the pair of heavy
Indian blankets he had loaned them. They were so close to the house that
they heard the old doctor moving around inside, and they could see the
light of his candle, so they were not afraid.
Indeed, the two sisters were so sleepy that even if they had been timorous
it could scarcely have kept them from the deep slumber into which they
fell at once, and which lasted until the sun shone in on them the next
morning.