“Where’s that tea?”
But she’d thrown it away.
“Gideon,” I said, “was there bane in that tea you did tell Tivvy to give
Mother?”
“Now what do I know what Tivvy did give to Mother?” says he.
“Oh, Sarn, you did know!” cries Tivvy. “You said, ‘Give it her strong,’
you did.”
“Hold your tongue, you little liar,” shouts Gideon, “or I’ll thank you
to tell Prue what you and me were doing in the loft, Sunday’s a week.”
With that, Tivvy went as red as fire, and hushed.
I could make nothing of them. I sent for the doctor, to see what Mother
died of. And he said, were we in the habit of giving her _digitalis_, a
strange word that I didna know, but he spelled it out for me, and I
wrote it down. So I said no, I’d never heard tell of it. So he says,
“Foxglove! Foxglove!”
“Foxglove?” I says. “No. Whatever should I give her that for?”
“What indeed?” he says, looking at me very sharp.
“What do puzzle me, sir,” I says, “is what Mother died of. She was
beginning to pick up so nice.”
“That’s what I want to know, too,” he says.
“Maybe we’d ought to have a Crowner’s ’Quest, sir?” I says.
“Oh, you’d be willing to have an inquest on the body?”
“Why, yes, indeed, if it was right and proper.”
“Well, if you’re willing to have it, there’s no need to have it.”
He was a very peculiar man. I couldna make him out at all.
“I was doubtful,” he says. “But if you’re willing . . . It’s nothing but
old age, I expect. They go like that in the spring sometimes. And it’s a
great trouble and expense, an inquest . . . all just for the flicker of
a doubt . . . and can’t do the poor woman any manner of good . . . so,
if you’re willing, we won’t bother with an inquest.”
I could make neither head nor tail of that. But remembering that Doctor
was an educated man, I left off trying to understand him. For there’s as
much of a mystery about an educated man, that’s been schooled and
colleged proper, as there is about the Trinity. So, being busy over the
funeral and all, I thought no more about him, but I grieved sorely for
Mother, because as she lay in coffin she did look like a frozen bird,
foredone with winter.