"
"A potato in your pocket!" exclaimed Dame Hartley. "Reuel Slocum! what
_do_ you mean?"
"Sounds curus, don't it?" returned Mr. Slocum. "But it's a fact that
it's a great cure for rheumatiz. A grea-at cure! Why, there's Barzillay
Smith, over to Peat's Corner, has kerried a potato in his pocket for
five years,--not the same potato, y' know; changes 'em when they begin
to sprout,--and he hesn't hed a touch o' rheumatism all that time. Not a
touch! tol' me so himself."
"Had he ever hed it before?" asked Dame Hartley.
"I d'no as he hed," said Mr. Slocum, "But his father hed; an' his
granf'ther before him. So ye see--"
But here Hilda uttered a long sigh of weariness and impatience; and Dame
Hartley, with a penitent glance at her, bade good-morning to the victim
of rheumatism, gave old Nancy a smart slap with the reins, and drove off
down the wood-road.
"My dear child," she said to Hilda as they jogged along, "I ought not to
have kept you waiting so long, and you tired with your ride in the cars.
But Reuel Slocum lives all alone here, and he does enjoy a little chat
with an old neighbor more than most folks; so I hope you'll excuse me."
"It is of no consequence, thank you," murmured Hildegarde, with cold
civility. She did not like to be called "my dear child," to begin with;
and besides, she was very weary and heartsick, and altogether miserable.
But she tried to listen, as the good woman continued to talk in a
cheery, comfortable tone, telling her how fond she had always been of
"Miss Mildred," as she called Mrs.
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