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 more complicated directions for administering them. Aunt Abigail, who always prided herself on her devotion to duty, carried out his instructions with scrupulous exactness. She was also very particular about excluding draughts and in fact all outside air. With great care she pasted up the cracks about the two small windows.

There followed a long period when Mrs. Pippinger alternated between being very sick and not quite so sick. The house was kept unnaturally tidy. The children moved about on tiptoe and spoke in whispers. Judith and the boys stayed outside or in the barn as much as they could. The rooms were full of the smell of strong medicines and ointments. Neighbors and relatives came bringing presents of soups and jellies and pickles and such bedside delicacies, which the children ate with subdued relish after their mother had refused them. The air was full of anxiety, of restlessness, of a sense of waiting, as though the regular flow of life hung for a time suspended and everybody was waiting with half-taken breath for the signal to breathe and live again.

When Bill came in from the barn after the evening chores were done, he pulled off his shoes very quietly and went about in sock feet. Sometimes he went to his wife's bedside and sat silently watching her flushed, restless tossing, or talked with her for a while in low tones if the fever was gone and she was lying pale and quiet. Then he would go back into the kitchen and sit by the stove with his quid of tobacco in his cheek, now and then lifting the lid nearest him to spit into the wood fire. He was a man of clean habits and hardly ever spat in the woodbox. Often he would sit like this till long after his usual bedtime, to be roused at last by Aunt Abigail's strident tones.

"Well, land sakes, Bill Pippinger, if you hain't a-settin' there yet! You'd otta be in bed this hour an' a half. If you're fixin' to be over bright an' early to help Andy Blackford butcher hawgs to-morrow mornin' you'd best be a-gittin' some sleep else ther'l be no rousin' you in the mornin'."

Thus exhorted, Bill would grunt sleepily, slouch to his feet, stretch, yawn, wind the clock, whittle a few kindlings for the