The doctor’s wife laughed.  She thought, but she did not say so, that probably this old lady had paid her husband a great many compliments.

“Well, Miss Panney,” she said, rising, “what report shall I make?”

The old lady took off her night-cap, and replaced it with her ordinary headgear of lace and ribbons.

“Have you heard anything,” she asked, “of the young man who is coming to Cobhurst?”

“No,” said Mrs. Tolbridge, “nothing at all.”

“Well,” continued Miss Panney, “I think the doctor knows something about him through old Butterwood.  I have an idea that I know something about him myself, but I wanted to talk to the doctor about him.  Of course this is a mere secondary matter.  My back has been troubling me a good deal lately, but as the doctor is so pushed, I won’t ask him to come here on purpose to see me.  If he’s in the neighborhood, I shall be very glad to have him call.  For the present, I shall try some of the old liniments.  Dear knows, I have enough of them, dating back for years and years.”

“But it will not do to make any mistakes, Miss Panney.  Those old prescriptions might not suit you now.”

“Don’t trouble yourself in the least about that,” said the old lady, lifting her hand impressively; “medicine never injures me.  Not a drop of it do I ever take inside of me, prescription or no prescription.  But I don’t mind putting things on the outside of me—­of course, I mean in reason, for there are outside applications that would ruin the constitution of a jack-screw.”

There were very few people in the neighborhood of Thorbury who were older than Miss Panney, and very few of any age who were as alert in both mind and body.  She had been born in this region; had left it in her youth, and had returned about thirty years ago, when she had taken up her abode with the Wittons, who at that time were a newly married couple.  They were now middle-aged people, but Miss Panney still lived with them, and seemed to be much the very same old lady as she was when she arrived.  She was a woman who kept a good deal to herself, having many resources for her active mind.  With many people who were not acquainted with her socially but knew all about her, she had the reputation of being wicked.  The principal reason for this belief was the well-known fact that she always took her breakfast in bed.  This was considered to be a French habit, and the French were looked upon as infidels.  Moreover, she never went to church, and when questioned upon this subject, had been known to answer that she could not listen with patience to a sermon, for she had never heard one without thinking that she could preach on that subject a great deal better than the man in the pulpit.

In spite of this fact, however, the rector of the Episcopal church of Thorbury and the Methodist minister were both great friends of Miss Panney, and although she did not come to hear them, they liked very much to go to hear her.  Mr. Hampton, the Methodist, would talk to her about flower-gardening and the by-gone people and ways of the region, while Mr. Ames, the rector, who was a young man, did not hesitate to assert that he frequently got very good hints for passages in his sermons, from remarks made by Miss Panney about things that were going on in the religious and social world.