“I wish I could go and see her.”

“Guess we can,” was the reply.

“Doesn’t she know you?”

“Yes, but watch me fix her,” drawled Sam.  “There ain’t nothin’ she likes better’n a sick pusson.”

Sam stopped now, rolled up his sleeves and examined both arms, apparently without success, for he then loosed his suspenders, dropped his pants, and proceeded to examine his legs.  Of course, all boys have more or less cuts and bruises in various stages of healing.  Sam selected his best, just below the knee, a scratch from a nail in the fence.  He had never given it a thought before, but now he “reckoned it would do.”  With a lead pencil borrowed from Yan he spread a hue of mortification all around it, a green butternut rind added the unpleasant yellowish-brown of human decomposition, and the result was a frightful looking plague spot.  By chewing some grass he made a yellowish-green dye and expectorated this on the handkerchief which he bound on the sore.  He then got a stick and proceeded to limp painfully toward the witch’s abode.  As they drew near, the partly open door was slammed with ominous force.  Sam, quite unabashed, looked at Yan and winked, then knocked.  The bark of a small dog answered.  He knocked again.  A sound now of some one moving within, but no answer.  A third time he knocked, then a shrill voice:  “Get out o’ that.  Get aff my place, you dirthy young riff-raff.”

Sam grinned at Yan.  Then drawling a little more than usual, he said: 

“It’s a poor boy, Granny.  The doctors can’t do nothin’ for him,” which last, at least, was quite true.

There was no reply, so Sam made bold to open the door.  There sat the old woman glowering with angry red eyes across the stove, a cat in her lap, a pipe in her mouth, and a dog growling toward the strangers.

“Ain’t you Sam Raften?” she asked fiercely.

“Yes, marm.  I get hurt on a nail in the fence.  They say you kin git blood-p’isinin’ that way,” said Sam, groaning a little and trying to look interesting.  The order to “get out” died on the witch’s lips.  Her good old Irish heart warmed to the sufferer.  After all, it was rather pleasant to have the enemy thus humbly seek her aid, so she muttered: 

“Le’s see it.”

Sam was trying amid many groans to expose the disgusting mess he had made around his knee, when a step was heard outside.  The door opened and in walked Biddy.

She and Yan recognized each other at once.  The one had grown much longer, the other much broader since the last meeting, but the greeting was that of two warm-hearted people glad to see each other once more.

“An’ how’s yer father an’ yer mother an’ how is all the fambily?  Law, do ye mind the Cherry Lung-balm we uster make?  My, but we wuz greenies then!  Ye mind, I uster tell ye about Granny?  Well, here she is.  Granny, this is Yan.  Me an’ him hed lots o’ fun together when I ‘resided’ with his mamma, didn’t we, Yan?  Now, Granny’s the one to tell ye all about the plants.”