It was with no affectation that he spoke in the fashion of the peasantry; his grandfather and his father were tillers of the soil, and he had gone straight from the farm to study medicine in Quebec, amongst other young fellows for the most part like himself—­ grandsons, if not sons of farmers—­who had all clung to the plain country manner and the deliberate speech of their fathers.  He was tall and heavily built, with a grizzled moustache, and his large face wore the slightly aggrieved expression of one whose native cheerfulness is being continually dashed through listening to the tale of others’ ills for which he is bound to show a decent sympathy.

Chapdelaine came in when he had unharnessed and fed the horse.  He and his children sat at a little distance while the doctor was going through his programme.

Every one of them was thinking:—­“Presently we shall know what is the matter, and the doctor will give her the right medicines.”  But when the examination was ended, instead of turning to the bottles in his bag, he seemed uncertain and began to ask interminable questions.  How had it happened, and where, particularly, did she feel pain ...  Had she ever before suffered from the same trouble ...  The answers did not seem to enlighten him very much; then he turned to the sick woman herself, only to receive confused statements and complaints.

“If it is just a wrench that she has given herself,” at length he announced, “she will get well without any meddling; there is nothing for her to do but to stay quietly in bed.  But if there is some injury within, to the kidneys or another organ, it may be a grave affair.”  He was conscious that his state of doubt was disappointing to the Chapdelaines, and was anxious to restore his medical reputation.

“Internal lesions are serious things, and often one cannot detect them.  The wisest man in the world could tell you no more than I. We shall have to wait ...  But perhaps it is not that we have to deal with.”  After some further investigation he shook his head.  “Of course I can give something that will keep her from suffering like this.”

The leather bag now disclosed its wonderworking phials; fifteen drops of a yellowish drug were diluted with two fingers of water, and the sick woman, lifted up in bed, managed to swallow this with sharp cries of pain.  Then there was apparently nothing more to be done; the men fit their pipes, and the doctor, with his feet against the stove, held forth as to his professional labours and the cures he had wrought.

“Illnesses like these,” said he, “where one cannot discover precisely what is the matter, are more baffling to a doctor than the gravest disorders—­like pneumonia now, or even typhoid fever which carry off three-quarters of the people hereabouts who do not die of old age.  Well, typhoid and pneumonia, I cure these every month in the year.  You know Viateur Tremblay, the postmaster at St. Henri ...”