“Well, keep on giving them, anyhow.  She’s a pretty sick child.”

“You ain’t no fears of smallpox, are you?” Mrs. Getz inquired.  “Mister was afraid it might mebbe be smallpox,” she said, indicating her husband by the epithet.

“Not that you say that I sayed it was!” Mr. Getz warned the doctor.  “We don’t want no report put out!  But is they any symptoms?”

“Och, no,” the doctor reassured them.  “It ain’t smallpox.  What did you give her that she couldn’t keep with her?”

“I fed some boiled milk to her.”

“Did she drink tea?” he inquired, looking profound.

“We don’t drink no store tea,” Mrs. Getz answered him.  “We drink peppermint tea fur supper, still.  Tillie she didn’t drink none this evening.  Some says store tea’s bad fur the nerves.  I ain’t got no nerves,” she went on placidly.  “Leastways, I ain’t never felt none, so fur.  Mister he likes the peppermint.”

“And it comes cheaper,” said Mister.

“Mebbe you’ve been leavin’ Tillie work too much in the hot sun out in the fields with you?” the doctor shot a keen glance at the father; for Jake Getz was known to all Canaan Township as a man that got more work out of his wife and children than any other farmer in the district.

“After school, some,” Mr. Getz replied.  “But not fur long at a time, fur it gets late a’ready till she gets home.  Anyhow, it’s healthy fur her workin’ in the fields.  I guess,” he speculated, “it was her settin’ up in bed readin’ last night done it.  I don’t know right how long it went that she was readin’ before I seen the light, but it was near morning a’ready, and she’d burned near a whole candle out.”

“And mebbe you punished her?” the doctor inquired, holding his hand to Tillie’s temples.

“Well,” nodded Mr. Getz, “I guess she won’t be doin’ somepin like that soon again.  I think, still, I mebbe used the strap too hard, her bein’ a girl that way.  But a body’s got to learn ’em when they’re young, you know.  And here it was a novel-book!  She borrowed the loan of it off of Elviny Dinkleberger!  I chucked it in the fire!  I don’t uphold to novel-readin’!”

“Well, now,” argued the doctor, settling back in his chair, crossing his legs, and thrusting his thumbs into the arm-holes of his vest, “some chance times I read in such a ‘Home Companion’ paper, and here this winter I read a piece in nine chapters.  I make no doubt that was a novel.  Leastways, I guess you’d call it a novel.  And that piece,” he said impressively, “wouldn’t hurt nobody!  It learns you.  That piece,” he insisted, “was got up by a moral person.”

“Then I guess it wasn’t no novel, Doc,” Mr. Getz firmly maintained.  “Anybody knows novels ain’t moral.  Anyhow, I ain’t havin’ none in my house.  If I see any, they get burnt up.”

“It’s a pity you burnt it up, Jake.  I like to come by somepin like that, still, to pass the time when there ain’t much doin’.  How did Elviny Dinkleberger come by such a novel?”