Folks said the days of witchcraft had
come again, and they were pretty shy of Luella. She acted sort of
offish to the Doctor and he didn't go there, and there wa'n't
anybody to do anythin' for her. I don't know how she DID get
along. I wouldn't go in there and offer to help her--not because I
was afraid of dyin' like the rest, but I thought she was just as
well able to do her own work as I was to do it for her, and I
thought it was about time that she did it and stopped killin' other
folks. But it wa'n't very long before folks began to say that
Luella herself was goin' into a decline jest the way her husband,
and Lily, and Aunt Abby and the others had, and I saw myself that
she looked pretty bad. I used to see her goin' past from the store
with a bundle as if she could hardly crawl, but I remembered how
Erastus used to wait and 'tend when he couldn't hardly put one foot
before the other, and I didn't go out to help her.
"But at last one afternoon I saw the Doctor come drivin' up like
mad with his medicine chest, and Mrs. Babbit came in after supper
and said that Luella was real sick.
"'I'd offer to go in and nurse her,' says she, 'but I've got my
children to consider, and mebbe it ain't true what they say, but
it's queer how many folks that have done for her have died.
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