“That’s what I felt when you began,” agreed Mrs. Bailey.
“Of course. It’s the even temperature. I’ve never had one, but we were all brought up homeopathically.” Sissie went away to make tea.
“Was you?” said Mrs. Bailey drawing herself into a sitting posture. Miriam launched into eager description of the little chest with its tiny bottles of pilules and tinctures and the small violet-covered book about illnesses strapped into its lid; the home-life all about her as she talked. … Belladonna; aconite; she was back amongst her earliest recollections, feeling small and swollen and feverish; Mrs. Bailey, sitting up, with her worn glad patient face seemed to her more than ever like her mother; and she could not believe that the lore of the book and the little bottles did not reside with her.
“Aconite,” said Mrs. Bailey, “that was in the stuff the doctor give me when I was so bad last year.” That was all new and modern. Mrs. Bailey must see if she could only rapidly paint them for her, the home scenes all about the room.
“They use those things in the British Pharmacopœia, but they pile them in in bucketsful with all sorts of minerals,” she said provisionally, holding to her pictures while she pondered for a moment over the fact that she had forgotten until tonight that she was a homeopath.
Mr. Gunner came quietly in with Sissie and the tea, making a large party distributed almost invisibly in the gloom beyond the circle of dim lamplight. There was a joyful urgency of communication in the room. But the teacups were filled and passed round before the accumulated intercourse broke through the silence in a low-toned remark. It seemed to come from everyone and to bear within it all the gentle speech that had sounded since the world began; light spread outward and onward from the darkened room.