e lower a little array of cloudy
bottles; some small bunches of herbs, all nicely labelled, were
packed in the wide space at the bottom.

His mother's antagonistic eyes followed him. "I dun'no' as I can have
them herbs in my china-closet much longer," said she; "they're
scentin' up the dishes too much. If I want to have a little company
to tea, I ain't goin' to have the tea all flavored with spearmint an'
catnip."

"Well, I'll move them when I come home," said Jerome, with his usual
concession, which always aggravated his mother more than open
rebellion, although she admired him for it. "I only brought those
little bundles down from the barn loft to have them handy. I'll rig
up a cupboard for them in the woodshed."

Jerome tucked a bottle or two in his pocket, and rolled up a little
bouquet of herbs in paper.

"I should think it would be time for you to go and see that young one
after meeting," said his mother, varying her point of attack when she
met with no resistance.

"I'll go to meeting this afternoon," replied Jerome, in the tone with
which he might have pacified a fretful child. There was no
self-justification in it.

"I s'pose Doctor Prescott will be mad if he hears of your goin'
there, an' I dun'no' but I should be in his place," she said, as
Jerome went out. Then, as he did not answer, she added, calling out
shrilly:

"I don't see why John Upham can't call in Lawrence, if he wants a
doctor; he's begun to study with his father; he can't have nothin'
against him. I guess he knows as much as you do."

"Mother's queer," Jerome told himself as he went down the road, and
then dismissed the matter from his mind, for the consideration of the
Upham baby and the probable nature of its ailment, upon which,
however, he did not allow himself to dwell too long. Early in his
amateur practice Jake Noyes had inculcated one precept in his mind,
upon which he always acted.

"There's one thing I want to tell ye, J'rome, and I want ye to
remember it," Jake Noyes had said, "and that is, a doctor had ought
to be like jurymen--he'd ought to be sworn in to be unprejudiced when
he goes to see a patient, just as a juryman is when he goes to court.
If you don't know what ails 'em, don't ye go to speculatin', as to
what 'tis an' what ye'll do, on the way there. Ten chances to one, if
you're workin' up measles in your mind an' what you'll do for them,
you'll find it's mumps, an' then you've got to cure your own measles
afore