ere she should go to obtain medicine
and advice.

"No, dochthor, dear--it's no mistake--it's the water cure I'm after.
Sure it's the blissid wather that saves us. There was Pat Murphy that
brak his leg when he fell with a hod of bricks aff the ladder in Say
Strate, and they put a bit of wet rag round it, and the next wake he
was dancing a jig to the chune of Paddy Rafferty, at the ball given by
the Social Burial Society. And there was my sister Molly's old man,
Phelim, that was took bad wid the fever--and he drank walth of
whiskey, but it never did him a bit of good--but when he lift off the
whiskey, and drank nothin' but wather, he came round in a wake. O,
dochthor, let me have the blissid water."

"You must see your landlord about that."

"You wouldn't sind me to him, dochthor."

"I'm no doctor, good woman," said the clerk, now thoroughly annoyed,
"and you've come to the wrong shop, as I told you."

"How do you use the water?" inquired the woman.

"Why, you turn the cock and let it on--in this way," said the clerk,
letting a little Cochituate into a basin. "There, go along now, and go
to the doctor's, as I have directed you."

"Sorrow a dochthor I go to but the water dochthor, this blissid day,"
said the woman, and she left the office.

She repaired to her cellar in no enviable frame of mind. She was sick
and discouraged, and labored under the impression that she had been to
the right place, but they had imposed upon her, from an unwillingness
to aid her. In the mean while, however, during her absence, a service
pipe had been admitted into her premises by the landlord, though she
was not aware of the fact. She became acquainted with it soon enough,
however. The next morning, about four o'clock, as she lay on the
floor, bemoaning her hard fate and the neglect of the "dochthor," she
heard a rushing noise. The water pipe had burst, and a stream, like a
fountain, was now steadily falling into the cellar.

"Bless their hearts!" exclaimed the old woman, "they haven't forgotten
the poor. The dochthor's sent the water at last--and I must lie still
and take it."

The first shock of the invading flood was a severe one.

"Millia murther!" she exclaimed, "how could it is! Dochthor, dear,
couldn't ye have let me had it a thrifle warmer?"

The water continued to pour in, and she was thoroughly soaked. Under
the belief that the doctor must be somewhere about, superintending the
operation, but keeping himself out of si