The petty annoyances which made up the sum of my lady's bitterness were endless. She was in the habit of bestowing broken meats upon the cottagers with stately condescension, accompanied sometimes with drugs. Mrs. Gillin followed suit. There were two ladies bountiful in the field, and the dowager sometimes came off second best; for, as amateur doctors will, she made mistakes, and killed people with fresh patent medicines, whilst her rival escaped active harm, because her boluses were innocent through lengthened sleep in the village apothecary's phials. So the cottagers only trembled and curtsied when the chatelaine called to see them, and emptied her bottles on the sly, whilst they eagerly consulted Madam Gillin as to their ailments, a preference of which madam made the most, when the ladies met over an invalid. Faithful to her _rôle_, she never spoke to the scowling dowager, but addressed scathing remarks to a third person who was always the companion of her wanderings--one Jug Coyle, her ancient nurse, who passed with many for a witch, whilst all admitted that she was a 'wise-woman.' This old harridan, who was learned in the use of simples, was established by her mistress in a one-eyed alehouse on the verge of her little property--on the outside edge of it which looked towards the Abbey. The noise of roysterous shouting there penetrated sometimes as far as my lady's chamber, yet she did not complain. It was one of her rival's thorns--one of the petty persecutions which the chatelaine was doomed to bear.