"That wuz when she fust come, yer know," he said to me one day, leaning against an old boat, his adze in his hand. "Her folks belonged over to Westerly. I never had seen much ov wimmen, and didn't know their ways. But I tell yer she wuz a queer 'un, allers imaginin' she wuz ailin', er had heart disease when she got out er breath runnin' upstairs, er as'mer, er lumbago, er somethin' else dreadful. She wuz the cur'usest critter too to take medicin' ye ever see. She never ailed none really 'cept when she broke her coller bone a-fallin' downstairs, and in the last sickness, the one that killed her, but she believed all the time she wuz, which was wuss. Every time the druggist would git out a new red card and stick it in his winder, with a cure fer cold, or chilblains, er croup, er e'sipelas, she'd go and buy it, an' out 'd cum ther cork, and she a-tastin' ov it 'fore she got hum. She used ter rub herself with St. Jiminy's intment, and soak her feet in sea-salt, and cover herself with plasters till yer couldn't rest. Why, ther cum a feller once who painted a yaller sign on ther whole side ov Buckley's barn--cure fer spiral meningeetius,--and she wuz nigh crazy till she had found out where ther pain ought ter be, and had clapped er plaster on her back and front, persuadin' herself she had it. That's how she bruk her coller bone, a-runnin' fer hot water to soak 'em off, they burnt so, and stumblin' over a kit ov tools I had brung hum to do a job around the house. After this she begun ter run down so, and git so thin and peaked, I begun to think she really wuz goin' ter be sick, after all, jest fer a change. "When ther doctor come he sed it warn't nothin' but druggist's truck that ailed her, and he throwed what there wuz out er ther winder, and give her a tonic--Tincter ov Iron he called it. Well, yer never see a woman hug a thing as she did that bottle. It was a spoonful three times a day, and then she'd reach out fer it in ther night, vowin' it was doin' her a heap er good, and I a-gettin' ther bottle filled at Sarcy's ther druggist's, and payin' fifty cents every time he put er new cork in it. I tried ter reason with her, but it warn't no use; she would have it, and if she could have got outer bed and looked round at the spring crop of advertisements on ther fences, she would hev struck somethin' worse. So I let her run on until she tuk about seven dollars' wuth of Tincter, and then I dropped in ter Sarcy's. 'Sarcy,' sez I, 'can't ye wholesale this, er sell it by the quart? If the ole woman's coller bone don't get ter runnin' easy purty soon I'll be broke.' "'Well,' he said, 'if I bought a dozen it might come cheaper, but it wuz a mighty pertic'ler medicine, and had ter be fixed jest so.' "''Taint pizen, is it?' I sez, 'thet's got ter be fixed so all-fired kerful?' He 'lowed it warn't, and thet ye might take er barrel of it and it wouldn't kill yer, but all ther same it has ter be made mighty pertic'ler.