Cousins -- Fiction; Prince Edward Island -- Fiction; Storytellers -- Fiction
Cecily finished her cucumber, and then drank a glass of milk, just as we
heard the wheels of Uncle Alec’s buggy rambling over the bridge in the
hollow. Felicity quickly restored pork and pudding to their own places,
and by the time Aunt Janet came in we were all in our respective beds.
Soon the house was dark and silent. I was just dropping into an uneasy
slumber when I heard a commotion in the girls’ room across the hall.
Their door opened and through our own open door I saw Felicity’s
white-clad figure flit down the stairs to Aunt Janet’s room. From the
room she had left came moans and cries.
“Cecily’s sick,” said Dan, springing out of bed. “That cucumber must
have disagreed with her.”
In a few minutes the whole house was astir. Cecily was sick--very, very
sick, there was no doubt of that. She was even worse than Dan had been
when he had eaten the bad berries. Uncle Alec, tired as he was from his
hard day’s work and evening outing, was despatched for the doctor. Aunt
Janet and Felicity administered all the homely remedies they could think
of, but to no effect. Felicity told Aunt Janet of the cucumber, but Aunt
Janet did not think the cucumber alone could be responsible for Cecily’s
alarming condition.
“Cucumbers are indigestible, but I never knew of them making any one as
sick as this,” she said anxiously. “What made the child eat a cucumber
before going to bed? I didn’t think she liked them.”
“It was that wretched Peter,” sobbed Felicity indignantly. “He told her
it would make her dream something extra.”
“What on earth did she want to dream for?” demanded Aunt Janet in
bewilderment.
“Oh, to have something worth while to write in her dream book, ma. We
all have dream books, you know, and every one wants their own to be the
most exciting--and we’ve been eating rich things to make us dream--and
it does--but if Cecily--oh, I’ll never forgive myself,” said Felicity,
incoherently, letting all kinds of cats out of the bag in her excitement
and alarm.
“Well, I wonder what on earth you young ones will do next,” said Aunt
Janet in the helpless tone of a woman who gives it up.
Cecily was no better when the doctor came. Like Aunt Janet, he declared
that cucumbers alone would not have made her so ill; but when he found
out that she had drunk a glass of milk also the mystery was solved.
“Why, milk and cucumbers together make a rank poison,” he said. “No
wonder the child is sick. There--there now--” seeing the alarmed faces
around him, “don’t be frightened. As old Mrs. Fraser says, ‘It’s no
deidly.’ It won’t kill her, but she’ll probably be a pretty miserable
girl for two or three days.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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