that—well, I suppose, now, you might say—that cancer,” she said, making a gesture of explanation with her broad hand—“whatever it is, that awful old thing that has been eating away inside him there for years—” here she pursed her lips powerfully and shook her head in a short convulsive tremor of disgust—“well, now, I give it as my theory that the whole thing tore loose in him yesterday—when he had that attack—and,” she paused deliberately, looked her daughter straight in the eyes, and went on with a slow and telling force—“and that he has simply gone and got that rotten old thing out of his system.”
“Then, you mean—” Helen began eagerly, seizing at this fantastic straw as if it were the rock by which her drowning hope might be saved—“you mean, Mama—”
“Yes, sir!” said Eliza, shaking her head slowly and positively. “That’s exactly what I mean! I think nature has taken its own course—I think nature has succeeded in doing what all the doctors and hospitals in the world were not able to do—for you can rest assured”—and here she paused, looking her daughter gravely in the eyes—“you can rest assured that nature is the best physician in the end! Now, I’ve always said as much, and all the best authorities agree with me. Why, yes, now!—here!—say!—wasn’t I readin’in the paper—oh! here along, you know a week or so ago—Doctor Royal S. Copeland!—yes, sir!—that was the very feller—why, he said, you know—” she went on in explanatory fashion.
“Oh, but, Mama!” Helen said, desperately, unable to make her mind believe this grotesque reasoning, and yet clutching at every word with a pleading entreaty that begged to be convinced.
“Oh, but, Mama, surely Wade Eliot and all those other men at Hopkins couldn’t have been wrong! Why, Mama,” she cried furiously, yet pleadingly—“you know they couldn’t—after all these years—after taking him there for treatment a dozen times or more! Why, Mama, those men are famous—the greatest doctors in the world! Oh, surely not! Surely not!” she said desperately, and then gazed at Eliza pleadingly again.
“H’m!” said Eliza, pursing her lips with a little scornful smile. “It won’t be the first time that a doctor has been wrong—I don’t care how famous they may be! You can rest assured of that! It’s always been my opinion that they’re wrong about as often as they’re right—only you can’t prove it on’em. They bury their mistakes.” She was silent a moment, looking at her daughter in a sudden, straight and deadly fashion, with a little smile at the corners of her mouth. “Now, child, I want to tell you something…. I want to tell you what I saw today.” Again she was silent, looking
