But Keturah had fallen on evil days. A fishing expedition, during which she tumbled into the canal, and after which she walked about till she was, as she put it, "moderate dry"—"at least not to notice"—had ended in the mysterious illness to which the doctor had just been called.
Matthew Moulder had gone that evening to a prayer-meeting in a neighbouring village, where he would stay the night with a hospitable brother; this fact, taken together with the fact that Keturah seemed most alarmingly ill, had given her mother the courage to call in the doctor.
He had seen Keturah, had expressed himself with his customary vigour as to the imbecility of people who could treat a case of acute pneumonia with "Dinver’s Lung Tonic" for sole remedy, and now he had returned to the little bedroom to have a final look at the child.
She was too weak to raise herself on her elbow, but she turned her head on the doctor’s entrance. "Shall I go to hell?" she asked, devouring his face with her great fever-bright eyes.
The doctor started. She had not volunteered any remark before.
"God bless my soul, no!" he exclaimed. "You’ll go to Weston-super-Mare when you’re well enough."
Keturah shook her head. "But if I don’t get well? Shall I go to hell?"
Theology is not one of the doctor’s strong points. Being as a rule much concerned with the treatment of the body, he expresses himself with diffidence regarding the ultimate fate of the soul. But on this occasion he shook his head vigorously, holding the hot thin little hand in a firm comforting clasp. "You must ask a parson about these things, my dear, but I am quite sure that no little girls go——but you are going to get well—cheer up! Eh?"
"Could I ast the young gentleman parson wot plays cricket?" Keturah’s voice was hoarse and eager.
"The very man—couldn’t do better. I’ll send him round as I go home," and the doctor turned to go. He hurried down the narrow stairs, but stopped at the front door to call back into the house, "She’s to live in poultices, mind! _Live_ in ’em."
He stopped at the curate’s lodgings as he drove home, and went right in, to find the cleric in question resting his slippered feet upon the chimney-piece, while he smoked and read the evening paper.