Anthony Trollope: Barchester Towers

23. CHAPTER XXIII: MR ARABIN READS HIMSELF IN AT ST EWOLD'S (continued)

'It is your duty, you know, to support yourself,' she said into the ear of the young mother; 'there's more than yourself depending on it;' and thus she coshered up Eleanor with cold fowl and port wine. How it is that poor men's wives, who have no cold fowl and port wine on which to be coshered up, nurse their children without difficulty, whereas the wives of rich men, who eat and drink everything that is good, cannot do so, we will for the present leave to the doctors and mothers to settle between them.

And then Miss Thorne was great about teeth. Little Johnny Bold had been troubled for the last few days with his first incipient masticator, and with that freemasonry which exists between ladies, Miss Thorne became aware of the fact before Eleanor had half finished her wing. The old lady prescribed at once a receipt which had been much in vogue in the young days of her grandmother, and warned Eleanor with solemn voice against the fallacies of modern medicine.

'Take his coral, my dear,' said she, 'and rub it well with carrot-juice; rub it till the juice dries on it, and then give it to him to play with--'

'But he hasn't got a coral,' said Eleanor.

'Not got a coral!' said Miss Thorne, with almost angry vehemence. 'Not got a coral!--How can you expect that he should cut his teeth? Have you got Daffy's Elixir?'

Eleanor explained that she had not. It had not been ordered by Mr Rerechild, the Barchester doctor whom she employed; and then the young mother mentioned some shockingly modern succedaneum, which Mr Rerechild's new lights had taught him to recommend.

Miss Thorne looked awfully severe. 'Take care, my dear,' said she, 'that the man knows what he is about; take care he doesn't destroy your little boy. 'But'--and her voice softened into sorrow as she said it, and spoke more in pity than in anger--'but I don't know who there is in Barchester now that you can trust. Poor dear old Dr Bumpwell, indeed--'

'Why, Miss Thorne, he died when I was a little girl.'