The good man may have counted upon the unfavorable
effect of certain potions which he should find his opportunity in
counteracting; at any rate, he now and then stopped and exchanged
greetings with Mrs. Todd over the picket fence. The conversation
became at once professional after the briefest preliminaries, and
he would stand twirling a sweet-scented sprig in his fingers, and
make suggestive jokes, perhaps about her faith in a too persistent
course of thoroughwort elixir, in which my landlady professed such
firm belief as sometimes to endanger the life and usefulness of
worthy neighbors.
To arrive at this quietest of seaside villages late in June,
when the busy herb-gathering season was just beginning, was also to
arrive in the early prime of Mrs. Todd's activity in the brewing of
old-fashioned spruce beer. This cooling and refreshing drink had
been brought to wonderful perfection through a long series of
experiments; it had won immense local fame, and the supplies for
its manufacture were always giving out and having to be
replenished.
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