§ 135 The Lady Made Good at Last
There was a Down-East housewife who, for years, was troubled with heart seizures. At the most inopportune times she would drop unconscious and after appearing for awhile to be at her last gasp would rally, and after an hour or so, seemingly would be as well as she ever had been.
The frequency of these attacks naturally interfered with her husband’s labors and also was highly disturbing to his peace of mind. As he worked in his woodlot, or his hay meadow or about his barn he never knew when the hired girl would be coming at full speed breathlessly to tell him his wife had suffered another stroke and surely now was on the point of death. If his patience frayed under repeated alarms of this sort the worthy man gave no outward sign. Whenever the summons came—and it came very often—he would drop whatever he was doing and hasten to the house, invariably to find the sufferer on the way back to consciousness.
One hot day he was hoeing his potato patch when word arrived by messenger that the invalid had just had an especially violent attack. He lumbered to the cottage.
The form of his wife was stretched upon the kitchen floor where she had fallen. A glance told him that this time she had made a go of it. Beyond question, life was extinct.
“Wall,” he said, “this is more like it!”