"Let me look at your tongue," said Dr. Porpoise, stroking his beard with one fin7, impressively. "Ahem! somewhat coated, I see. And your pulse is far from normal; no appetite, I presume? Yes, my dear, your system is sadly out of order. You need medicine."
The little oyster hated medicine; so she cried,—yes, she actually shed cold, briny8 tears at the very thought of taking old Dr. Porpoise's prescriptions9. But the father-oyster and the mother-oyster chided her sternly; they said that the medicine would be nice and sweet, and that the little oyster would like it. But the little oyster knew better than all that; yes, she knew a thing or two, even though she was only a little oyster.
Now Dr. Porpoise put a plaster on the little oyster's chest and a blister10 at her feet. He bade her eat nothing but a tiny bit of sea-foam on toast twice a day. Every two hours she was to take a spoonful of cod-liver oil, and before each meal a wineglassful of the essence of distilled11 cuttlefish12. The plaster she didn't mind, but the blister and the cod-liver oil were terrible; and when it came to the essence of [Pg 117]distilled cuttlefish—well, she just couldn't stand it! In vain her mother reasoned with her, and promised her a new doll and a skipping-rope and a lot of other nice things: the little oyster would have none of the horrid13 drug; until at last her father, abandoning his dignity in order to maintain his authority, had to hold her down by main strength and pour the medicine into her mouth. This was, as you will allow, quite dreadful.
But this treatment did the little oyster no good; and her parents made up their minds that they would send for another doctor, and one of a different school. Fortunately they were in a position to indulge in almost any expense, since the father-oyster himself was president of one of the largest banks of Newfoundland. So Dr. Sculpin came with his neat little medicine-box under his arm. And when he had looked at the sick little oyster's tongue, and had taken her temperature, and had felt her pulse, he said he knew what ailed14 her; but he did not tell anybody what it was. He threw away the plasters, the blisters15, the cod-liver oil, and [Pg 118]the essence of distilled cuttlefish, and said it was a wonder that the poor child had lived through it all!
"Will you please bring me two tumblerfuls of water?" he remarked to the mother-oyster.
The mother-oyster scuttled16 away, and soon returned with two conch-shells filled to the brim with pure, clear sea-water. Dr. Sculpin counted three grains of white sand into one shell, and three grains of yellow sand into the other shell, with great care.
"Now," said he to the mother-oyster, "I have numbered these 1 and 2. First, you are to give the patient ten drops out of No. 2, and in an hour after that, eight drops out of No. 1; the next hour, eight drops out of No. 2; and the next, or fourth, hour, ten drops out of No. 1. And so you are to continue hour by hour, until either the medicine or the child gives out."
"Tell me, doctor," asked the mother, "shall she continue the food suggested by Dr. Porpoise?"
"What food did he recommend?" inquired Dr. Sculpin.
[Pg 119]
"Sea-foam on toast," answered the mother.
Dr. Sculpin smiled a smile which seemed to suggest that Dr. Porpoise's ignorance was really quite annoying.
"My dear madam," said Dr. Sculpin, "the diet suggested by that quack17, Porpoise, passed out of the books years ago. Give the child toast on sea-foam, if you wish to build up her debilitated18 forces."
Now, the sick little oyster did not object to this treatment; on the contrary, she liked it. But it did her no good. And one day, when she was feeling very dry, she drank both tumblerfuls of medicine, and it did not do her any harm; neither did it cure her: she remained the same sick little oyster,—oh, so sick! This pained her parents very much. They did not know what to do. They took her travelling; they gave her into the care of the eel19 for electric treatment; they sent her to the Gulf20 Stream for warm baths,—they tried everything, but to no avail. The sick little oyster remained a sick little oyster, and there was an end of it.
At last one day,—one cruel, fatal day,—a horrid, fierce-looking machine was poked21 down[Pg 120] from the surface of the water far above, and with slow but intrepid22 movement began exploring every nook and crevice23 of the oyster village. There was not a family into which it did not intrude24, nor a home circle whose sanctity it did not ruthlessly invade. It scraped along the great mossy rock; and lo! with a monstrous25 scratchy-te-scratch, the mother-oyster and the father-oyster and hundreds of other oysters were torn from their resting-places and borne aloft in a very jumbled26 and very frightened condition by the impertinent machine. Then down it came again, and the sick little oyster was among the number of those who were seized by the horrid monster this time. She found herself raised to the top of the sea; and all at once she was bumped in a boat, where she lay, puny27 and helpless, on a huge pile of other oysters. Two men were handling the fierce-looking machine. A little boy sat in the stern of the boat watching the huge pile of oysters. He was a pretty little boy, with bright eyes and long tangled28 hair. He wore no hat, and his feet were bare and brown.
"What a funny little oyster!" said the boy,[Pg 121] picking up the sick little oyster; "it is no bigger than my thumb, and it is very pale."
"Throw it away," said one of the men. "Like as not it is bad and not fit to eat."
"No, keep it and send it out West for a Blue Point," said the other man,—what a heartless wretch29 he was!
But the little boy had already thrown the sick little oyster overboard. She fell in shallow water, and the rising tide carried her still farther toward shore, until she lodged30 against an old gum boot that lay half buried in the sand. There were no other oysters in sight. Her head ached and she was very weak; how lonesome, too, she was!—yet anything was better than being eaten,—at least so thought the little oyster, and so, I presume, think you.
For many weeks and many months the sick little oyster lay hard by the old gum boot; and in that time she made many acquaintances and friends among the crabs33, the lobsters34, the fiddlers, the star-fish, the waves, the shells, and the gay little fishes of the ocean. They did not harm her, for they saw that she was sick; they pitied her—some loved her. The one that[Pg 122] loved her most was the perch35 with green fins36 that attended school every day in the academic shade of the big rocks in the quiet cove37 about a mile away. He was very gentle and attentive38, and every afternoon he brought fresh cool sea-foam for the sick oyster to eat; he told her pretty stories, too,—stories which his grandmother, the venerable codfish, had told him of the sea king, the mermaids39, the pixies, the water sprites, and the other fantastically beautiful dwellers40 in ocean-depths. Now while all this was very pleasant, the sick little oyster knew that the perch's wooing was hopeless, for she was very ill and helpless, and could never think of becoming a burden upon one so young and so promising41 as the gallant42 perch with green fins. But when she spoke43 to him in this strain, he would not listen; he kept right on bringing her more and more cool sea-foam every day.
The old gum boot was quite a motherly creature, and anon the sick little oyster became very much attached to her. Many times as the little invalid44 rested her aching head affectionately on the instep of the old gum boot, the old gum boot told her stories of the world beyond the sea: how she had been born in a mighty45 forest, and how proud her[Pg 123] folks were of their family tree; how she had been taken from that forest and moulded into the shape she now bore; how she had graced and served a foot in amphibious capacities, until at last, having seen many things and having travelled much, she had been cast off and hurled
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