Looking back over the winter months of that second year of teaching
Amanda sometimes wondered how she was able to do her work in the
schoolroom acceptably. But the strain of being a stoic left its marks
upon her.
"My goodness," said Aunt Rebecca one day in February when a blizzard
held her snowbound at the Reist farmhouse, "that girl must be doin' too
much with this teachin' and basket makin' and who knows what not! She
looks pale and sharp-chinned. Ain't you noticed?" she asked Mrs. Reist.
"I thought last week she looked pinched and I asked if she felt bad but
she said she felt all right, she was just a little bit tired sometimes.
I guess teachin' forty boys and girls ain't any too easy, Becky."
"My goodness, no! I'd rather tend hogs all day! But why don't you make
a big crock of boneset tea and make her take a good swallow every day?
There's nothin' like that to build abody up. She looks real bad--you
don't want her to go in consumption like that Ellie Hess over near my
place."
"Oh, mercy no! Becky, how you scare abody! I'll fix her up some boneset
tea to-day yet. I got some on the garret that Millie dried last
summer."
Amanda protested against the boneset but to please her mother she
promised to swallow faithfully the doses of bitter tea. She thought
whimsically as she drank it, "First time I knew that boneset tea is
good for an aching heart. Boneset tea--it isn't that I want! I'm afraid
I'm losing hold of my old faith in the ultimate triumph of sincerity
and truth. Seems that men, even men like Martin Landis, don't want the
old-fashioned virtues in a woman. They don't look for womanly
qualities, but prefer to be amused and entertained and flattered and
appealed to through the senses. Brains and heart don't seem to count. I
wish I could be a butterfly! But I can never be like Isabel. When she
is near I feel like a bump-on-a-log. My tongue is like lead while she
chatters and holds the attention of Martin. She compels attention and
crowds out everybody else. Oh, yea! as we youngsters used to say when
things went wrong when we were little. Perhaps things will come out
right some day. I'll just keep on taking that boneset tea!"