Elizabeth von Arnim: The Solitary Summer – Reading Progress Update: 87 of 190 Pages

After one of her daughter’s had fallen into a neighbor’s slimy green pond:

“It was no use sending for the doctor because there is no doctor within reach; a fact which simplifies life amazingly when you ave children.  During the time we lived in town the doctor was never out of the house.  Hardly a day passed but one or other of the Three had a spot, or, as the expressive German has it, a Pickel,* and what parent could resist sending for a doctor when one lived round the corner?  But doctors are like bad habits — once you have shaken them off you discover how much better you are without them; and as for the babies, since theiy inhabit a garden, prompt bed and the above-mentioned simple remedy** have been all that is necessary to keep them robust.”

______________________________________________

* which I’d actually rather translate as “pimple”, myself …
** That remedy being castor oil, poor lambs!!

______________________________________________

And then we get to the point where it becomes clear once and for all why Elizabeth loved Austen:

“I had heard of a little boy who had drunk seltzer water and thereupon been seized with typhoid fever and had died, and if, I asked myself with a power of reasoning unusual in a woman, you die after seltzer water, what will you not do after frog-pond?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Summary post HERE.
Further reading progress updates:

Original post:
ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/1783651/reading-progress-update-i-ve-read-87-out-of-190-pages