And as for you folk, you seem to have hidden yourselves as far in the woods as you could.

Great Heavens! You might very well all die without a soul coming to help you." After warming himself for a little while at the stove he approached the bedside.

"Well, good mother, so we have taken the notion to be sick, just like people who have money to spend on such things!" But after a brief examination he ceased to jest, saying:--"She really is sick, I do believe." It was with no affectation that he spoke in the fashion of the peasantry; his grandfather and his father were tillers of the soil, and he had gone straight from the farm to study medicine in Quebec, amongst other young fellows for the most part like himself--grandsons, if not sons of farmers--who had all clung to the plain country manner and the deliberate speech of their fathers.

He was tall and heavily built, with a grizzled moustache, and his large face wore the slightly aggrieved expression of one whose native cheerfulness is being continually dashed through listening to the tale of others' ills for which he is bound to show a decent sympathy.
Chapdelaine came in when he had unharnessed and fed the horse.

He and his children sat at a little distance while the doctor was going through his programme.
Every one of them was thinking:--"Presently we shall know what is the matter, and the doctor will give her the right medicines." But when the examination was ended, instead of turning to the bottles in his bag, he seemed uncertain and began to ask interminable questions.