Ever since he was a baby,” continued Mrs. Tucker, taking up the thread of conversation where her husband had paused, “Tommy has had a great fear of the cellar.
Even now, big boy that he is, he does not love me enough to fetch and carry for me through that door and down those steps.
It is not natural for a child to act like he does, and what with chinking the cracks with rags and kissing the lock, he drives me to the point where I fear he may become daft-like as he grows older.”
The doctor, eager to satisfy new customers, and dimly remembering some lectures on the nervous system received when he was a medical student, asked some general questions, listened to the boy’s heart, examined his lungs and looked at his eyes and fingernails.
At last he commented:
“Looks like a fine, healthy boy to me.”
“Yes, all except the cellar door,” replied the father.
“Has he ever been sick?”
“Naught but fits once or twice when he cried himself blue in the face,” answered the mother.
“Frightened?”
“Perhaps.
It was always in the kitchen.”
“Suppose you go out and let me talk to Tommy by myself?”
And there sat the doctor very much at his ease and the little six-year-old boy very uneasy.
“Tommy, what is there in the cellar you are afraid of?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you ever seen it?”
“No, sir.”
“Ever heard it? smelt it?”
“No, sir.”
“Then how do you know there is something there?”
“Because.”
“Because what?”
“Because there is.”
That was as far as Tommy would go, and at last his seeming obstinacy annoyed the physician even as it had for several years annoyed Mr. Tucker.
He went to the door and called the parents into the office.
“He thinks there is something down in the cellar,” he stated.
The Tuckers simply looked at each other.
“That’s foolish,” commented Mr. Tucker.
“‘Tis just a plain cellar with junk and firewood and cider barrels in it,” added Mrs. Tucker.
“Since we moved into that house, I have not missed a day without going down those stone steps and I know there is nothing there.
But the lad has always screamed when the door was open.
I recall now that since he was a child in arms he has always screamed when the door was open.”
“He thinks there is something there,” said the doctor.
“That is why we brought him to you,” replied the father.
“It’s the child’s nerves.
Perhaps foetida, or something, will calm him.”
“I tell you what to do,” advised the doctor.
“He thinks there is something there.
Just as soon as he finds that he is wrong and that there is nothing there, he will forget about it.
He has been humored too much.
What you want to do is to open that cellar door and make him stay by himself in the kitchen.
Nail the door open so he can not close it.
Leave him alone there for an hour and then go and laugh at him and show him how silly it was for him to be afraid of an empty cellar.
I will give you some nerve and blood tonic and that will help, but the big thing is to show him that there is nothing to be afraid of.”
On the way back to the Tucker home Tommy broke away from his parents.
They caught him after an exciting chase and kept him between them the rest of the way home.
Once in the house he disappeared and was found in the guest room under the bed.
The afternoon being already spoiled for Mr. Tucker, he determined to keep the child under observation for the rest of the day.
Tommy ate no supper, in spite of the urgings of the unhappy mother.