However, he made a feeble clutch at
Mercantile Mendacity, and stammered out, "Here's a many ingredients, and
the governor's out walking, and he's been and locked the drawer where we
keeps our haulhoppy. You couldn't come again in half an hour, Miss, could
ye?" She acquiesced readily, for she was not habitually called Miss, and
she had a follower, a languid one, living hard by, and belonged to a
class which thinks it consistent to come after its followers.
Dicky saw her safe off, and groaned at his ease. Here was a prescription
full of new chemicals, sovereign, no doubt, _i.e.,_ deadly when applied
Jennerically; and the very directions for use were in Latin words he had
encountered in no prescription before. A year ago Dicky would have
counted the prescribed ingredients on his fingers, and then taken down an
equal number of little articles, solid or liquid, mixed them, delivered
them, and so to cricket, serene; but now, his mind, to apply the
universal cant, was "in a transition state." A year's practice had
chilled the youthful valour which used to scatter Epsom salts or oxalic
acid, magnesia or corrosive sublimate.
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