grin; his eye glanced over it; it fell to shaking in his hand, chill
dismay penetrated his heart; and, to speak with oriental strictness, his
liver turned instantly to water. 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. An experiment or two by himself
and his compeers, with comments by the coroner, had enlightened him as to
the final result on the human body of potent chemicals fearlessly
administered, leaving him dark as to their distinctive qualities applied
remedially. What should he do? Run with the prescription to old Taylor in
the next street, a chemist of forty years? Alas! at his tender age he had
not omitted to chaff that reverend rival persistently and publicly.
Humble his establishment before the King Street one? Sooner perish drugs,
and come eternal cricket! And after all, why not? Drummer-boys, and
powder-monkeys, and other imps of his age that dealt destruction, did not
depopulate gratis; Mankind acknowledged their services in cash: but old