“What’s that you say? What’s that you say?” squeaked the voice, as if its owner were in a terrible rage. And the very next moment Bedelia felt a dreadfully choking sensation, and out of her mouth popped the queerest little figure that Sally had ever laid eyes upon.
He was not more than half an inch tall and he was pink all over, even his eyes and his hair and his long, flowing beard—bright pink like Bedelia’s tongue. And there he stood, glaring at Bedelia as well as he could, for the bright sunshine made him blink dreadfully, and at the same time he bowed politely to Sally, whom he evidently regarded with approval. And Sally bowed gravely in return, although she could hardly keep from laughing outright at the queer little creature with his round, flat body, his thin, crooked arms and spindling legs, and above all his extremely pompous manner.
“In me you behold Tablet—D. Tablet,” he remarked without further preliminaries.
He paused a moment, and Sally exclaimed impetuously, “I have heard of dyspep—” Here she stopped abruptly, afraid she had already given offense. “Dyspepsia tablet” she had been going to say.
But much to her relief, the little creature nodded affably and quickly continued, “Children like you, who eat in moderation and show some breeding while they eat, have no need of my good offices. Only creatures who stuff like pigs have to be reproved by me.”
There was a slight pause and D. Tablet presently continued, evidently flattered by the attention of his audience, although he still glared at Bedelia out of his pink eyes which had now become accustomed to the sunlight.
“Know, then,” he went on, “that your stomach and everybody’s stomach is simply a storehouse in which the food is put away on shelves in pantries and cupboards as fast as it is swallowed. Everybody who comes into this country has a D. Tablet in his stomach to attend to this business. He may not know it, but we are there all the same. Therefore when you pile in fifty different things at once and drown it all with oceans of liquid, how can we possibly get things in any kind of order? We don’t, and then you are ill, as you were yesterday.”