He was instantly chilled, for experience had taught him that when predictions of this character were made, nothing pleasant need be expected. Two seconds later his last hope departed as she turned from the closet and he beheld in her hands a quart bottle containing what appeared to be a section of grassy swamp immersed in a cloudy brown liquor. He stepped back, grave suspicion in his glance.
“What IS that?” he asked, in a hard voice.
Mrs. Schofield smiled upon him. “It's nothing,” she said. “That is, it's nothing you'll mind at all. It's just so you won't be so nervous.”
“I'm not nervous.”
“You don't think so, of course, dear,” she returned, and, as she spoke, she poured some of the brown liquor into a tablespoon. “People often can't tell when they're nervous themselves; but your Papa and I have been getting a little anxious about you, dear, and so I got this medicine for you.”
“WHERE'D you get it?” he demanded.
Mrs. Schofield set the bottle down and moved toward him, insinuatingly extending the full tablespoon.
“Here, dear,” she said; “just take this little spoonful, like a goo—”
“I want to know where it came from,” he insisted darkly, again stepping backward.
“Where?” she echoed absently, watching to see that nothing was spilled from the spoon as she continued to move toward him. “Why, I was talking to old Mrs. Wottaw at market this morning, and she said her son Clark used to have nervous trouble, and she told me about this medicine and how to have it made at the drug store. She told me it cured Clark, and—”