“What does it mean, dear?” I venture. “It means that you had not been gone an hour when I found Ted with that little two-ounce phial you left half filled with laudanum on the lower pantry shelf yesterday. He had evidently climbed a chair and reached it down. The cork was out and the bottle was empty. You can perhaps imagine my feelings. I didn't know whether he had taken the stuff or not, but was in an agony of anxiety on the point, you may be sure. The doctor was away hunting, you were away hunting, and here was I fairly consumed with apprehension lest my baby had poisoned himself.”
Like a flash the whole mystery of my stupor sleep revealed itself to me. “Baby barlo”—flask—laudanum phial—whiskey—it was all as clear as day.
I said: “But it transpires he hadn't taken any of the laudanum, eh?”
“Yes, thank Heaven! But for all of you——-”
“Listen, please. All I want to say is that what Ted missed I got. Do you understand?”
“Do I understand! Are you in your sane and sober senses, William?”
“I have a shrewd suspicion that I am,” I replied, with a slight laugh, “and being so, I will repeat it: Baby didn't down the poison; but I guess I made up for that, because I did!”
Then I told her the story.
Of course I gained my point. It ended with—— but, no matter. The Judge stood the supper in consideration of quail on toast being incorporated in the menu, and we sat around the festive board in the Queen's Arms a week later, and talked over our Xmas Eve hunting match. No one was disposed to question the sentiment in a speech by the Doc, who declared: “Fellows, our prowess as a gun club is growing, and I verily believe the old district is getting to be once more something like a half-decent hunting ground. Let us keep together, be as men and brothers always, and—I was nearly overlooking it—let us invariably wash out our pocket pistols before filling 'em up afresh.”