"Which is the most efficacious?" she asked in a dreamy voice, "the powder or the wheat?"
"They're both equally efficacious," he assured her uneasily. "The wheat is bad enough, but you've only to swallow a little of that white stuff--oh, you needn't even swallow it, hardly touch it with the tip of your tongue, and you're done for. It's a deadly poison--strychnine." He shuddered. "Oh, how could I bring such a thing home with me? I am possessed by the devil. Give me it!" He snatched the packet out of her hands and ran to the stove, in which big logs of wood were crackling and spluttering.
"Are you mad?" She saw what he was going to do--he intended burning it. She was at his side in one bound, and, tearing the packet out of his hand, she hid it in her pocket.
"Give me it, give me it!" he cried.
She laughed at him and pressed her hand tightly against her pocket.
Then he began to wail and lament. Alas, alas, what had he done? How could he ever have been so foolish as to bring such a thing into the house? He would never have another peaceful hour, he would always be thinking that an accident might happen.
"But why," she asked in a calm voice, looking at him fixedly with her black eyes, "should an accident happen?"
"Alas, alas!" he moaned, and buried his head in his hands.
She had to comfort him. Her words calmed him; he was like a child. Then he asked her to stroke him; she did that also. At last he wanted to be helped to bed; he must have been drinking, although he denied it. The maid had to come as well; and whilst she took off his riding-boots he put his heavy head on his wife's shoulder, and she had to hold him in her arms.
When they had got him to bed they both looked very hot and flushed, for he had been pinching them in fun and had pretended to be quite helpless.