“O my”—cough—“Jo!” exclaims the Signor. “I shall be,”—cough and sneeze, “so ill,”—cough, “eet ees in my nose.”
As for the Professor, being just over the horrible compound, he has nearly fainted.
*****
The room is cleared.
Servants sent to open windows. Sneezing, coughing, and a suffocating, nauseating sensation, experienced by everyone except Layder, who now enters the drawing-room with a jar.
Happy Thought.—To speak with an air of authority as President, and tell him that it is really too bad of him to carry such a liquid about. He exculpates himself by saying that the Professor didn't know how to use it, and that he oughtn't to have taken the things out of his Practical Joke Box.
“His what box?” we ask.
“My practical joke box,” he replies, quite calmly. “I've got a box full of practical jokes in chemicals. They're very amusing,” he adds, “if used properly.”
The horrid smell is gradually spreading itself throughout the lower part of the house. It is stealing into the drawing-room, it is getting into the morning-room, into the hall, into the passages.
“You can't get rid of it,” Layder informs us, “for two or three days. But it's first-rate for killing all insects.”