“Pshaw! What accident could he meet with in walking to the village with a bottle of liniment and back, unless—”
“Yes?” cried Aunt Hannah, excitedly; “unless what, my dear?”
“He has opened the bottle and sat down by the roadside to drink it all.”
“Oh, my dear, surely you don’t think that Vane would be so foolish.”
“I don’t know,” cried the doctor, “perhaps so. He is always experimentalising over something.”
“But,” cried Aunt Hannah, with a horrified look, “it was liniment for outward application only!”
“Exactly: that’s what I mean,” said the doctor. “He has not been content without trying the experiment of how it would act rubbed on inside instead of out.”
“Then that poor boy may be lying somewhere by the roadside in the agonies of death—poisoned,” cried Aunt Hannah in horror; but the doctor burst out into a roar of laughter.
“Oh, it’s too bad, my dear,” cried Aunt Hannah, tearfully. “You are laughing at me and just, too, when I am so anxious about Vane.”
“I’m not: a young rascal. He has met those sweet youths from the rectory, and they are off somewhere, or else stopping there.”