With one accord they looked. There was some slight tittering among them at first, but the dignity and gravity with which the towering J. Rufus, hale and hearty and in the pink of condition, withstood that inspection, checked all inclination to levity. Moreover, he was entirely too prosperous-looking to be a “capper.”
“I owe you my life, Doctor,” said Wallingford gratefully. “I never travel without those other two bottles of the Sciatacata,” and with the air of a debt of honor paid, he pressed back through the crowd to the sidewalk.
His wife was laughing, yet confused.
“I don’t see how you can make yourself so conspicuous,” she protested in a low voice.
“Why not?” he laughed. “We public characters must boost one another.”
“And the price,” they heard the doctor declaiming, “is only one dollar per bottle, or six for five dollars, guar-an-teed not only to drive sciatic rheumatism from the sys-tem, but to cure the most ob-stin-ate cases of ague, Bright’s disease, cat-a-lepsy, coughs, colds, cholera, dys-pepsia, ery-sip-e-las, fever and chills, gas-tritis”—
“And so on down to X Y Z, etc.,” commented Wallingford as they walked away.
His wife looked up at him curiously.
“Jim, did you honestly take four bottles of that medicine?” she wanted to know.
“Take it?” he repeated in amazement. “Certainly not! It isn’t meant for wise people to take. It wouldn’t do them any good.”