“Yes, if you like; Pine-breeze will show you the way—but, Jane, say nothing to her of what occurred yesterday; she thinks nobody knows except one of the servants here.”
“I’ll say nothing,” replied Jane; “but I’ve got some antikamnia tabloids in my pocket, fortunately, and I’ll just make her take one.”
“All right,” said Leslie; “but for goodness sake don’t poison her.”
This was another point on which Jane had not altered. As a girl she had been possessed by a passion for drugs, and would swallow anything in the way of medicine she came across or was given. She had always been doctoring rabbits and other unfortunate animals, and had once nearly poisoned herself by taking half a bottle of pain-killer for a dose. And now here she was, nearly fifteen years after, in Japan, going upstairs to doctor Campanula, with just the same manner and seriousness of face with which long ago, medicine bottle in hand, she would give the order: “Prize its mouth open, Dick; don’t hurt it. Steady now, I’m going to pour.”
Quarter of an hour later she came down triumphant.
“She took it like a lamb. She’s the dearest child! Now I’m off. I have a hundred things to do. Will you walk down with me as far as the hotel?”
He accompanied her to the hotel, and neither of them spoke much on the way.
“I won’t ask you in,” said Jane, when they reached the door, “because it wouldn’t be proper. Now let me see. To-morrow is the garden-party; we might do something to-day, you and Campanula and I—might not we?”
“We could run over to Mogi,” he said. “We can get rikshas, have luncheon there, and come back to tea at my place; and to-night there’s an affair on at the O Suwa temple, we might go there. Shall I call for you at twelve or so?”
“Yes,” said Jane, “if you’ll bring a chaperon. You see, now George is away I must be awfully ‘propindicular,’ like that person in Uncle Remus—the Terrapin—wasn’t it?”