“I wish to purchase some laudanum,” Daisy faltered. “I wish it to relieve a pain which is greater than I can bear.”
“Toothache, most probably?” intimated the brisk little doctor. “I know what it is. Lord bless you! I’ve had it until I thought I should jump through the roof. Laudanum’s a first-class thing, but I can tell you of something better––jerk ’em out, that’s my recipe,” he said, with an odd little smile. “Of course every one to their notion, and if you say laudanum––and nothing else––why it’s laudanum you shall have; but remember it’s powerful. Why, ten drops of it would cause––death.”
“How many drops did you say?” asked Daisy, bending forward eagerly. “I––I want to be careful in taking it.”
“Ten drops, I said, would poison a whole family, and twenty a regiment. You must use it very carefully, miss. Remember I have warned you,” he said, handing her the little bottle filled with a dark liquid and labeled conspicuously, “Laudanum––a poison.”
“Please give me my change quickly,” she said, a strange, deadly sickness creeping over her.
“Certainly, ma’am,” assented the obliging little man, handing her back the change.
Daisy quite failed to notice that he returned her the full amount she had paid him in his eagerness to oblige her, and he went happily back to compounding his drugs in the rear part of the shop, quite unconscious he was out the price of the laudanum.
He was dreaming of the strange beauty of the young girl, and the smile deepened on his good-humored face as he remembered how sweetly she had gazed up at him.
Meanwhile Daisy struggled on, clasping her treasure close to her throbbing heart. She remembered Ruth had pointed out an old shaft to her from her window; it had been unused many years, she had said.