"What is it?" I screamed.
"It's--it's what I thought it was."
"What you thought it was?"
"It's 'Aunt Jane's Jalap.'"
"'Aunt Jane's Jalap!'"
The words came from the three medical gentlemen in a sort of chorus. As for me, in spite of my piteous condition, I felt inclined to tear my hair--and Hughes's!
"I see, quite clearly, how the mistake arose. It was in this way. There were two sample bottles of the mixture, only in one of them the quantities were wrong. I placed it where I generally keep my laudanum--so that I shouldn't mistake it. And when I found it missing, of course I thought it was the laudanum which had gone."
"Was it--was it poison?"
"Not a bit of it, dear boy! The finest medicine in the world! Only in that particular bottle there was a little too much jalap, and, taking it on the top of such a dinner as you'd been eating, it a little upset you--that was all."
That was all?