“Put it out at once,” she said.
“I can’t,” said Freda. “It’s gone.”
“Oh dear,” said the nurse. “Does anyone know what that star was made of?”
But nobody knew what the star was made of. Even the mother of the little girl whose party it was didn’t know.
“What did it taste like?” they asked Freda.
But she had swallowed it so quickly that she didn’t know.
“You’re a very naughty little girl,” said the nurse. And of course you can all guess what happened then. Freda got off her chair and lay down on the floor, and began to bellow at the top of her voice.
But it was far too serious a case to be treated merely by sending her to sit upstairs. For all that anyone knew the star might have been made of the most deadly kind of poison. So Freda’s nurse ran off and found her shawl, and she picked her up off the floor (where she was still bellowing at the top of her voice) and wrapped the shawl round her and carried her away and put her into a taxi, and they drove back to Freda’s home, and she missed the dancing altogether—which served her perfectly right.
And when they got home, the nurse went to the cupboard in the corner of the room and took out a very large bottle and a very small glass, and filled the very small glass from the very large bottle, and then she said to Freda:
“Now you must drink this.”