Is that all perfectly clear? Well, now I’ll tell you something that Freda doesn’t know to this day.
The mother of the little girl who had given the party had been so anxious about Freda that the very first thing in the morning she had telephoned to the shop where the cake had come from, and had asked the lady there what the star was made of. And the lady had said: “Sugar.” And the mother of the little girl who had given the party had telephoned to Freda’s house and had asked to speak to Freda’s nurse and had told her that the star was made of sugar. And when Freda’s nurse heard this she was very much relieved, but at the same time she wasn’t going to tell Freda that she had made her drink that slimy stuff (as she thought) for nothing at all. “If I do that,” she said to herself, “I shall never get Miss Freda to drink any medicine again.”
So she said nothing; and Freda—who of course hadn’t drunk even a drop of the slimy stuff—went about wondering when the poison was going to begin working, and whether it would hurt horribly when it did.
She was so frightened now that if only she could have got at the large bottle, she would have drunk it all up without saying anything—and that really would have made her ill. But she couldn’t get at the large bottle, because the cupboard was out of her reach.
And so what do you think she did?
She went to the china pig in which she kept all her money, and she shook it and rattled it and waved it and waggled it until at last a very bright sixpence (which her grandfather had once given her) rolled out on to the floor. And she picked up this sixpence, and waited carefully until her nurse went up to the bathroom to wash out the party frock which had got all dirty from being under the table last night, and then she ran downstairs very quickly and let herself out by the front door and ran off to the chemist’s shop, which was just round the corner.
The chemist was a very old man with spectacles, and in the ordinary way Freda was rather frightened of him, but she was still more frightened of being poisoned, so she pushed open his door—which, always made a little bell ring—and went straight up to his counter and knocked on it with her sixpence.
Presently the old chemist came out and looked at her through his spectacles.
“And what can I do for you, miss?” he said.
“I want to buy some medicine,” said Freda, “that would save someone from being poisoned by a golden star on the top of a cake at a party. And it mustn’t cost more than sixpence, because that’s all I’ve got.”