"Is it nasty?"
"No—like very strong bitter almonds or cherry-water; only in excess," he said. "Here is some cherry-water. Will you have a little in some water? It is not nasty, and it will not hurt you."
"No," said Leam with an offended air: "I do not want your horrid stuff."
"It would not hurt you, and it is really rather nice," returned Alick apologetically.
"It is horrid," said Learn.
"Well, perhaps you are better without it," Alick answered, quietly taking the bottle of prussic acid from her hands and replacing it on the shelf, well barricaded by phials and pots.
"You should not have taken it till I gave it you," said Leam proudly. "You are rude."
From this time the laboratory had the strangest fascination for Leam. She was never tired of going there, never tired of asking questions, all bearing on the subject of poisons, which seemed to have possessed her. Alick, unsuspecting, glad to teach, glad to see her interest awakened in anything he did or knew, in his own honest simplicity utterly unable to imagine that things could turn wrong on such a matter, told her all she asked and a great deal more; and still Leam's eyes wandered ever to the shelf where the little phial of thirty deaths was enclosed within its barricades.
One day while they were there Mrs. Corfield called Alick.
"Wait for me, I shall not be long," he said to Leam, and went out to his mother.