pensary, before it suggests any more inquiries
to that active mind of yours? No? You want to see an experiment? You
want to see how the little bubbles are made? Well, well! there is no
harm in that. We will let Mrs. Armadale see the bubbles," continued the
doctor, in the tone of a parent humoring a spoiled child. "Try if you
can find a few of those fragments that we want, Benjamin. I dare say the
workmen (slovenly fellows!) have left something of the sort about the
house or the grounds."

The Resident Dispenser left the room.

As soon as his back was turned, the doctor began opening and shutting
drawers in various parts of the Dispensary, with the air of a man who
wants something in a hurry, and does not know where to find it. "Bless
my soul!" he exclaimed, suddenly stopping at the drawer from which he
had taken his cards of invitation on the previous day, "what's this? A
key? A duplicate key, as I'm alive, of my fumigating apparatus upstairs!
Oh dear, dear, how careless I get," said the doctor, turning round
briskly to Miss Gwilt. "I hadn't the least idea that I possessed this
second key. I should never have missed it. I do assure you I should
never have missed it if anybody had taken it out of the drawer!" He
bustled away to the other end of the room--without closing the drawer,
and without taking away the duplicate key.

In silence, Miss Gwilt listened till he had done. In silence, she glided
to the drawer. In silence, she took the key and hid it in her apron
pocket.

The Dispenser came back, with the fragments required of him, collected
in a basin. "Thank you, Benjamin," said the doctor. "Kindly cover them
with water, while I get the bottle down."

As accidents sometimes happen in the most perfectly regulated families,
so clumsiness sometimes possesses itself of the most perfectly
disciplined hands. In the process of its transfer from the shelf to the
doctor, the bottle slipped and fell smashed to pieces on the floor.

"Oh, my fingers and thumbs!" cried the doctor, with an air of comic
vexation, "what in the world do you mean by playing me such a wicked
trick as that? Well, well, well--it can't be helped. Have we got any
more of it, Benjamin?"

"Not a drop, sir."

"Not a drop!" echoed the doctor. "My dear madam, what excuses can I
offer you? My clumsiness has made our little experiment impossible for
to-day. Remind me to order some more to-morrow, Benjamin, and don't
think of troubling yourself to put that