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 potted meat—and the Major broke his tooth on it.”

It was the next day that parcel arrived. A shower of white balls descended to the floor, two odd socks, some peppermint bull’s-eyes, a letter, and the bottle.

“Great Heavens!” muttered Horatius, gingerly inspecting the collection. “What has the old girl sent?” He opened the letter, read it, and asked for whiskey.

“My dear nephew,” he read, in a hushed voice. “I am sending you a bottle of the new milk—Dr. Trapheim’s Pepnotised Milk. As you will gather from perusing the label on the bottle, it is a marvellous discovery. At first I feared from the inventor’s name that he might be of Germanic extraction, but subsequent inquiries enabled me to discover that he is in reality the son of a Swedish Jew who married a girl from Salt Lake City. So, of course, he must be all right.

“In this wonderful milk, my dear nephew, there are three million germs to the cubic foot—or is it inch? I forget which. Anyway, a very large number of nutritious germs exist in it. You remember poor Pluto?