Page:The Soul of a Bishop.djvu/127

Rh manner, his shock of black hair. He wanted that tonic—with grave misgivings.

"If you think this tonic is the wiser course," he began.

"I'd give it you if you were my father," said Dr. Dale.

"I've got everything for it," he added.

"You mean you can make it up—without a prescription."

"I can't give you a prescription. The essence of it It's a distillate I have been trying. It isn't in the Pharmacopœia."

Again the bishop had a twinge of misgiving.

But in the end he succumbed. He didn't want to take the stuff, but also he did not want to go without his promised comfort.

Presently Dale had given him a little phial—and was holding up to the window a small medicine glass into which he was pouring very carefully twenty drops of the precious fluid. "Take it only," he said, "when you feel you must."

"It is the most golden of liquids," said the bishop, peering at it.

"When you want more I will make you more. Later of course, it will be possible to write a prescription. Now add the water—so.

"It becomes opalescent. How beautifully the light plays in it!"

"Take it."