Barry Pain

“ Take any bottle that is partially filled with medicine prescribed for someone else; empty out the medicine, and rinse the bottle once, hastily and perfunctorily. Procure for the sum of one penny from the village grocer or chemist a piece of black, hard, stick-liquorice. Take it home, and wrap it up securely in the daily paper that your uncle has not yet seen and is certain to want after luncheon. ”

“ I fully believe and hold that all cats are feminine, all dogs masculine, and that cows in the road, if they stare at one, are ipso facto bulls. Could anything less than a woman do that? I take a fashion paper, look better at dinner than at breakfast, like chocolate, shy things with a wrist action, and ignore all questions of physiology. ”

“ The thing faded out, of course, with time, as such things do. My uncle left that neighbourhood, and I saw no more of Harry Silvester. I learnt long afterwards that he had gone into the tea-trade, married, and was living at Clapham; and I still fail to understand how the Harry Silvester that I knew could in his manhood do such things. However, we most of us outlive our romantic side—sooner or later. ”

“ Of course, you can make a sort of substitute cork out of a wad of clean note-paper, but it is an untidy-looking mockery. Now at my uncle's house the servants were always too glad to get me medicine bottles or anything else that I wanted. Besides in the country I always went much longer walks than when I was living in London; on a long walk a child naturally wants to feel adventurous, quite new, and traveller-like ”

“ Every affair of the heart ought to end in marriage.”
“You take,” I answered, “a very large size in generalisations. I suppose you mean that if any man and woman love each other, they ought to marry if they are free to marry. Sometimes they are not free; sometimes there's not enough money; sometimes the love's one-sided; very often it is temporary—the result of inexperience. Besides, no affair of the heart ought to end in marriage ”

“ Place the parcel thus formed on the dining-room table—or on any polished table where dents show easily—and then smite it patiently for some time with the handle of the poker. When the liquorice is broken in small pieces, place it in the bottle, fill up with water, cork, and shake vehemently. ”