TheMagic Medicine
TheMagic Medicine
BYDENIS MACKAIL
BYDENIS MACKAIL
BYDENIS MACKAIL
BY
DENIS MACKAIL
Once upon a time there was a very naughty little girl called Freda. She was what is known as an only child, and so you might have thought that her father and mother and her grandparents and her uncles and aunts and her nurse would have had all the more time for teaching her to be good. But though this was perfectly true, and they all worked very hard at saying “Don’t do that, Freda,” or “Put that down at once!” she continued to be extremely naughty.
She never tried to be polite to anybody, she used to tear her clothes on purpose, she used to break her toys, and walk in puddles, and snatch things from other children, and say things that weren’t true, and eat gravel and blow bubbles in her milk. If there are any other naughty things that I have forgotten to mention, then she did them too. And when she was scolded, instead of sayingshe was sorry, she used to lie down on the ground and bellow at the top of her voice.
For this reason the people who knew her best grew to be rather careful about scolding her—especially in the Park, where her behaviour had often attracted quite a crowd; but, of course, the only result of this was that she became far naughtier than ever.
Is that perfectly clear? Well, now we come to the story.
One afternoon she was taken to a children’s party, where there was not only a bran-pie but also a conjuror. Freda was fairly good while she was being dressed, and still fairly good while she was driving there in the taxi with her nurse, but as soon as she got to the party itself she just let herself go. She made a face at a little boy who was smaller than she was until he cried and had to be taken to sit upstairs. She snatched a balloon from another child and burst it, so that the child also cried and had to be taken to sit upstairs. And when the bran-pie came in, she felt about in it for nearly two minutes until she had found the largest parcel—which, of course, is cheating—and afterwards, because she didn’t like what was inside, she forced another little girl to change presents with her, and the other little girl cried and had to be taken to sit upstairs.
And when the conjuror was in the middle of his most difficult trick and had just got to the part where he was going to cut open an orange and take out of it a watch which he had borrowed from the father of the little girl who was giving the party, I am sorry to say that Freda shouted out: “It isn’t the same orange!”
This was exceedingly naughty of her, and distressed the conjuror more than I can say, as well as spoiling all the pleasure of the good children who thought itwasthe same orange. And several of them were so much upset that they cried, and had to be taken to sit upstairs.
Freda’s nurse had seen her doing all these naughty things, but she had said to herself: “It’s no use my saying anything to Miss Freda now, because if I do she will only lie down on the floor and bellow at the top of her voice. It will be better to speak to her about it when we get home.” So she contented herself by making a stern face when she thought that Freda and no one else could see her. Only, as a matter of fact, she did this just at the wrong moment and missed Freda altogether, and only succeeded in frightening a little boy in a kilt. And he cried, and had to be taken to sit upstairs.
So Freda went on being naughtier and naughtier, and the room upstairs became fuller and fuller of other children, but the lady whose little girl was giving the party didn’t like to say anything because she thought, “Freda is an only child, and, anyhow, I needn’t ask her another time.” And Freda’s nurse didn’t like to say anything because (as I have already told you) she was afraid that Freda might disgrace her by lying down on the floor and bellowing at the top of her voice.
Is that all perfectly clear? Well, now we get on to what happened next.
All the children went into the dining-room, where there were so many buns and chocolates and crackers and pink cakes and sandwiches and other things of this nature that their eyes nearly popped out of their heads. And in the middle of the biggest table there was an enormous cake, and on the top of the enormous cake there was a rather smaller cake, and on the top of the rather smaller cake there was a golden star.
And as soon as Freda saw this golden star, she pointed at it (which, of course, she shouldn’t have done) and said in a very loud, clear voice: “I WANT THAT STAR.”
If only her nurse had heard these words, she would most certainly have said something which would have made Freda liedown on the floor and bellow at the top of her voice. For there is no need to explain how naughty it is to point at things in other people’s houses and say that you want them. No grown-up person would ever dream of doing a thing like that.
But, as a matter of fact, the nurse had just met another nurse who was a great friend of hers, and although they had had a long talk in the Park only that very morning, they still found they had so much to tell each other that neither of them heard what Freda was saying.
Is that all perfectly clear? Well, now Freda reallyisgoing to be naughty.
For I am grieved to say that, having pushed a number of other children out of the way (several of whom cried and had to be taken to sit upstairs) she went on pushing until she had got right up to the middle table. And then, when no one was looking, she stood up very quickly on a chair and snatched at the golden star.
I really don’t know what, exactly, she meant to do with it, because she had no pocket in her party frock; and very likely if she had been left to herself she would have got tired of the golden star and dropped it under the table.
But just at this moment a little boy in a white silk blouse looked up and saw what she had done.
“Oh!” he said, in a very loud, clear voice. “Freda has taken the golden star.”
And all the other children began to shout and tell each other that Freda had taken the golden star. And Freda’s nurse heard the noise, and came quickly to see what had happened.
“What’s the matter, Miss Freda?” she said. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” said Freda.
“She did,” said a little girl who had just lost all her front teeth. “She took the golden star off the top of the cake.”
“Put it back at once,” said Freda’s nurse.
“Shan’t!” said Freda.
And then the nurse saw it in her hand and tried to take it from her. And Freda never stopped to think what the star might be made of, but put it very quickly into her mouth, and crunched it into three bits, and swallowed them all with one swallow.
“I’ve swallowed it,” she said.
Her nurse turned first pink, then white, and then green in the face.
“Put it out at once,” she said.
“I can’t,” said Freda. “It’s gone.”
“Oh dear,” said the nurse. “Does anyone know what that star was made of?”
But nobody knew what the star was made of. Even the mother of the little girl whose party it was didn’t know.
“What did it taste like?” they asked Freda.
But she had swallowed it so quickly that she didn’t know.
“You’re a very naughty little girl,” said the nurse. And of course you can all guess what happened then. Freda got off her chair and lay down on the floor, and began to bellow at the top of her voice.
But it was far too serious a case to be treated merely by sending her to sit upstairs. For all that anyone knew the star might have been made of the most deadly kind of poison. So Freda’s nurse ran off and found her shawl, and she picked her up off the floor (where she was still bellowing at the top of her voice) and wrapped the shawl round her and carried her away and put her into a taxi, and they drove back to Freda’s home, and she missed the dancing altogether—which served her perfectly right.
And when they got home, the nurse went to the cupboard in the corner of the room and took out a very large bottle and avery small glass, and filled the very small glass from the very large bottle, and then she said to Freda:
“Now you must drink this.”
At these words Freda lay down on the floor and bellowed at the top of her voice.
“If you don’t drink it,” said the nurse, “you will have a terrible pain.”
“Whoo-hoo-hoo,” said Freda (for this was the way that she bellowed), and she crawled right under the table—in her best frock—and stayed there.
“Now, Miss Freda,” said the nurse presently, when everything else had failed, “I shall put this glass on the table here, and I shall go upstairs and turn on your bath, and if you haven’t drunk it by the time I come back again, I shall be very angry indeed.”
Then she left the room, and after a second Freda came out from under the table and picked up the glass and sloshed all the slimy stuff in it into the fireplace, and it spluttered and fizzed and disappeared from sight.
And when she had done this, she was terribly frightened.
She was so frightened that when the nurse came back and said, “Ah, that’s a good little girl. I see you’ve drunk it all up nicely,” she never said anything at all. She didn’t even bellow at the top of her voice.
All the time she was having her bath she was trying to say what she had done, but she never could quite bring herself to do it. And after she was in bed she called out suddenly to her nurse, meaning to say what she had done with the slimy stuff in the little glass; but when the nurse came in, she just couldn’t get it out. She pretended that she had wanted a drink of water, and the nurse gave it her and went away again, and Freda was left alone—still feeling terribly frightened.
“Supposing,” she thought, “that star reallywasmade of poison. Supposing that stuff I threw in the fire might have saved me. Oh dear, if the poison kills me now, it will be all my own fault.”
It was a long time before she could go to sleep, and in the morning she hadn’t been awake for more than five minutes when it all came back to her. But she had left it so long now, that it was quite impossible to tell anyone.
Is that all perfectly clear? Well, now I’ll tell you something that Freda doesn’t know to this day.
The mother of the little girl who had given the party had been so anxious about Freda that the very first thing in the morning she had telephoned to the shop where the cake had come from, and had asked the lady there what the star was made of. And the lady had said: “Sugar.” And the mother of the little girl who had given the party had telephoned to Freda’s house and had asked to speak to Freda’s nurse and had told her that the star was made of sugar. And when Freda’s nurse heard this she was very much relieved, but at the same time she wasn’t going to tell Freda that she had made her drink that slimy stuff (as she thought) for nothing at all. “If I do that,” she said to herself, “I shall never get Miss Freda to drink any medicine again.”
So she said nothing; and Freda—who of course hadn’t drunk even a drop of the slimy stuff—went about wondering when the poison was going to begin working, and whether it would hurt horribly when it did.
She was so frightened now that if only she could have got at the large bottle, she would have drunk it all up without saying anything—and that reallywouldhave made her ill. But she couldn’t get at the large bottle, because the cupboard was out of her reach.
And so what do you think she did?
She went to the china pig in which she kept all her money, and she shook it and rattled it and waved it and waggled it untilat last a very bright sixpence (which her grandfather had once given her) rolled out on to the floor. And she picked up this sixpence, and waited carefully until her nurse went up to the bathroom to wash out the party frock which had got all dirty from being under the table last night, and then she ran downstairs very quickly and let herself out by the front door and ran off to the chemist’s shop, which was just round the corner.
The chemist was a very old man with spectacles, and in the ordinary way Freda was rather frightened of him, but she was still more frightened of being poisoned, so she pushed open his door—which, always made a little bell ring—and went straight up to his counter and knocked on it with her sixpence.
Presently the old chemist came out and looked at her through his spectacles.
“And what can I do for you, miss?” he said.
“I want to buy some medicine,” said Freda, “that would save someone from being poisoned by a golden star on the top of a cake at a party. And it mustn’t cost more than sixpence, because that’s all I’ve got.”
“Dear, dear,” said the chemist. “And are you the little girl who ate the golden star?”
Freda would have liked to say “No,” but she didn’t dare.
“Yes,” she said, in a very small voice.
“Dear, dear,” said the chemist again. “That wasn’t very good of you, was it?”
“No,” said Freda, in a still smaller voice.
“And when did you eat it?” asked the old chemist.
“Yesterday,” said Freda.
“And do you still feel quite well?” asked the old chemist.
“Yes,” said Freda. “But I only pretended to drink the slimy stuff they gave me last night, and I’m afraid the poison may still be waiting inside me.”
“It seems to me,” said the chemist, “that what you really need is some medicine to make you good. Eh?”
He looked at her very hard through his spectacles as he said this, and Freda agreed at once.
“Very well,” said the chemist. “You’ve come to me just in time. When I close this shop to-night I’m never coming back, and next week they’re going to start pulling it down. But I’ve got just one dose of medicine for naughty children left, and you shall have it now.”
Then he took Freda round behind the counter, and she watched him while he poured a little from one bottle, and a few drops from another, and a teaspoonful from a third, and just a dash from a fourth. And he mixed them all together until the stuff fizzed and turned pink, and then he poured most of it away and gave the rest to Freda.
“If you drink this,” he said, “it will make you good for twenty-four hours.”
She drank it down, and it tasted delicious.
“Thank you very much,” she said. “And here’s the sixpence.”
“Thankyou, miss,” said the old chemist. “And here’s your change.”
And he gave Freda half-a-crown from his pocket, and she ran back home as fast as she could and found the front door still open. So she ran right up to the nursery, and she dropped the half-crown into the china pig, and just at that moment the nurse came down from the bathroom.
“Why, Miss Freda,” she said; “how quiet you’ve been.”
“I cannot see,” said Freda, “why any child should ever be anything but quiet. Can you, my dear nurse?”
She was good now, you see, because the pink medicine was beginning to work. And this is the way that good children talk. But the nurse couldn’t make it out.
“Well,” she said, with a laugh, “I’m sure it’s strange to hear you say that, Miss Freda.”
“I fear,” said Freda, “that I have often been extremely thoughtless in the past, and that I have often allowed my temper to get the better of me, with the result that I have lain down on the floor and bellowed at the top of my voice. I can only express my regret that this should have been so, and my hope that you will overlook the trouble which I must have given you.”
The nurse opened her mouth very wide and stared.
“Good gracious, Miss Freda!” she said. “Whathascome over you?”
“Nothing, that I am aware of,” said Freda. “And now, if you will be good enough to dress me, I think it is time for us to go up to the Park.”
The nurse was more puzzled than ever, for Freda used almost always to make a fuss about going out. But she was still more puzzled by the time they came in again. For Freda hadn’t walked in a single puddle, she had insisted on keeping her gloves on, she hadn’t run, she hadn’t shouted, and she had refused to play with her usual friends because she said their games were so noisy and rough.
At lunch time she asked for a second helping of plain rice-pudding, and ate every scrap of it.
“This can’t last,” said the nurse to herself. But it did. And after tea, when Freda went down to the drawing-room, she quite terrified her mother by asking to be taught a hymn—although her father had just offered to play at tigers with her.
At half-past six she kissed her father and mother and went up to bed without being fetched. While she was having her bath, instead of splashing—and screaming when it was time to come out—she told her nurse how she had decided to give all her toys to the poor children who hadn’t got any. As soon as she was put to bed, she lay quietly down and went fast to sleep.
The nurse and Freda’s mother had a long talk together that evening.
“I don’t see how she can be ill, mum,” said the nurse, “because she’s eaten everything, and made no fuss about it at all. I just can’t make it out.”
“I don’t like it,” said Freda’s mother. “There’s nothing we can do now, and she’s certainly sleeping very peacefully—though I’ve never seen that look on her face before. But if she’s no different in the morning, I shall send for the doctor.”
In the morning Freda was just the same, and her mother sent for the doctor.
“It is very kind of you, dear mother,” said Freda, when she was told, “but I am feeling perfectly well. Would it not be better if the doctor were to visit some of the poor children in the hospital?”
And this alarmed Freda’s mother so much that she went quickly to the telephone, and asked Dr. Tomlinson to put off all his other patients and come at once. When he arrived, he found Freda sitting bolt upright in her little chair and reading a lesson-book.
“Well, my little dear,” he said, “and how do you feel this morning?”
“It is very good of you to ask,” said Freda. “I am happy to say that I am in the best of health. However, if you have a few minutes to spare, perhaps you would be kind enough to hold my book, and see whether I have yet learnt this beautiful poem about the poor little chimney-sweep.”
The doctor did nothing of the sort.
“I’m very glad you sent for me,” he told Freda’s mother, and he picked Freda up and felt her pulse and looked at her tongue and put his head first against her chest and then against her back.
“Well,” he said at length; “this beats me. The child seems to be perfectly well, and yet....” And he scowledand puffed out his cheeks and walked up and down, while all the time Freda’s mother and the nurse waited in the utmost anxiety.
And then all of a sudden the clock struck, and as it was twenty-four hours since Freda had swallowed the magic dose, the effect vanished in a single instant.
The grown-up people who were watching her saw her jump out of the chair, and fling the lesson-book on the ground.
“Now, now,” said Dr. Tomlinson, “oughtn’t you to be more careful with that pretty book?”
Freda gave one look at him, and then she lay down on the floor and bellowed at the top of her voice.
“Thank heaven!” said her mother.
“Our dear little Miss Freda has come back to us,” said the nurse.
“Hum-ha,” said Dr. Tomlinson. “Yes, I think we have cured her.”
He had to say this, you see, because he was a doctor. But Freda’s mother was so glad that her little girl was herself once more, that she thanked him over and over again. And all the time Freda lay on the floor and bellowed at the top of her voice, and from that moment she was just as naughty as ever she had been before.
I hope that’s all perfectly clear. Some people say that this story will encourage little girls to be naughty, by making them think that their parents and nurses prefer them like that. I should be very sorry if this were so, but of course it’s no use pretending that anything happened otherwise than I have said.
Freda never had another dose of the magic medicine, because the old chemist never came back to his shop, and—as he had said—the next week the men came and began to pull it down. But of course she didn’t go on being naughty for ever, because after a bit she grew up, and now she actually has a little girl of her own. And if there’s one thing that’s absolutely certain, it is that all grown-up people are always good.