‘Noel wasn’t sniggering,’ said Alice in a hurry; ‘it is only his taking so much interest in what you were saying makes him look like that. Be quiet, H. O., and don’t you make faces, either. Do go on, Dicky dear.’
So Dicky went on.
‘There must be hundreds of millions of bottles of medicines sold every year. Because all the different medicines say, “Thousands of cures daily,” and if you only take that as two thousand, which it must be, at least, it mounts up. And the people who sell them must make a great deal of money by them because they are nearly always two-and-ninepence the bottle, and three-and-six for one nearly double the size. Now the bottles, as I was saying, don’t cost anything like that.’
‘It’s the medicine costs the money,’ said Dora; ‘look how expensive jujubes are at the chemist’s, and peppermints too.’
‘That’s only because they’re nice,’ Dicky explained; ‘nasty things are not so dear. Look what a lot of brimstone you get for a penny, and the same with alum. We would not put the nice kinds of chemist’s things in our medicine.’
Then he went on to tell us that when we had invented our medicine we would write and tell the editor about it, and he would put it in the paper, and then people would send their two-and-ninepence and three-and-six for the bottle nearly double the size, and then when the medicine had cured them they would write to the paper and their letters would be printed, saying how they had been suffering for years, and never thought to get about again, but thanks to the blessing of our ointment —’
Dora interrupted and said, ‘Not ointment — it’s so messy.’ And Alice thought so too. And Dicky said he did not mean it, he was quite decided to let it be in bottles. So now it was all settled, and we did not see at the time that this would be a sort of going into business, but afterwards when Albert’s uncle showed us we saw it, and we were sorry. We only had to invent the medicine. You might think that was easy, because of the number of them you see every day in the paper, but it is much harder than you think. First we had to decide what sort of illness we should like to cure, and a ‘heated discussion ensued’, like in Parliament.
Dora wanted it to be something to make the complexion of dazzling fairness, but we remembered how her face came all red and rough when she used the Rosabella soap that was advertised to make the darkest complexion fair as the lily, and she agreed that perhaps it was better not. Noel wanted to make the medicine first and then find out what it would cure, but Dicky thought not, because there are so many more medicines than there are things the matter with us, so it would be easier to choose the disease first. Oswald would have liked wounds. I still think it was a good idea, but Dicky said, ‘Who has wounds, especially now there aren’t any wars? We shouldn’t sell a bottle a day!’ So Oswald gave in because he knows what manners are, and it was Dicky’s idea. H. O. wanted a cure for the uncomfortable feeling that they give you powders for, but we explained to him that grown-up people do not have this feeling, however much they eat, and he agreed. Dicky said he did not care a straw what the loathsome disease was, as long as we hurried up and settled on something. Then Alice said —
‘It ought to be something very common, and only one thing. Not the pains in the back and all the hundreds of things the people have in somebody’s syrup. What’s the commonest thing of all?’
And at once we said, ‘Colds.’
So that was settled.
Then we wrote a label to go on the bottle. When it was written it would not go on the vinegar bottle that we had got, but we knew it would go small when it was printed. It was like this:
BASTABLE’S
CERTAIN CURE FOR COLDS
Coughs, Asthma, Shortness of Breath, and all infections of the Chest
One dose gives immediate relief
It will cure your cold in one bottle
Especially the larger size at 3s. 6d.
Order at once of the Makers
To prevent disappointment
Makers:
D., O., R., A., N., and H. O. BASTABLE
150, Lewisham Road, S.E.
(A halfpenny for all bottles returned)
Of course the next thing was for one of us to catch a cold and try what cured it; we all wanted to be the one, but it was Dicky’s idea, and he said he was not going to be done out of it, so we let him. It was only fair. He left off his undershirt that very day, and next morning he stood in a draught in his nightgown for quite a long time. And we damped his day-shirt with the nail-brush before he put it on. But all was vain. They always tell you that these things will give you cold, but we found it was not so.
So then we all went over to the Park, and Dicky went right into the water with his boots on, and stood there as long as he could bear it, for it was rather cold, and we stood and cheered him on. He walked home in his wet clothes, which they say is a sure thing, but it was no go, though his boots were quite spoiled. And three days after Noel began to cough and sneeze.
So then Dicky said it was not fair.
‘I can’t help it,’ Noel said. ‘You should have caught it yourself, then it wouldn’t have come to me.’
And Alice said she had known all along Noel oughtn’t to have stood about on the bank cheering in the cold.
Noel had to go to bed, and then we began to make the medicines; we were sorry he was out of it, but he had the fun of taking the things.
We made a great many medicines. Alice made herb tea. She got sage and thyme and savory and marjoram and boiled them all up together with salt and water, but she would put parsley in too. Oswald is sure parsley is not a herb. It is only put on the cold meat and you are not supposed to eat it. It kills parrots to eat parsley, I believe. I expect it was the parsley that disagreed so with Noel. The medicine did not seem to do the cough any good.
Oswald got a pennyworth of alum, because it is so cheap, and some turpentine which every one knows is good for colds, and a little sugar and an aniseed ball. These were mixed in a bottle with water, but Eliza threw it away and said it was nasty rubbish, and I hadn’t any money to get more things with.
Dora made him some gruel, and he said it did his chest good; but of course that was no use, because you cannot put gruel in bottles and say it is medicine. It would not be honest, and besides nobody would believe you.
Dick mixed up lemon-juice and sugar and a little of the juice of the red flannel that Noel’s throat was done up in. It comes out beautifully in hot water. Noel took this and he liked it. Noel’s own idea was liquorice-water, and we let him have it, but it is too plain and black to sell in bottles at the proper price.
Noel liked H. O.‘s medicine the best, which was silly of him, because it was only peppermints melted in hot water, and a little cobalt to make it look blue. It was all right, because H. O.‘s paint-box is the French kind, with Couleurs non Veneneuses on it. This means you may suck your brushes if you want to, or even your paints if you are a very little boy.
It was rather jolly while Noel had that cold. He had a fire in his bedroom which opens out of Dicky’s and Oswald’s, and the girls used to read aloud to Noel all day; they will not read aloud to you when you are well. Father was away at Liverpool on business, and Albert’s uncle was at Hastings. We were rather glad of this, because we wished to give all the medicines a fair trial, and grown-ups are but too fond of interfering. As if we should have given him anything poisonous!
His cold went on