Both children were craning over to see what she was writing, and they were quite unprepared for the pounce that the old woman made on the screw of paper that Rosemary had brought out of her pocket. They unfolded the note she had given them and stared at it.
‘But it isn’t writing! It looks like nonsense!’ said Rosemary.
Mrs Cantrip took no notice. She was undoing the paper. Inside was about a saltspoonful of what looked like tiny grains of hundreds and thousands.
‘Take it to Hedgem and Fudge to have it made up. Now go away. I’m busy.’
As she spoke she dropped a single grain of the powder into the ink bottle. There was a slight hiss, and the muddy-looking ink turned a brilliant scarlet. She dropped another grain into the bottle and the ink changed to pure yellow. Her grim face softened.
‘Good heavens!’ said John with interest.
‘Go away,’ said Mrs Cantrip fiercely, shielding the bottle with her hands.
There seemed nothing else to do, so they went.
4
Hedgem and Fudge
John and Rosemary closed the front door behind them and stood blinking in the sunlight. It was like coming out of a cave. Carbonel stopped his restless pacing and ran to them with an anxious little ‘Prrt!’
‘She’s given us a prescription, and we’ve got to get it made up at a chemist’s called Hedgem and Fudge. It looks like nothing but a lot of squiggles to me,’ said John.
‘But so do the prescriptions that doctors write,’ said Rosemary. ‘What’s the matter, Carbonel?’
‘I think he wants to read it,’ said John.
Rosemary bent down and laid the piece of paper on the pavement. Carbonel held it down with one paw and stared at it with unblinking yellow eyes. They waited anxiously while he examined it. First he sniffed it with delicately twitching whiskers. Then he sneezed violently. Finally, he removed his paw and shook it with distaste. But he purred loudly, and gave each of the children an approving lick on a bare leg, and set off at a gallop in the direction of the High Street, looking back from time to time to see that they were following.
‘It’s all so strange,’ said John breathlessly, as they hurried after him. ‘Such a mixture of queerness and commonsense!’
‘I know,’ said Rosemary. ‘And whoever could be going as a lodger to Mrs Cantrip? Oh, goodness! I believe Hedgem and Fudge is that big chemist near the Cathedral!’
‘We shall look pretty silly if we hand over a page of gibberish and say “I want this made up, please!”’ said John gloomily.
But no one can be gloomy for long if he is running, so Rosemary and John stopped talking because they needed all their breath to keep up with Carbonel. Once, in the High Street full of afternoon shoppers, they thought they had lost him, and several times they bumped into people and had to stop and apologize. When Carbonel reached the top of the High Street where the road widens in front of the Cathedral, he waited for them to catch up.
‘There it is!’ said Rosemary. ‘That’s the shop on the other side of the road!’
It was a large, old-fashioned building. Above the cars that honked and hurried, they could see the name in gold letters, as well as two great glass bottles full of glowing red and green liquid that have been the sign of a dispenser of medicine since the days when few people could read.
There was a screeching of brakes as Carbonel stepped without warning on to the pedestrian crossing and with great dignity, tail erect, swept across the road. The drivers who were not angry grinned.
Very red about the ears, John and Rosemary crossed the road behind him.
Although the building was clearly an old one, the shop had been brought up to date inside. Behind the counter, there were rows of little mahogany drawers with cut-glass handles which sparkled in the strip lighting. There were steel chairs to sit on, and one counter, which displayed face powder and lipsticks and shampoos, with a yellow-haired young lady behind it. A smaller counter displayed castor oil, cough medicines and headache pills, with a pink young man behind it. On this counter was a notice which said, PRESCRIPTIONS, so Rosemary handed the piece of paper to the young man.
He took it and glanced casually at the writing. Then suddenly his eyebrows shot up and his neck seemed to lengthen as he peered at the paper.
‘Wait for it!’ said John under his breath to Rosemary.
But far from being angry, the young man said, ‘Excuse me one minute!’ and went to consult an older man who was busy in a glass-partitioned dispensary at the back of the shop. They whispered together for a while, and then the older man came over to the counter. First he read the prescription again through his spectacles, then he peered over them at John and Rosemary.
‘This is most unusual,’ he said. ‘I have never been asked for it before. However, it is not for me to question a prescription.’
He turned to the young man. ‘You’d better fetch the steps from the back, Mr Flackett.’
‘What is he going to do?’ Rosemary asked John anxiously.
‘Ask me another! I only hope Mrs Cantrip hasn’t double-crossed us!’ said John.
The young man put the steps against the mahogany partition that divided the window from the shop, and mounted them gingerly, while the older man held them steady. Then he put both arms round the huge glass bottle of red liquid that they had seen from the other side of the road, and breathing heavily with the effort, tottered dangerously down the steps with it into the dispensary.
John and Rosemary stood and listened to the fair-haired young lady serving a customer until the young man returned with a small medicine bottle full of red liquid. There was a pink mark down the front of his white jacket which he was rubbing with his handkerchief.
‘Such an awkward thing to pour from,’ he said to Rosemary, who noticed that his fingers were stained with the liquid. He wrapped up the bottle in white paper which he fastened at each end with a little blob of sealing wax.
‘Excuse me while I look it up in the price list,’ he said, flicking over the leaves of a catalogue. He licked his pink-stained thumb several times the better to turn the pages.
Now this is a horrible habit as everyone knows, but what followed may have cured him forever. He turned to speak to John and Rosemary, and suddenly started. His mouth fell open and all the pink ebbed from his face, leaving it a curious greenish white.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Rosemary sympathetically.
The young man swallowed hard.
‘It’s a funny thing,’ he said faintly, ‘but I distinctly thought I heard that black cat beside you speak! There is a black cat, isn’t there?’ he asked anxiously.
John and Rosemary looked down. There was indeed. It was Carbonel. Tired of waiting outside, he had followed an old lady through the swinging door into the shop. The children looked at each other.
‘What did you think he said?’ John asked tactfully.
The now pale young man swallowed hard again.
‘He said, in a cross voice, “Royalty, and left outside to wait like an old umbrella!” It doesn’t even make sense,’ said the young man unhappily.
‘That sounds like Carbonel all right!’ said John to Rosemary. The black cat stood between them, his ears slightly flattened and his tail twitching. The young man stared fascinated at the cat, and his colour began to come back, but he started violently once more.
‘He’s done it again!’ he said miserably. ‘He says – the cat I mean – to tell you not to take all day about it. Couldn’t you hear him, too?’ he pleaded.
‘No!’ said John and Rosemary. ‘We couldn’t, truthfully.’
‘But a cat talking! Whatever does it mean?’ asked the young man anxiously.
‘I expect it means that you’ve eaten something that has disagreed with you,’ said Rosemary truthfully.
‘I should take some Peterson’s Pink Pills,’ said John. They were the first thing that caught his eye. ‘And go to bed early. Good afternoon! Come on, Rosie!’