'"Wilton's Panmedicon, or Heal All," a patent medicine. He sold the
patent and retired.'

Merton shuddered.

'It would be Pammedicum if it could be anything,' he thought, 'but it
can't, linguistically speaking.'

'Invaluable as a subterfuge,' said Mrs. Nicholson, obviously with an
indistinct recollection of the advertisement and of the properties of the
drug.

Merton construed the word as 'febrifuge,' silently, and asked: 'Have you
taken the young lady much into society: has she had many opportunities of
making a choice? You are dissatisfied with the choice, I understand,
which she has made?'

'I don't let her see anybody if I can help it. Fire and powder are
better kept apart, and she is powder, a minx! Only a fisher or two comes
to the Perch, that's the inn at Walton-on-Dove, and _they_ are mostly old
gentlemen, pottering with their rods and things. If a young man comes to
the inn, I take care to trapes after her through the nasty damp meadows.'

'Is the young lady an angler?'

'She is--most unwomanly I call it.'

Merton's idea of the young lady rose many degrees. 'You said the young
lady was "strange from a child, very strange. Fond of the men." Happily