"I'll 'tend to it soon's I get time, Jim," replied the prescription
clerk. "I'm busy fixin' the smallpox medicine for the sick policeman
downtown."

Penrod stopped sales to watch this operation. Sam had found an empty
pint bottle and, with the pursed lips and measuring eye of a great
chemist, was engaged in filling it from other bottles.

First, he poured into it some of the syrup from the condemned preserves;
and a quantity of extinct hair oil; next the remaining contents of a
dozen small vials cryptically labelled with physicians' prescriptions;
then some remnants of catsup and essence of beef and what was left
in several bottles of mouthwash; after that a quantity of rejected
flavouring extract--topping off by shaking into the mouth of the
bottle various powders from small pink papers, relics of Mr. Schofield's
influenza of the preceding winter.

Sam examined the combination with concern, appearing unsatisfied. "We
got to make that smallpox medicine good and strong!" he remarked; and,
his artistic sense growing more powerful than his appetite, he poured
about a quarter of the licorice water into the smallpox medicine.

"What you doin'?" protested Penrod. "What you want to waste that
lickrish water for? We ought to keep it to drink when we're tired."

"I guess I got a right to use my own lickrish water any way I want to,"
replied the prescription clerk. "I tell you, you can't get smallpox
medicine too strong. Look at her now!" He held the bottle up admiringly.
"She's as black as lickrish. I bet you she's strong all right!"