This, of course, was Pybus. "Let those laugh who win. Wait till you see the name blazoned on every dead wall. Then you'll welcome 'Aunt Jane's Jalap' as a friend." That dinner, I confess, was a little patent mediciney. More than once I rather wished that I had kept the subject out of it. Pybus told some pleasant and characteristic anecdotes about injurious effects of patent medicines. How he had known whole families killed by taking them. How more than half the infant mortality of Great Britain was owing to their unrestricted sale. How the habit of taking patent medicines was worse than the habit of dram drinking, and the why, and the wherefore, and so on. I could not, at my own table, take the man by the scruff of the neck and drop him from the first floor window. But I know that Margaret didn't like it--and I didn't either. Mrs. Chalmers seemed undecided. She herself swears by some noxious compound, which is absurdly named "Daddy's Delight," and which I know, by the mere smell of it, is nothing else but poison. "Have you any of the stuff in the house?" she asked. "I have a bottle of 'Aunt Jane's Jalap,' which is not stuff, my dear Mrs. Chalmers, but a most invaluable medicine. Hughes brought it this afternoon as a sample." "Trot it out," said Pybus. Pybus is fifty-five, if he is a day, but he uses the slang of a schoolboy. I was not going to act on such a hint as that, but when Mrs. Chalmers expressed a wish to look at it I fetched the bottle. It was a small black bottle, such as is used for "samples" of wines, about quarter-bottle size. I held it in my hand. "This, ladies and gentlemen, is 'Aunt Jane's Jalap.' It is a name which I trust will soon be familiar in your mouths as household words. This, however, is its first appearance on the scene, and I propose, to mark the importance of the occasion, that we drink to its success. I propose, ladies and gentlemen, that we drink to 'Aunt Jane's Jalap' _in_ 'Aunt Jane's Jalap.' Brooks, bring four claret glasses." I drew the cork. "George, you don't mean that we're to drink the stuff?" "I do, my dear Margaret, why not? The dose is a wine-glassful, to be taken immediately after meals. Mrs. Chalmers, allow me to offer you a glass of 'Aunt Jane's Jalap.'" She sniffed at it. "It has a very disagreeable smell." That was good. I protest that I have smelt "Daddy's Delight" when I was passing the house, and took it--till I knew better--for drains. "Margaret, a glass of 'Aunt Jane's Jalap.'" "But, George, I assure you that I never do take medicine." "Some people's wine is no better than medicine. We drink that, and pretend we like it. Why not jalap?" This was Pybus! As he had just before been making insinuations about my wine, the allusion was pointed. But the man's proverbial. "No heeltraps--'Aunt Jane's Jalap'--with the honours!"