“Do you mean to tell me you sold the child a charm, and didn’t enlighten her as to its futility?” “I sold her some bicarbonate of soda worth a couple of _doubles_, and charged her five shillings for it into the bargain,” said Mauger unblushingly. “A wrinkle I learned from once overhearing an old lady I had treated for nothing expatiating to a crony, ‘Eh, but, my good, my good! dat Mr. Major, I don’t t’ink much of him. He give away his add-vice an’ his meddecines for nuddin. Dey not wort nuddin’ neider, for sure.’ So I made Elsie hand me over five British shillings, and gave her the powder, and told her to drink it with her meals. But I threw in another prescription, which, if less important, must nevertheless be punctiliously carried out, if the charm was to have any effect. ‘The very next time,’ I told her, ‘that you meet your young man in the street, walk straight up to him without looking to the right or to the left, and hold out your hand, saying these words: “Please, I so want to be friends again!” Then if you’ve been a good girl, have taken the powder regularly, and not forgotten one of my directions, you’ll find that all will come right.’ “Now, little as you may credit it,” said Mauger, smiling, “the charm worked, for all that we live in the so-called nineteenth century. Elsie came into the shop only yesterday to tell me the results, and to thank me very prettily. ‘I shall always come to you now, sir,’ she was good enough to say, ‘I mean, if anything was to go wrong again. You know a great deal more than Mère Todevinn, I’m sure.’ ‘Yes, I’m a famous sorcerer,’ said I, ‘but you had better not speak about the powder. You are wise enough to see that it was just your own conduct in meeting your young man rather more than halfway, that did the trick--eh?’ She looked at me with eyes brimming over with wisdom. ‘You needn’t be afraid, sir, I’ll not speak of it. Mère Todevinn always made me promise to keep silence too. But of course I know it was the powder that worked the charm.’ “And to that belief the dear creature will stick to the last day of her life. Women are wonderful enigmas. Explain to them that tight-lacing displaces all the internal organs, and show them diagrams to illustrate your point, they smile sweetly, say, ‘Oh, how funny!’ and go out to buy their new stays half an inch smaller than their old ones. But tell them they must never pass a pin in the street for luck’s sake, if it lies with its point towards them, and they will sedulously look for and pick up every such confounded pin they see. Talk to a woman of the marvels of science, and she turns a deaf ear, or refuses point-blank to believe you; yet she is absolutely all ear for any old wife’s tale, drinks it greedily in, and never loses hold of it for the rest of her days.”