The Reverend Septimus yielded himself up quite as willing a victim
to a nauseous medicinal herb-closet, also presided over by the
china shepherdess, as to this glorious cupboard. To what amazing
infusions of gentian, peppermint, gilliflower, sage, parsley,
thyme, rue, rosemary, and dandelion, did his courageous stomach
submit itself! In what wonderful wrappers, enclosing layers of
dried leaves, would he swathe his rosy and contented face, if his
mother suspected him of a toothache! What botanical blotches would
he cheerfully stick upon his cheek, or forehead, if the dear old
lady convicted him of an imperceptible pimple there! Into this
herbaceous penitentiary, situated on an upper staircase-landing: a
low and narrow whitewashed cell, where bunches of dried leaves hung
from rusty hooks in the ceiling, and were spread out upon shelves,
in company with portentous bottles: would the Reverend Septimus
submissively be led, like the highly popular lamb who has so long
and unresistingly been led to the slaughter, and there would he,
unlike that lamb, bore nobody but himself. Not even doing that
much, so that the old lady were busy and pleased, he would quietly
swallow what was given him, merely taking a corrective dip of hands
and face into the great bowl of dried rose-leaves, and into the
other great bowl of dried lavender, and then would go out, as
confident in the sweetening powers of Cloisterham Weir and a
wholesome mind, as Lady Macbeth was hopeless of those of all the
seas that roll.
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