‘Aha! aha! Take a little of this powder, Fuchsia dear,’ he said, bringing across to her the white cardboard box. He removed the lid and tilted a little into her glass which he filled again with elderberry wine. ‘You won’t taste anything at all, my dear girl; just sip it up and you will feel as strong as a mountain tiger, ha, ha! Mrs Slagg you will take this box away with you. Four times a day, with whatever the dear child happens to be drinking. It is tasteless. It is harmless, and it is extremely efficacious. Do not forget, my good woman, will you? She needs something and this is the very something she needs, ha, ha, ha! this is the very something!’

Nannie received the box on which was written ‘Fuchsia. One teaspoonful to be taken 4 times a day.’

‘Master Steerpike,’ said the Doctor, ‘is that the reason you wanted to see me, to beard me in my den, and to melt my heart like tallow upon my own hearth-rug?’ He tilted his head at the youth.

‘That is so, sir,’ said Steerpike. ‘With Lady Fuchsia’s permission I accompanied her. I said to her: “Just let me see the Doctor, and put my case to him, and I am confident he will be impressed”.’

There was a pause. Then in a confidential voice Steerpike added: ‘In my less ambitious moments it is as a research scientist that I see myself, sir, and in my still less ambitious, as a dispenser.’

‘What knowledge of chemicals have you, if I may venture to remark?’ said the Doctor.

‘Under your initial guidance my powers would develop as rapidly as you could wish,’ said Steerpike.

‘You are a clever little monster,’ said the Doctor, tossing off another cognac and placing the glass upon the table with a click. ‘A diabolically clever little monster.’

‘That is what I hoped you would realize, Doctor,’ said Steerpike. ‘But haven’t all ambitious people something of the monstrous about them? You, sir, for instance, if you will forgive me, are a little bit monstrous.’

‘But, my pooryouth,’ said Prunesquallor, beginning to pace the room, ‘there is not the minutest molecule of ambition in my anatomy, monstrous though it may appear to you, ha, ha, ha!’

His laughter had not the spontaneous, uncontrollable quality that it usually possessed.

‘But, sir,’ said Steerpike, ‘there has been.’

‘And why do you think so?’

‘Because of this room. Because of the exquisite furnishings you possess; because of your calf-bound books; your glassware; your violin. You could not have collected together such things without ambition.’

‘That is not ambition, my poor confused boy,’ said the Doctor: ‘it is a union between those erstwhile incompatibles, ha, ha, ha! – taste and a hereditary income.’

‘Is not taste a cultivated luxury?’ said Steerpike.