ion knew that Mr. Thrush had
already been two or three times to see Robin, and had wondered about it
with some amusement. "Where will your cult for Mr. Thrush lead you?"
he had laughingly said to Rosamund. And then he had forgotten "the
phenomenon," as he sometimes called Mr. Thrush. But now, when he
actually beheld Mr. Thrush in his house, seated on a chair in the
nursery, with purple hands folded over a seedy, but carefully brushed,
black coat, he genuinely marveled.

Mr. Thrush rose up at his entrance, quite unself-conscious and
self-possessed, and as Dion, concealing his surprise, greeted the
visitor, Rosamund, who was showing Robin, remarked:

"Mr. Thrush has great ideas on hygiene, Dion. He quite agrees with us
about not wrapping children in cotton-wool."

"Your conceptions are Doric, too, in fact?" said Dion to Thrush, in the
slightly rough or bluff manner which he now sometimes assumed.

"I wouldn't go so far as to say exactly that, sir," said Mr. Thrush,
speaking with a sort of gentleness which was almost refined. "But
having been a chemist in a very good way of business--just off Hanover
Square--during the best years of my life, I have my views, foolish or
perhaps the reverse, on the question of infants. My motto, so far as I
have one, is, _Never cosset_."

He turned towards Robin, who, from his mother's arms, sent him a look of
mild inquiry, and reiterated, with plaintive emphasis, "_Never cosset!_"

"There, Dion!" said Rosamund, with a delicious air of genial
appreciation which made Mr. Thrush gently glow.

"And I'll go further," pursued that authority, lifting a purple hand
and moving his old head to give emphasis to his deliverance, "I'll
go further even than that. Having retired from the pharmaceutical
brotherhood I'll say this: If you can do it, avoid drugs. Chemists"--he
leaned forward and emphatically lowered his voice almost to a
whisper--"Chemists alone know what harm they do."

"By Jove, though, and do they?" said Dion heartily.

"Terrible, sir, terrible! Some people's insides that I know of--used to
know of, perhaps I should say--must be made of iron to deal with all the
medicines they put into 'em. Oh, keep your baby's inside free from all
such abominations!" (He loomed gently over Robin, who continued to stare
at him with an expression of placid interrogation.) "Keep it away from
such things as the Sampson Syrup, Mother Maybrick's infant tablets,
Price's purge for the nursery, Tinkler's