With palsied hands they raised the glasses to their lips.  The liquor, if it really possessed such virtues as Dr. Heidegger imputed to it, could not have been bestowed on four human beings who needed it more woefully.  They looked as if they had never known what youth or pleasure was, but had been the offspring of Nature’s dotage, and always the gray, decrepit, sapless, miserable creatures who now sat stooping round the doctor’s table without life enough in their souls or bodies to be animated even by the prospect of growing young again.  They drank off the water and replaced their glasses on the table.

Assuredly, there was an almost immediate improvement in the aspect of the party—­not unlike what might have been produced by a glass of generous wine—­together with a sudden glow of cheerful sunshine, brightening over all their visages at once.  There was a healthful suffusion on their cheeks instead of the ashen hue that had made them look so corpse-like.  They gazed at one another, and fancied that some magic power had really begun to smooth away the deep and sad inscriptions which Father Time had been so long engraving on their brows.  The widow Wycherly adjusted her cap, for she felt almost like a woman again.

“Give us more of this wondrous water,” cried they, eagerly.  “We are younger, but we are still too old.  Quick! give us more!”

“Patience, patience!” quoth Dr. Heidegger, who sat, watching the experiment with philosophic coolness.  “You have been a long time growing old; surely you might be content to grow young in half an hour.  But the water is at your service.”  Again he filled their glasses with the liquor of youth, enough of which still remained in the vase to turn half the old people in the city to the age of their own grandchildren.

While the bubbles were yet sparkling on the brim the doctor’s four guests snatched their glasses from the table and swallowed the contents at a single gulp.  Was it delusion?  Even while the draught was passing down their throats it seemed to have wrought a change on their whole systems.  Their eyes grew clear and bright; a dark shade deepened among their silvery locks:  they sat around the table three gentlemen of middle age and a woman hardly beyond her buxom prime.

“My dear widow, you are charming!” cried Colonel Killigrew, whose eyes had been fixed upon her face while the shadows of age were flitting from it like darkness from the crimson daybreak.

The fair widow knew of old that Colonel Killigrew’s compliments were not always measured by sober truth; so she started up and ran to the mirror, still dreading that the ugly visage of an old woman would meet her gaze.