“This is a progressive age,” said the old man, “and I flatter myself your Uncle Daws keeps right along with the procession.  Now, one of your old-fashioned sorcerers would have made you some nasty, bitter pills to swallow; but I have consulted your taste and convenience.  Here are some magic bonbons.  If you eat this one with the lavender color you can dance thereafter as lightly and gracefully as if you had been trained a lifetime.  After you consume the pink confection you will sing like a nightingale.  Eating the white one will enable you to become the finest elocutionist in the land.  The chocolate piece will charm you into playing the piano better than Rubenstein, while after eating you lemon-yellow bonbon you can easily kick six feet above your head.”

“How delightful!” exclaimed Claribel, who was truly enraptured.  “You are certainly a most clever sorcerer as well as a considerate compounder,” and she held out her hand for the box.

“Ahem!” said the wise one; “a check, please.”

“Oh, yes; to be sure!  How stupid of me to forget it,” she returned.

He considerately retained the box in his own hand while she signed a check for a large amount of money, after which he allowed her to hold the box herself.

“Are you sure you have made them strong enough?” she inquired, anxiously; “it usually takes a great deal to affect me.”

“My only fear,” replied Dr. Daws, “is that I have made them too strong.  For this is the first time I have ever been called upon to prepare these wonderful confections.”

“Don’t worry,” said Claribel; “the stronger they act the better I shall act myself.”

She went away, after saying this, but stopping in at a dry goods store to shop, she forgot the precious box in her new interest and left it lying on the ribbon counter.

Then little Bessie Bostwick came to the counter to buy a hair ribbon and laid her parcels beside the box.  When she went away she gathered up the box with her other bundles and trotted off home with it.

Bessie never knew, until after she had hung her coat in the hall closet and counted up her parcels, that she had one too many.  Then she opened it and exclaimed: 

“Why, it’s a box of candy!  Someone must have mislaid it.  But it is too small a matter to worry about; there are only a few pieces.”  So she dumped the contents of the box into a bonbon dish that stood upon the hall table and picking out the chocolate piece—­she was fond of chocolates—­ate it daintily while she examined her purchases.

These were not many, for Bessie was only twelve years old and was not yet trusted by her parents to expend much money at the stores.  But while she tried on the hair ribbon she suddenly felt a great desire to play upon the piano, and the desire at last became so overpowering that she went into the parlor and opened the instrument.

The little girl had, with infinite pains, contrived to learn two “pieces” which she usually executed with a jerky movement of her right hand and a left hand that forgot to keep up and so made dreadful discords.  But under the influence of the chocolate bonbon she sat down and ran her fingers lightly over the keys producing such exquisite harmony that she was filled with amazement at her own performance.