And Mr. Thrush of John’s Court?  One evening, when he returned home, Dion found that old phenomenon in the house paying his respects to Robin.  He was quite neatly dressed, and wore beneath a comparatively clean collar a wisp of black tie that was highly respectable, though his top hat, deposited in the hall, was still as the terror that walketh in darkness.  His poor old gray eyes were pathetic, and his long, battered old face was gently benign; but his nose, fiery and tremendous as ever, still made proclamation of his “failing.”  Dion 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