And now the mystery was to be solved. But alas! it seemed as though the
last chance of securing even a sip of the contents was to be removed for
ever, for Mr Pontifex took the bottle into his own hands and held it up
to the light after carefully examining the seal. He smiled and left the
bin with the bottle in his hands.
Then came a catastrophe. He stumbled over an empty hamper; there was the
sound of a fall--a smash of broken glass, and in an instant the cellar
floor was covered with the liquid that had been preserved so carefully
for so many years.
With his usual presence of mind Mr Pontifex gasped out a month's warning
to Gelstrap. Then he got up, and stamped as Theobald had done when
Christina had wanted not to order his dinner.
"It's water from the Jordan," he exclaimed furiously, "which I have been
saving for the baptism of my eldest grandson. Damn you, Gelstrap, how
dare you be so infernally careless as to leave that hamper littering
about the cellar?"
I wonder the water of the sacred stream did not stand upright as an heap
upon the cellar floor and rebuke him. Gelstrap told the other servants
afterwards that his master's language had made his backbone curdle.
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