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The half-used glasses on the little table beside her; the candle burned down in the socket, and overlooked; the tightly corked phials of useless drugs; the strong odour of mustard from the saucer in which a plaster had been mixed these things struck upon her faltering consciousness with a shock of horrible reality. The odour of the mustard was more real than the breathing of the body on the bed.
Droop was making desperate efforts to climb along the floor and reach the engine-room, but, although by dint of gigantic struggles he managed to make his way a few feet, he was then obliged to pause for breath, whereupon he slid gently and ignominiously back to his nook under the table. Here he found himself in contact with a corked bottle. He looked at it and felt comforted.
Poor chap! well, I'm glad he didn't see me dancing. "We broke up about eleven, and Mr. Randolph suggested that, as we lived in the same general direction, we might walk homeward together. Great heaven! it's eleven and five after now! Enough, in all conscience, for to-night. You shall have the rest to-morrow." An evening or two later Cope again corked his red ink and uncorked his black.
One thing remained to do, and that was to fill the great stone bottle, brought on purpose, with water for the new aquarium. "Gluggle, gluggle blob, blob," went the big bottle as the air rushed out, displaced by the salt-water, till the great thing was full, securely corked, and deposited in the car.
He broke a bit from a fishing-rod, secured the line round the middle of it with a notch, put the stick through the bunghole in the bilge, and corked up the hole with a net-float. Happily he had a knife in his pocket. He then joined strong lines together until he thought he had length enough, secured the last end to a bar of the grate, and knocked out both sashes of the window with an axe.
I feed him; wash the carriage; drive the carriage; arrange the cellar; rinse out the bottles; bottle the wine; pile up the bottles after they are corked and stamped; lower the hogsheads of wine into the cellar with a thick rope, with the help of a comrade, and the price is two francs for each hogshead.
It may be an ignoble satisfaction, yet I believe I would rather flash and fade in one moment of happy daylight than be corked and cob-webbed for fifty years in the dungeons of an unsunned cellar, with a remote possibility, indeed, of coming up from my incarceration to moisten the lips of beauty or loosen the tongue of eloquence, but with a far surer prospect of but adding one more to the potations of the glutton and wine-bibber.
Corked wine at the end of a really good meal is a bitter blow to any man, an exceedingly bitter blow to a man of Lord Loudwater's sensitiveness in such matters. "Am I sure? Hey? Am I sure? Yes! I am sure, you little fool!" he bellowed. "What do you know about wine? Talk about things you understand!" Lady Loudwater's face was twisted by a faint spasm of hate which left it flushed.
Presently the Tin Woodman changed his position, and at once Ojo, to the astonishment of all, dropped to the floor and held his crystal vial under the Emperor's knee joint. Just then the drop of oil fell, and the boy caught it in his bottle and immediately corked it tight. Then, with a red face and embarrassed manner, he rose to confront the others.
It was a quart of Scotch whisky, corked and sealed as it had left the distillery. And it had been there for two years! The more the reader ponders this striking fact, the better will he be able to realise the depth of the solitude in which we now found ourselves.
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