Next time they came she said the patient was in a fever, and felt as if he were growing a tail. She slammed the door in their faces and said she would not open it again for anybody.
Tuppenny was too depressed to argue.
Henry P. and the other guinea-pigs were perturbed. They betook themselves to the market place, where Messrs. Ratton and Scratch were still trying to sell bottles by lamplight, and they asked anxiously whether there was any risk of tails growing? Mr. Scratch burst into ribald laughter; and Mr. Ratton said – ‘No sort of tail except pigtails on the head!’
During the night Messrs. Ratton and Scratch packed up their booth and departed from the town of Marmalade.
Next morning at daybreak a crowd of guinea-pigs collected on Tuppenny’s doorstep. More and more arrived until Mrs. Tuppenny came out with a scrubbing brush and a pail of water. In reply to inquiries from a respectful distance, she said that Tuppenny had had a disturbed night. Further she would not say, except that he was unable to keep on his nightcap. No more could be ascertained, until, providentially, Mrs. Tuppenny discovered that she had nothing for breakfast. She went out to buy a carrot.
Henry P. and a crowd of other guinea-pigs swarmed into the house, as soon as she was round the corner of the street. They found Tuppenny out of bed, sitting on a chair, looking frightened. At least, presumably it was Tuppenny, but he looked different. His hair was over his ears and nose. And that was not all; for whilst they were talking to him, his hair grew down onto his empty plate. It grew something alarming. It was quite nice hair and the proper colour; but Tuppenny said he felt funny; sore all over, as if his hair were being brushed back to front; and prickly and hot, like needles and pins; and altogether uncomfortable.
And well he might! His hair – it grew, and it grew, and it grew; faster and faster and nobody knew how to stop it! Messrs. Ratton and Scratch had gone away and left no address. If they possessed an antidote there was no way of obtaining it. All day that day, and for several days – still the hair kept growing. Mrs. Tuppenny cut it, and cut it, and stuffed pin-cushions with it, and pillow cases and bolsters; but as fast as she cut it – it grew again. When Tuppenny went out he tumbled over it; and the rude little guinea-pig boys ran after him, shouting ‘Old Whiskers!’ His life became a burden.
Still the hair kept growing.
Then Mrs. Tuppenny began to pull it out. The effect of the quintessence was beginning to wear off, if only she would have exercised a little patience; but she was tired of cutting; so she pulled.
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