Also, the narrator refers to Dr. H as " a very strange old gentleman, whose eccentricity had become the nucleus for a thousand fantastic stories" and the narrator admits he or she may be a " fiction monger" which is someone who spreads stories that aren't real or true.
The drink seems to have made the group younger because they wanted to believe that it would work. Each was very unhappy with the state of their lives and wanted the chance to live a different life. A the author says, " the liquor, if it really possessed such virtues as Dr. H. imputed to it, could not have been bestowed on four human beings who needed it more woefully."
After the group drinks the water, they look at each other and "fancied that some magic power had really begun to smooth away the deep and sad inscriptions which Father Time had been so long engraving on their brows" which means they imagined their wrinkles disappearing and their faces becoming younger looking. When they drank the water, their moods improved. Widow Wychery felt better about herself. But thee changes were in attitude, not in their physical age. The mirror in the story reflects what is real: " The tall mirror is said to have reflected the figures of the three old, gray withered grandsires, ridiculously contending for the skinny ugliness of the shrivelled grandam."
They felt young, as the story says, " But they were young. Their burning passions proved them so." Their youth was in their imagination. When the water is spilled on the floor after their fight,the flower dries up again, and their youthful spirit disappears.
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