Bob was willing; indeed he needed clean collars himself, and had reached the decision that there was only one way to get them. Inquiry had established the fact that there was no laundry in Flame City, and the genus washwoman was practically unknown.
Betty went in to get her middy blouse, and Bob pumped pail after pail of water and carried it to the barn. One pump supplied the whole farm, house and barns. The two cows, three horses, and the pigs and chickens were watered thrice daily by the patient Ki.
Cold water was not the only difficulty Betty encountered when she came to the actual washing. The soap would not lather, and a thick white scum formed on the water when she tried to churn up a suds.
“Hard,” said Bob laconically. “Got to have something to put in to soften it. Borax is good; know where there is any?”
Betty remembered having seen a box of borax on the kitchen shelf, and Bob volunteered to go for it. When he returned with it, he brought the news that there was a peddler at the back door with a bewildering “assortment of everything,” Bob said.
“Put a lot of this in,” he directed, handing the box to Betty, who obediently shook in half the contents. “Now we’ll put the stuff to soak, and go and look at this fellow’s stuff. When you come back to wash, all you’ll have to do will be to rinse ’em out and put them out to dry.”
This sounded plausible, and the middy blouse and collars were left to soak themselves clean.
The peddler proved to have a horse and wagon, and he carried dress goods, notions, kitchen wear, books, stationery and candy. Bob and Betty had never seen a wagon fitted up like this, and they thought it far better than a store.
“I might buy that dotted swiss shirtwaist,” whispered Betty, as Mrs. Watterby ordered five yards of apron gingham measured off. “My middy blouse might not dry in time.”
“All right. And I’ll get a clean collar,” agreed Bob. “These aren’t much and I suppose they’re too cheap to last long, but at any rate they’re clean.”