“I’ll take all the blame Mosey.”
“Ef you could only see how you look, Betty. You must hev some eyebrows somehow.”
“Put a li’l shoe-black on then an’ that’ll make me dark again,” advised Betty serenely.
A liberal application of shoe paste furnished the unfortunate victim with a startling pair of jet-black eyebrows, nearly an inch in depth. Appalled at what he saw, Moses drew from his pocket a grimy handkerchief. Dampening one corner of it in his mouth, the most expeditious thing to do under the circumstances, he carefully wiped around the outside of these funereal bands, reducing them slightly in size but also straightening their edges.
“Moses! Betty! Time fer school!” called Mrs. Wopp. Betty, satisfied that after Moses’ frenzied ministrations she was quite presentable, hastened into the house. Moses fled into the yard where he became very active splitting wood, his guilty conscience adding efficiency to his arm.
“Land o’ Goshen, child,” shrieked Mrs. Wopp throwing up her hands in dismay, “whatever hev you been doin’ to yerself. You look jist like a wooden Injin. I wouldn’t of knowed you ef I’d met you in the streets of Judear.”
Nell Gordon, ready for school, came into the kitchen and catching sight of Betty was seized with such uncontrollable mirth that she fled upstairs again.
“Come here Betty, till I clean yer face. Where is that boy Moses? I know he had a hand in this. Drat him anyhow,” said the incensed Mrs. Wopp.
“Moses didn’t want to clip me Mar, but I thought ’twould be a ’provement to hev nice white eyebrows.” As Betty spoke one large tear rolled slowly down her cheek moistening in its course a small drop of blacking which Moses had overlooked in his cleansing operations, adding still more to the child’s grotesque appearance.
“White eyebrows child! What are you talkin’ about? Yer eyebrows are blacker nor that stove.”