The shrill staccato words of the women set the child trembling.
"But—but," she faltered, "it'll all wash off." She gave a convincing nod of her head and rubbed a hand ruefully across the grotesquely decorated cheek. "It's just cream and red-beet juice and flour."
"Did I ever!" exclaimed the mother of Phares Eby.
"I-to-goodness!" laughed Granny Hogendobler.
"Vanity, vanity, all is vanity," quoted one of the other women.
"Come here, Phœbe," said the mother of David Eby, and that woman, a thin, alert little person with tender, kindly eyes, drew the unhappy little girl to her. "You poor, precious child," she said, "it's a shame for us all to sit here and look at you as if we wanted to eat you. You've just been playing, haven't you?" She turned to the other women. "Why, Maria, Susan, I remember just as well as if it were only yesterday how we used to rub our cheeks with rough mullein leaves to make them red for Love Feast, don't you remember?"
Aunt Maria's cheeks grew pink. "Ach, Barbara, mebbe we did that when we were young and foolish, but we didn't act like this."
"Not much different, I guess," said Phœbe's champion with a smile. "Only we forget it now. Phœbe is just like we were once and she'll get over it like we did. Let her play; she'll soon be too old to want to play or to know how. She ain't a bad child, just full of life and likes to do things other people don't think of doing."
"She, surely does," said Aunt Maria curtly, ill pleased by the woman's words. "Where that child gets all her notions from I'd like to know. It's something new every day."
"She'll be all right when she gets older," said David's mother.