“One wash a day.” Rita Carson was inexorable. “It’s absurd of you to insist upon being made up as often as that, and more I simply won’t do.”
This seemed reasonable enough, but Amelia tearfully declared that she never washed her face less than four times daily. “And being in the sun so much gets me hot, and the paint feels sticky, and I’m just miserable,” she wailed mournfully.
“You’re not game for things,” Rita told her crossly. “You agreed to this plan, and you can’t be any sicker of your bargain than I am. When your twin comes you’ll only have to go to classes. You can wash your face all the afternoon and evening if you want to, pussy-cat.”
“I shall be off the campus then,” Amelia retorted with dignity. “It’s been thought simpler for us to room together up on Main Street, so you’ll have a nice walk before breakfast for a day or two.”
Aurelia’s arrival was of course kept in the secret, while Amelia’s departure from the campus was easily explained on the ground of her wanting to be well rested for the meet. In the morning Amelia, duly freckled, went to classes, while Aurelia, too amused to protest, was locked into their room in hiding. In the afternoon Amelia hid, while Aurelia, escorted and surrounded by a watchful band of the initiated, went to practice. Her performances delighted the escort so extravagantly that they took her for a motor ride, showed her Paradise from a canoe, and promised her wonderful “eats” and “the time of her freckled life” as soon as the meet was over and the secret out. Meanwhile Amelia, who had “kept on” her freckles in order to make a necessary trip to the library, waited in vain for a chance to go out; and with the prospect of a total failure before her she got up the next morning in an extremely bad temper. Rita Carson was in a bad temper too—she was not used to getting up so early. To tease Amelia, she put the twins in a row and matched freckle to freckle with painstaking, maddening slowness. Then she daubed two huge ones on Amelia’s nose, for good measure, and departed, calling back a final warning against water.
“But I could wash my nose without doing any harm, couldn’t I, Aurelia?” asked Amelia indignantly.
Aurelia burst into an annoying peal of laughter. “I don’t know, I’m sure. Better not take the risk. Oh, Amelia, you look perfectly killing—so exactly like me. Come to the glass and see.”
Amelia refused to be comforted. “I can see those two freckles all the time,” she complained. “They worry me to death. I’d like to wash the whole thing off and—and——”
“Think what fun you’ll be having to-morrow,” suggested Aurelia artfully. “And think how the class is depending on you. And above everything, don’t cry.”
Amelia finally departed for the campus, her freckles intact, her nerves unstrung, and a wet wad of handkerchief “to use when she just couldn’t stand it any longer” clutched defiantly in her hot little hand.