“Then I heard some one in the hall, so I had to stay in the bath-room ever so long, and I thought they’d never go. And here’s the whole case,” she said, producing it.
“But suppose that papa wants the case before we can get it back?” asked Eunice, selecting a big piece.
“Hope to goodness he won’t, or I’ll get a wiggin,” said Cricket, calmly, applying, as she spoke, a good-sized strip over one eye, while the corner of Eunice’s mouth disappeared under a black patch.
“Oh, Cricket, how funny you look!” Eunice exclaimed, when she had completed her own face. Cricket’s left eye had vanished, and two long strips on the other side, right over her dimples, completely disguised her. She had stuck a broad-brimmed, ragged hat on the back of her curly head, and streaked what was visible of her face and her hands with soot from the chimney.
“You are the funniest girl!” Eunice cried, fairly doubling up with laughter, as Cricket extricated a little black paw from her voluminous coat sleeve, and said, in a whining voice,—
“Please, ma’am, I’m a poor widdy, and I have seven small children, and my wife is dead, and I’m blind and deaf and dumb, and I can’t talk on account of my bad rheumatics, and will you give me some ice-cream and a cup of coffee?”
After they had laughed themselves sore, they concluded that they were ready to set out, so they stole cautiously down. Eunice had bundled her long braid on top of her head under a battered old felt hat, jammed well over her ears, and nobody would have known the two dirty little wretches that crept quietly over the stairs. It was the middle of the afternoon, and as everybody was napping, the coast was clear. They slipped out the side door into the shrubbery, and through that to the road, climbing the low stone fence. Then they came up the lane to the back door.
Cook was nodding on the shady back piazza, as the grotesque little figures stole up the steps. Cricket crept softly up and laid a grimy little finger on the end of cook’s unconscious nose.
Cook opened her eyes with a start.
“Howly Moses!” she howled, thinking she had the nightmare. “Get away wid yer.”