"Why, I wasn't doing anything, honest I wasn't, mom. Oh, how funny you look with that patch of flour on your cheek! Just like a clown in a circus, only he has white stuff all over his face."
"Well, I must say, Bob Henderson, you're not very complimentary to your mother, telling her she looks like a circus clown."
"I didn't say you did, mom. You only look like half a clown."
"That's just as bad."
Bob took advantage of this little diversion to hide the paper snappers behind the tree while his mother was wiping the flour off her face. The snappers were oblong pieces of stout wrapping paper, folded in such a way that when swung through the air they went off like a bag blown up and crushed between the hands. Bob was an expert in their manufacture.
"Come," went on Mrs. Henderson, when she was satisfied that her face was no longer adorned with flour, "I want you to go to the store for some lard. Tell Mr. Hodge you want the best. Here's the money."
"All right, mom, I'll go right away. Do you want anything else?"
Now Bob usually made more of a protest than this when asked to go to the store, which was at the other end of the village of Moreville, where he lived. He generally wanted to stay at his play, or was on the point of going off with some boy of his acquaintance.
But this time he prepared to go without making any complaint, and had his mother not been so preoccupied thinking of her housework, she might have suspected that the lad had some mischief afoot—some scheme that he wanted to carry out, and which going to the store would further.
"No, I guess the lard is all I need now," she said. "Now do hurry, Bob. Don't stop on the way, for I want to get these pies baked before supper."