Hardly had they mounted the car steps than the colored woman came hobbling after them, screaming, “Hey, wait for me!” She picked up her skirts, displaying two legs in knickers and boyish hose and shoes, and ran to the car. In the glare of the lighted street car, they saw a rim of red hair peeping under the bandanna when the woman approached. It was Chub, ready with nickels to pay their fares. The stick he had been leaning on was nothing but a ball bat. He had been particularly elated at having fooled Amy.
“But, Chub,” Joan objected now, “it’s suffocating in the attic.”
“Oh, come on, be a sport,” he pleaded; “I want to assemble my ensemble for Hallowe’en.”
“Well, all right,” she gave in. The attic was so hot she stayed there only long enough to yank the red silk blouse and other things out of the trunks. She found an old tweed skirt of mother’s and a panama hat that Tim had discarded. The skirt was too small in the waist for Chub, but they made it fit with a big safety pin. It reached to his ankles. The panama hat brim came down over his eyes. His own dusty brown oxfords gave just the right effect. As a final touch, Joan, really interested now, added a pair of shell-rimmed glasses that Tim had once worn to a movie party when he had assumed the role of Harold Lloyd.
“It’s perfect, Chub,” she giggled. “Wait till I get Mother’s covered basket, and you’ll look exactly like the Doughnut Woman.”
She found the basket in the pantry, and Chub put the rest of the doughnuts in the bag to give it a bit of reality.
“Guess I’ll go over to the office and give the folks a laugh,” he decided. “You stay here or they’ll guess who I am.”
Joan turned again to her weeding and her thoughts. How could she get that picture for Tim? Betty’s joking remark about snatching the picture off the mantel came to her now, as she pulled viciously at the weeds.
Remembering Cookie’s story—how he had been forced to play the part of chore boy to get that story of the wedding in the East—she wondered whether she might not go to the King home on some pretense and get the picture, returning it after it had been in the paper. If this were a movie, now, she’d dress up as a dainty little maid with cap and apron and get a job in the King household and then disappear with the picture. But she had to do something quick!
The idea of a disguise seemed so safe. But maids in caps and aprons did not walk the streets in Plainfield. Anyway, she wouldn’t really have the nerve to go herself, though, and there was no one she could send on such an errand. Chub would be willing enough, but he would only bungle things.