“Your neuralgia lotion!” shrieked Bell, first with a look of blank astonishment, and then one of excitement and glee mixed in equal parts. “Look at it, girls! Look, Alice and Jo! Oh, Lilia, you precious, blundering goose!” and thereupon she dragged out from beneath the bed valance a pint bottle of violet ink, and then relapsed into a paroxysm of voiceless mirth. Just then the hack door opened, and in hurried Uncle Harry, Edith, and Patty, much terrified, for they had heard the shouts and gasps and excited voices from outside, and supposed that Lilia must at least have fallen into convulsions.
“Let me see the poor child immediately,” cried Mr. Winship. “What is the trouble with you, Bell? are you demented? and where is Lilia?” looking at the apparently empty bed, for Lilia had wound herself in the sheets and blankets, disappeared from view, and was endeavoring to force a pillow into her mouth in order to render her shame-faced laughter inaudible. “Are you trying to play a joke on me?” continued he, with as much dignity as was consistent with an attire made up of an undershirt, a pair of trousers, overshoes, a tall hat, and a gold-headed cane which he had quite unconsciously caught up in his hasty flight from his chamber.
“The fact is,” answered Bell, between her gasps, and trying desperately hard to regain her sobriety,—“the fact is—Uncle Harry—we made—a mistake, and so did—Lilia. There were two bottles just alike on the wash-stand, and in the night she bathed her face for five minutes in the purple ink! Oh, oh, oh!!”
Uncle Harry's face relaxed into a broad smile as he realized the joke.
“Oh, Mr. Winship, you should have seen her!” sighed Jo, lifting her head from the sofa-pillow, with streaming eyes. “All her face, except part of her forehead and one cheek, was covered with enormous dark purple blotches. She looked like a clown, or a Fourth of July fantastic, or anything else frightful!”
“Well,” said Edith, slyly, “Bell said mortification had taken place. I don't think Lilia has ever been more mortified than she is now; do you?
“Puns are out of place, Edith,” said Bell, severely. “Don't hurry, Uncle Harry. Don't let any thought of your rather peculiar attire cause you embarrassment.”
But before Bell's teasing voice had ceased, the last thud, thud of his rubbers, and click, click of his gold-headed cane were heard in the hall, and he thought, as he tried to finish his early morning nap, that it would be a long time before he allowed those madcap girls to rout him out of bed again at five o'clock on a winter's day.
As for the girls themselves, they did not even make a trial of slumber, but first scrubbed Lilia energetically with hard soap and pumice, and then made molasses candy, determined that the roaring kitchen fire should be used to some purpose.
Having gained so much time by the unusual way in which they had started the day, they were enabled to look back at nightfall on an unprecedented number of activities, some of them rather unique and original. There was a call upon Emma Jane's mother, another upon Mrs. Carter at the Winter Farm, a sleigh-ride with Geoffrey Strong, the vehicle being a truck for hauling wood, an hour's coasting down Brigadier hill, and a trip to the doctor's for courtplaster and arnica and peppermint and cough lozenges. Then directly after luncheon Bell and Jo made a private and confidential call upon Grandma Win-ship's pig, leaving with him as evidences of regard several samples of their own cookery. This call they hoped was unnoticed, but an hour afterwards the other four girls were espied coming from the Winships', all clad in black garments of one sort or another. When questioned as to the meaning of this mysterious piece of foolishness they merely remarked that they, too, had called upon the Winships pig, but that it was a visit of condolence and sympathy.