One time the Stricker gang wrote us a fake note, signing Miss Prindle’s name to it, asking us to drop twelve of our cats into her basement window. That was the time that the cats got into her crab-apple marmalade.
If I hadn’t seen the beautified dressmaker with my own eyes, I probably would have suspected that this letter of Mr. Posselwait’s was another trick of Bid Stricker’s. But I knew that the letter was no fake. For I had seen the transformed one with my own eyes. Tom had seen her, too. It was no case of imagination with us. [[124]]
“You kin take it along with you,” the soap man told us, “an’ show it to your customers. It ought to help you make sales. Work hard, boys,” and he rubbed his hands together like an old miser.
Tom and I went to a house where I had been turned down the preceding afternoon.
“Well?” Mrs. Larson said sharply, coming to her front door. She didn’t act very glad to see me. You could have imagined, from the way she looked at me, that I was an alley cat with a choice assortment of smallpox germs.
“Yesterday,” I said, in proper dignity, “you told me that my beauty soap was a fraud. In justice to my goods,” I concluded, handing her the letter, “I think you ought to read that.”
She took the letter and read it through.
“As you know,” I said, getting in my selling talk, “Miss Prindle was not a very beautiful woman before she used our beauty soap. But in just one night Bubbles of Beauty, the wonder soap, has transformed her into a dream of beauty. Of course,” I added, in good tact, “I realize that you have no use for the soap yourself. It is only for women who are not beautiful. But you may know of some woman who is homely and who wants to become beautiful. And in your kind-hearted way——” [[125]]
“Excuse me,” she laughed. “I have a cake in the oven,” and she closed the door in my face.
We went to another house where I had been turned down. Mrs. Macey took my letter and read it.