The fellows had a lot of fun with me the following morning. Having given me a suit of his clothes to wear, my own being too filthy for further use, Tom hunted up an article in the back of Aunt Polly’s cook book telling how to remove ink stains with sour cream. He said that if sour cream was good for ink stains it ought to be first-class for soot. So he and the others plastered sour cream all over my face. Then they rubbed me with coarse towels. But when they got through with me I was far from being white.
“It’ll have to wear off,” I said.
“Wait till your ma sees you,” grinned Scoop.
“I can powder my face,” I said, “and make it white.”
“Hot dog!” cried Tom, and he ran into his aunt’s bedroom and came back with her powder puff.
Peg was draped out of a front window. [[143]]
“There goes the mail man,” he cried, when I had finished powdering myself. “Maybe there’s another letter from Aunt Polly. Come on, gang.”
We went down the path lickety-cut. But there was no letter in the mail box. It was disappointing. For we had hoped for favorable news.
“Anyway,” Peg broke the silence, “no news is good news. So let’s look on the bright side.… What are we going to do this morning?—peddle soap?”
While we were talking, making our plans, sort of, an automobile came into sight from the country, a classy red roadster, driven by a boy our age. There was a screeching of brakes, and on the instant that the car came to a skidding stand-still, Tom dove from sight into a lilac bush beside the path.