“Yes,” returned Mrs. Crandon, “I heard how it beautified Miss Prindle,” and she looked at me and smiled.
Dog-gone! I felt pretty cheap. For everybody in town knew the joke. The woman I had seen on Miss Prindle’s porch was her out-of-town [[226]]sister. And Red’s beauty was all put on with cold cream and face powder. He had his mother fix him up to fool me.
The Strickers, of course, had made up the fake beauty letter.
“Anyway,” laughed Mrs. Crandon, “the soap is good soap, whether it makes people beautiful or not. It has such a good smell that the baby bit into a cake yesterday afternoon, thinking it was candy, I suppose, and I was up half the night with her.”
“If the baby has warts on the inside of her stomach,” grinned Scoop, “she’s cured for life. For Bubbles of Beauty is death on warts. If you think I’m stringing you, ask Jerry. The soap cured the wart that Mrs. Pederson put on the top of his head with a broom.”
“If you don’t dry up,” I waggled, “I’ll put a wart on your head.”
But he knew I said it in fun, for I was grinning.
THE END
[[227]]