“Now,” he said to himself, in a worried voice, “doesn’t that beat the Dutch?”
“You lose somedings?” inquired Mrs. Pederson, inquisitive-like.
She reached down to pick up one of the cakes of soap, curious, I imagine, to feel of the soap and to smell of it, as I have seen women do in the ten-cent stores. But Scoop quickly held out his hand and headed her off. Then he took his handkerchief and flicked imaginary particles of dust from the soap cake.
“This cake,” he told the flower raiser, “is the one that I’m saving for Mrs. Tompkins to look at,” and he gave it another careful dusting, squinting at it critical-like, his head cocked on one side. Then he carefully dusted each cake in turn, taking a lot of time. “This one,” he pointed out, “I’m saving for Mrs. Morrisy to look at and this [[66]]one for Mrs. Smith and this one for Mrs. Gronke and this one for——” Well, in short, he named over practically all of the women in the neighborhood, customers of his father’s grocery store.
Mrs. Pederson was busting with curiosity. She showed it in her actions. She was thinking to herself, I imagine, that here was something going on in the neighborhood that she didn’t know anything about. Probably she felt slighted.
“What ’tis?” she inquired shrilly, a queer eager look in her eyes.
But Scoop was busy counting his soap and gave her no attention.
“I guess,” he said, still worried, “that I must have made a mistake. I figured that I had an extra cake for you, Mrs. Pederson. But instead of having twelve cakes, the number that I started out with, I can count only eleven.”
The woman squinted eagerly at the cakes of soap that had been spread on the grass in front of her.
“A new kind of soap?” she inquired.