“A thing you don’t understand,” he added, acting big, “is human nature.”

“I don’t know how to be an old soft soap slinger, either,” I shot at him.

It isn’t in me to get mad and stay mad. So pretty soon I got over my grouch. Anyway, I admitted to myself, Scoop, with all of his conceit, was deserving of some praise. For he had turned a neat trick, succeeding where I had failed.

I know how to be fair. [[71]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER VIII

IN THE OLD MILL

On the way to Mrs. Kelly’s house we stopped at the Gronke farm and talked the housekeeper into buying a box of our beauty soap. At the next farm we sold a box to Mrs. Smith, though it took an awful lot of persuasion. At the third farmhouse we were turned down cold. Our beauty soap, Mrs. Morrisy told us, uninterested, was a fraud.

It was now after eleven o’clock by Scoop’s watch.

“We’ve got to snap into it,” he said, “if we expect to get back to town in time for dinner.”