“What do you mean?” I said.
“Think of the good that we are doing. That, my boy,” and he put his hand on my head in a fatherly way, “is vastly more important than the money part.”
“Scoop, the preacher,” laughed Peg.
“Ours,” preached Scoop, getting in some of the soap man’s fancy gestures, “is a very noble work. We are bringing beauty, and with it happiness, into the starved and discouraged lives of countless sad-hearted, homely women.”
“Here,” Peg offered, “take this jawbreaker and shut up.”
“All the same,” I grinned, wanting to help the fun along, “the women who bought our soap are going to be very grateful to us.”
“Especially Miss Prindle,” said Scoop, sucking on the jawbreaker. “I can imagine how grateful she will be to Peg when she looks into her mirror [[82]]to-morrow morning and finds a Mary Pickford face smiling back at her.”
We were joking of course. We had no idea that the soap would actually make women beautiful. It didn’t seem possible.
But it was good soap. We had tried it out. And in selling it we felt that our customers were getting their money’s worth, even though they didn’t get any beautifying results from its use.
“After supper,” Scoop planned, “we’ll call at the mill and give the soap man his two dollars and forty cents.”