“We’re peddling beauty soap,” I told Mrs. Kelly, bringing out a pink box. “The regular [[100]]price of the soap is ten cents a cake or three cakes for a quarter. But I want you to have a free cake,” I told her, “to sort of pay you back for the cookies.”
“Beauty soap?” she repeated. And I had the sudden feeling that something queer was happening in her head.
“It’s a very wonderful soap,” Scoop picked up. “It makes women beautiful. The homelier they are the more beautiful they become. And we have been told further that it removes warts and blemishes; turns wrinkles into dimples. Of course,” he said, in pretended earnestness, “I realize that you haven’t any use for the soap yourself. But maybe you have a friend who is homely and who wants to become beautiful. And in your kind-hearted way——”
“What is the name of your soap?” Mrs. Kelly cut in.
“Bubbles of Beauty,” recited Scoop.
“Here it is,” I said, opening my pink box and handing her a cake.
She turned white—a sort of scared-looking, yellowish white, like the keys of an old piano.
“So he’s in the neighborhood, is he? The ould scoundrel! When did you meet him? This mornin’?” [[101]]
“Yesterday morning,” informed Scoop.
“And did he send you here?”