Mrs. Grayson, her babies leaving her side to cluster interestedly around Frank, replied that she and the children were well; that the epidemic of whooping-cough had not reached them because they lived so far out of town.
"Yes," assented Bep, politely; "and then, the smell of gas is so good for whooping-cough. That keeps 'em well. And that's why I brought Frank down here."
Mrs. Grayson's excitable motherhood took alarm. "I never heard," she said quickly, "that breathing in coal-tar smells kept off whooping-cough."
"No, neither did I, though p'r'aps it does. But it cures—I know that."
"You don't mean to say—" Mrs. Grayson flew like a terrified hen for her chicks, lifting two by an arm each clear from the ground and hustling the third into the kitchen before her.
"Yep, she's got it," said Bep, proudly. And Frank, feeling called upon to be interesting, burst into a convulsive corroboration of the glad tidings.
"You nasty little minx!" exclaimed Mrs. Grayson, as she shut the door in Bep's face.
"What's 'minx'?" Frank asked her sister, as they toiled up toward town again.
"Oh, it's a wild animal," answered Bep, readily; "but she don't know how to say it. She's going to have bad luck, though; anybody can tell that by the way she walked under that ladder. I shouldn't be a bit surprised if every last one of her children gets the whooping-cough!"
And Frank felt sorry for the Graysons. For she was sure that Bep knew whereof she spoke. She knew the laws of the superstitious country in which she dwelt, did Bep: a country where if you sing before you eat, you're bound to cry before you sleep; where, if you put your corset-waist on wrong side out, and are hardy enough to change it, you deserve what you're likely to get; where no sane girl will tempt Providence by walking on a crack; where, if you lose something, you have only to spit in the palm of your hand,—if you're dowered in the matter of saliva,—strike the tiny pool sharply, and say: