I was sitting writing my notes, when suddenly the door was thrown open, and my sister, her face aflame with heat and excitement, appeared with a large bright orange parcel under her arm.
"I've got it, I've got it," she exclaimed.
"Got what—the measles or scarlet fever?"
"Soap," she replied with a tragic air, waving the bright orange bag over her head.
"You don't mean to say that enormous parcel contains soap?"
"I do," she replied. "I never intend to be without soap again, and so I bought all I could get. At least," with a merry twinkle and in an undertone, she added, "I brought away as little as I could, after explaining to the man for half an hour I did not want the enormous quantity he wished to press upon me."
Dear readers, it was not beautiful pink scented soap, it was not made in Paris or London; heaven only knows the place of its birth; it gave forth no delicious perfume; it was neither green, nor yellow, nor pink, to look upon. It was a hideous brown brick made in Lapland, I should think, and so hard it had probably been frozen at the North Pole itself.
But that was not all; when we began to wash, this wondrous soap which had cost so much trouble to procure—such hours in its pursuit—was evidently some preparation for scrubbing floors and rough household utensils, for there was a sandy grit about it which made us clean, certainly, but only at the expense of parting with our skin.
My poor sister! Her comedy ended in tragedy.