“Good heavens!” said Elsie. “Talk of sound waves!”
Pee-wee now paused to glance about at the litter which filled his sister’s room. The multi-colored evidences of intensive manufacture were all about, on the bed, on the collapsible cutting-table, on and about the wicker sewing stand, in the jaws of the sewing machine. There was a riot of color, and a kind of atmosphere of cooperative ingenuity which even the masculine invader was conscious of. This was no ordinary task of dressmaking. A queer-looking specimen of headgear with a facsimile snake on the front of it testified to that.
The eyes of the rival manufacturer were attracted to this cotton-stuffed reptile, with projecting tongue made of a bent hairpin. He glanced at a motley costume besprinkled with writhing serpents, and among its other embellishments he recognized one as bearing a resemblance to the sphinx in his school geography.
Pee-wee had never inquired into the processes of dressmaking but here was a specimen of handiwork which caught his eye and set him gaping in wonder. Attached to the costume, which rivaled futuristic wall-paper in its motley originality, was a metal snake with red glass eyes. It was long and flexible. Pee-wee was a scout, a naturalist, a lover of wild life, and he gazed longingly upon this serpentine girdle.
“Walter,” said his mother, “I want you to promise me that you won’t say a word, not a single word, to anybody about the costume Elsie is going to wear at Mary Temple’s masquerade. I want you to promise me that you won’t even say that she has a big surprise. Do you think you can——”
“I don’t see why he can’t stay in the house another two or three days,” said Elsie, who was sitting at the machine. “If dad thinks he ought to stay home till Monday, he certainly won’t lose much by staying home till Wednesday. If he doesn’t go out, why then he can’t talk. I don’t see why you had to let him in.”
“Because I’m not going to have him endangering his life on that coping,” said Mrs. Harris.
“I might just as well send an item to the Evening Bungle,” said Elsie, with an air of exasperated resignation. The Bridgeboro daily paper was named the Bugle, but it was more appropriately spoken of as the Bungle. “Every single guest at the masquerade will know I’m going as Queen Tut long before my costume is ready,” the girl added.
“You shouldn’t have mentioned the name,” said Mrs. Harris.
“Oh, there’s no hope of secrecy now,” said Elsie. “He’s seen it, that’s enough.”