“And then,” the Committee joyously took up the tale, “we went out and trailed the pink-eye.”
“We did. We trailed it to its lair in School Number 14, and there we found one of the most dangerous creatures which civilization still allows to exist.”
“In the school?” said Bettykin. “Oo-oo! What was it?”
“It was a Rollertowl,” replied the doctor impressively and in a sonorous voice.
“I never heard of it,” said the Cherub, awestruck. “What is it like?”
“He means a roller-towel, goosie,” explained Julia. “A towel on a roller, that everybody wipes their hands and faces on.”
“Exactly. And because everybody uses it, any contagious disease that anybody has, everybody is liable to catch. I’d as soon put a rattlesnake in a school as a roller-towel. In this case, half the grade where it was had conjunctivitis. But that isn’t the worst. There was one case of trachoma in the grade; a poor little Italian whose parents ignorantly sent her to an optician instead of an oculist. The optician treated her for an ordinary inflammation, and now she will lose the sight of one eye. Meantime, if any of the others have been infected by her, through that roller-towel, there will be trouble, for trachoma is a serious disease.”
“Did you throw out the roller-towel?” asked Charley with a hopeful eye to a fray.
“No. We got thrown out ourselves, didn’t we, Junkum?”
“Pretty near,” corroborated Julia. “The principal told Dr. Strong that he guessed he could run his school himself and he didn’t need any interference by—by—what did he call us, Dr. Strong?”