"OH, MY!"
Just then the front-door bell rang, and Mr. Bradford (our new minister) and his wife and three daughters and his son came in. Sue jumped up and ran into the front parlor to light the gas, and Mr. Travers came to help her. They just got it lit when the visitors came in, and father and mother came down stairs to meet them. Mr. Bradford looked as if he had seen a ghost, and his wife and daughters said, "Oh my!" and father said, "What on earth!" and mother just burst out laughing, and said, "Susan, you and Mr. Travers seem to have had an accident with the inkstand."
You never saw such a sight as those poor young people were. I had made a mistake, and brought down a bottle of liquid blacking—the same that I blacked the baby with that time. Mr. Travers had put it all over Sue's face, so that she was jet black, all but a little of one cheek and the end of her nose, and then he had rubbed his hands on his own face until he was like an Ethiopian leopard, only he could change his spots if he used soap enough.
You couldn't have any idea how angry Sue was with me—just as if it was my fault, when all I did was to go up stairs for her, and get a bottle to bring her to with; and it would have been all right if she hadn't left the blacking bottle on her bureau; and I don't call that tidy, if she is a girl. Mr. Travers wasn't a bit angry; but he came up to my room and washed his face, and laughed all the time. And Sue got awfully angry with him, and said she would never speak to him again after disgracing her in that heartless way. So he went home, and I could hear him laughing all the way down the street, and Mr. Bradford and his folks thought that he and Sue had been having a minstrel show, and mother thinks they'll never come to the house again.
As for father, he was almost as much amused as Mr. Travers, and he said it served Sue right, and he wasn't going to punish the boy to please her. I'm going to try to have another circus some day, though this one was all an accident, and of course I was dreadfully sorry about it.
LAWN TENNIS TOURNAMENT AT THE ST. GEORGE'S CLUB GROUND, HOBOKEN, NEW JERSEY, OCTOBER 27, 1881.