BUBBLES OF BEAUTY
Wednesday morning when we came into the school grounds a number of the
kids were yipping and kicking up their heels. Tom was the first one in
our gang to grab the good news that was going around among the
scholars.
“Hot dog!” he cried. “Teachers’ convention. No school till next
Monday.”
We were excited. And right away we began to plan our fun.
“Let’s catch frogs,” suggested Scoop. “We can sell them and make some
money. For almost everybody likes fried frog legs.”
So we got a bag and started out. First we tried our luck in the
millpond behind the brick house. But what frogs we saw there were small
and not worth catching. So we decided to go to the ravine where Scoop
and I had played dinosaur.
“Risky” said Peg, reflective-like.
“What’s risky?” inquired Scoop.
“Leaving the talking frog without a guard.”
“You’re right,” considered Scoop. He fished some matches out of his
pocket. “We’ll draw cuts,” he said, getting the matches ready. “The
short-match drawer will be the guard.”
“That’s fair enough,” said Tom, drawing.
I drew next, hoping that I would be lucky. I didn’t want to miss the
fun of going to the ravine.
Peg got the short match.
“I almost wish,” he said, making a wry face, “that I had kept my mouth
shut.”
Scoop laughed.
“We’ll be back by twelve o’clock. So be sure and have dinner ready for
us and don’t burn the coffee.”
We started off, three abreast. But we hadn’t gone very far along the
country road before we came to a horse and buggy, drawn up in the shade
of a high hedge. It was the ricketiest buggy I ever set eyes on. The
wheels were warped out of true. They made the buggy look as though it
had a bad case of bowlegs. The leather top was cracked and shrunken out
of shape.
And the horse! Good night! That horse was so skinny that you could have
used its ribs for a washboard. It was sway-backed and its hip bones
stuck up like chair knobs. It had a big head, and when I got a look
into its sober, forlorn-looking face, I had the uncomfortable feeling
that it was dying of a broken heart. I don’t know how old horses get to
be as a rule. But if some horses live to be fifty years old, this skate
was easily sixty-something.
An oldish man was seated in the dilapidated buggy. He had some kind of
an iron jigger in his lap. And when he saw us he gave a start, as
though he had been caught doing something that he didn’t want us to
know about. Kerplunk! Quick as scat the iron thing disappeared under
the buggy seat.
He was every bit as queer-looking as his old nag. Yes, sir, they were a
good pair. The long face that he had turned to us was thin, like a
sun-fish. The eyes were black, sort of restless-like, and set close
together. The head was bald on top. We could see that it was because
the man’s hat was parked on the buggy seat. He wasn’t fat. But he had
more stomach than he needed. The way it stuck out in front, like a
halved pumpkin, made me think of a lean boa constrictor that had
swallowed a dog.
Well, we kind of stared at him, wondering who he was, and he, in turn,
squinted back at us.
“Howdy, boys,” he smiled, friendly-like.
“Howdy,” Tom returned.
It struck me on the moment that my new chum’s voice sounded queer. I
wondered why. Turning to look at him, to read his thoughts, I found him
squinting hard at the old nag. As though he had seen it before and was
trying to puzzle out something in his head.
“You boys must be out coonin’ chickens,” the stranger cackled, pointing
to the bag that I was carrying.
“No,” I spoke up. “We’re planning to fill our bag with frogs.”
“Frogs?” he repeated, looking at me questioning-like.
“We’re going to sell the hind legs,” I explained, “and earn some
money.”
“Um.... How would you like to work fur me? The three of you. Calc’late
you kin make a lot more money assistin’ me than you kin sellin’ frog
legs. I’ve got a real proposition, boys.”
“What’s your line?” I grinned, looking at the four-legged washboard.
“Horse trading?”
I was a little bit suspicious of this stranger. For one time an old
shyster came to Tutter and stung me for a dollar and a quarter for a
membership in his fake detective agency. Since then I have been
cautious about taking up with men I’m not acquainted with.
Very gravely the old man reached under the buggy seat and brought out a
fancy sign. He hung the sign on the side of the buggy. It read:
BUBBLES OF BEAUTY
The Wonder Soap That
Makes All
Women Beautiful
I had heard of Ivory soap and Palmolive soap and two or three other
kinds of advertised toilet soap. But I never had heard of Bubbles of
Beauty. It must be something brand new, I figured.
The man stood up in the buggy and kind of posed, one hand resting on
his over-size stomach and the other feeling around in the air above his
head. He looked awfully tall. With his lanky arms and legs and thin
face and pushed-out stomach he seemed to be all out of proportion.
Looking at him, I was reminded of the funny pictures in the Sunday
newspapers.
“Boys,” he said, dramatic-like, “I ask you as a disinterested friend,
who has done the most for this country, Edison or Gallywiggle?”
I grinned.
“Henry Ford,” the old man questioned further, acting as though he was
preaching a sermon, “or Gallywiggle?”
Amused, I wondered who Gallywiggle was. I had heard of Mr. Edison and
Mr. Ford, but I never had heard of a Mr. Gallywiggle. Gallywiggle!
Wasn’t that a name for you?
“Mr. Gallywiggle,” the old man went on, sort of warming up, “Mr.
Mortimor Hackadorne Gallywiggle, the president of our company an’ the
friend of all humanity. The genius who has taken more warts from
women’s noses than all of the talkin’ machines an’ all of the
automobiles put together. The man who has made millions of sallow skins
pink. The man who has turned bushels of blemishes into barrels of
blushes. The man, folks, who spent fifty years of his noble, useful
life perfectin’ the formula of the greatest gift that science has ever
bestowed upon womankind. Bubbles of Beauty! The only toilet soap of its
kind in the world. An’ to-night, ladies and gents, to introduce this
marvelous beautifier into your homes—for one evening, folks, as a
special introductory offer—we are cuttin’ the price of this household
necessity down to only a dime, ten cents, a cake.”
Suddenly his voice trailed away. And he looked sort of
embarrassed-like. I guess he had forgotten himself. I figured it out
that he was a soap peddler and was used to talking this way to
street-corner crowds.
“Boys,” he said, holding our eyes with his own, “if you’ll work fur me
I’ll make you assistant beautifiers. I need you in my business. For
this thing of makin’ women beautiful is a big job. To do it thorough,
like our dear departed president, Mr. Gallywiggle, asked me to do,
personal, when he signed my territorial contract, I’ve got to have
plenty of capable help. Mebby you kin guess how turrible I’d feel to
learn that I had passed up some poor, unfortunate woman who wanted to
be beautiful an’ who was left homely simply because I was so rushed
that I didn’t git around to her with a cake of our marvelous Bubbles of
Beauty.”
There was a worn black leather satchel in the buggy. He opened this
satchel and took out several small cardboard boxes. Removing the cover
of one of the pink boxes, he let us see that it contained three thin
cakes of soap. It was swell soap all right. I could tell by the smell.
“As I started to say,” the soap man continued, “my name is Ajax
Posselwait. I’m on a’ advertisin’ tour through this section of the
country gittin’ folks acquainted with our marvelous Bubbles of Beauty,
the wonder soap that makes all women beautiful. To introduce the soap
into every home we are offerin’ three cakes for a quartex. In the
cities, where thousands of women, yes, millions of women, are usin’
Bubbles of Beauty to keep beautiful with, the reg’lar price is fifty
cents. But it’s all a part of our sellin’ plan to put up with a loss in
gittin’ established in a new territory. We just charge up the loss to
advertisin’.”
He cleared his throat.
“Now, it ain’t goin’ to be no trick at all fur you boys, as assistant
beautifiers, to sell a box of our marvelous Bubbles of Beauty into
every home in this community. All you’ve got to do is to tell the women
how the soap improves the complexion, drives away blotches, transforms
wrinkles into dimples. An’ fur every quarter that you take in you keep
ten cents, which is your pay, an’ I git fifteen cents.”
I looked at our leader. He had suggested catching frogs as a possible
way of earning money. And on the moment it seemed to me that selling
this man’s soap was a better money-making scheme than frog-catching. He
couldn’t gyp us, like the fake detective did, because we wouldn’t be
putting up any money. We were safe.
“Um....” said Scoop, thinking.
“You kin make a lot of money workin’ fur me,” the soap man put in,
persuasive-like.
“Maybe,” said Scoop.
“It ain’t ordinary peddlin’,” the man went on. “It’s what I call
artistic peddlin’. Yes, sir, an assistant beautifier must be an artist
to be a success at his job. Absolutely. He’s got to have enough tact to
sell somethin’ to a homely woman to make her beautiful without makin’
her feel that he knows that she’s homely an’ needs what she’s buyin’
from him. Doin’ a thing like that successfully is an art, just the same
as paintin’ beautiful pictures an’ carvin’ statues. It’s a job that any
boy kin be proud of. Fur it calls fur ability. An’, like I say, your
profit is a dime out of every quarter.”
“Fifteen cents,” said Scoop, whose father is one of the shrewdest
business men in Tutter.
“Ten cents,” said the soap man, scowling.
“Not enough,” said Scoop. He took my arm and started off. “Come on,
gang,” he said. I tried to hold back, but he hissed in my ear to follow
him and keep still. He had a scheme, he said.
“Um.... Just wait a minute,” the soap man called after us.
We paused and looked back.
“Fifteen cents,” said Scoop.
The older one’s scowl deepened.
“Plain robbery, that’s what! Calc’late though I’ve got to stand fur
it.”
Scoop gave me a dig in the ribs with his elbow.
“Fifteen cents,” he whispered in my ear, “is better than ten cents. I
figured that we could hook him for the extra nickel.”
We went to the buggy and our new employer gave each of us four boxes of
soap, twelve boxes in all. “Bubbles of Beauty” was printed on the
covers in gold lettering.
“You ought to have it all sold by noon,” he said.
“Where’ll we find you when we want to settle up?” inquired Scoop.
“You boys live in Tutter, I take it.”
Our leader nodded.
“As you go into town on this road,” the man pointed, “there’s a big red
brick house on the right-hand side with a yardful of pine trees.”
“We know the place,” Scoop said quickly, giving Tom and me a look that
was intended to shut us up if we had any thought of saying anything.
“Back of the brick house there’s a’ old mill.”
“Yes,” said Scoop.
“Well,” said the soap man, flapping the lines, “when you want to settle
up with me that’s where you’ll find me.”
“In the old mill?”
“Exactly. Git up, Romeo.”