Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/269

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SEEING THROUGH VEILED PLACES
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and hungry look every time she passed a hot-dog stand or an Eskimo-pie wagon. Ain’t they the prettiest things! I liked to see Nannette wear ’em. She couldn’t get ’em too bright to suit me, nor too broad, nor too flowery. She had a whole drawer full of ’em. But when she shingled, I asked her if I could have ’em. She’s got a business head on her all right! She soaked me two bits, but I paid it because I knew what they were worth. Then I took ’em down to the Princess in the kitchen and I told her she could have two that she liked the best to make her cases for her embroidery silks if she’d wash the rest of ’em and iron out the creases and make ’em pretty for me. Į wasn’t too lazy to do it myself, but I wasn’t right sure how much soap to put on ’em, or what kind, and swingin’ an electric iron is a profession you got to learn. You can’t flip the dust off your shoulder into anybody’s eye unless you’ve had a good deal of dust there to flip, and that’s the way it is with swinging an electric iron. You’ve got to know how to do it before you get results.”

The Scout Master shook out the ribbons.

“Now, one thing you can do is to take ’em one at a time and just slip ’em through your fingers and look how silky they are and how lovely the flowers are and what beautiful colours there are in the stripes and how they run into each other.”

Before the eyes of the Bee Master there was held up one ribbon of delicate hues.

“You know,” said the small person, “the man who invented that—if it wasn’t a woman—whoever did it—had