Suds In Your Eye by Mary Lasswell Read Free Book Online Page A

Rasmussen, thrilled to have got someone to bite on her ancient gag. ‘These curtains is nice an’ thick. Won’t no light shine through them when we get ’em dyed an’ hung in front o’ them two big windows. Good thing we only got two windows to black out!’
    She turned over the job of stirring the curtains in the dye to Miss Tinkham while she gave Mrs. Feeley a hand in manufacturing a bed for the latest addition to the family.
    ‘See,’ Mrs. Feeley explained, ‘by runnin’ a wire from the end o’ your partition to the front window an’ hangin’ the rest o’ them pink drapes on it, she’ll have a private room. Now, I figger to knock out these three bottom shelves against the outside wall here, an’ use the boards to build her a bunk against the wall.’
    Mrs. Rasmussen thought that would be fine, only wouldn’t it be kind of hard sleeping?
    ‘I got that all figgered out, too,’ Mrs. Feeley replied sagely.
    She ripped out boards, and sawed, and pounded, while Mrs. Rasmussen held boards in place and handed her nails. When the platform of the bunk was finished, Mrs. Feeley went out to the junk yard and returned bearing the back-seat cushion of a car. Old-Timer followed with another. Mrs. Rasmussen caught on at once and hurried out to do her share. When the four cushions were laid in a row in the boxlike frame of the bunk, a large square divan was the result. Mrs. Feeley sat down on the edge of the bunk and bounced up and down.
    ‘Swell!’ she cried. ‘Little mite uneven, but mighty comfortable! Guess a couple o’ quilts spread over it would level it off.’
    ‘Wait,’ Mrs. Rasmussen said, and dived through the pink curtains into her room. She scrabbled around in her trunk and came back with a small feather bed which she spread over the ex-auto cushions.
    ‘I don’t need it,’ she said. ‘My bed’s got a in the spring mattress.’
    They called Miss Tinkham to come and behold her room.
    ‘Now when the blackout curtains is up, all you have to do is pull ’em closed an’ nobody can see into your room from the street! Ain’t that somethin’?’
    Miss Tinkham thought it was all that and more besides. A corner all her own!
    Mrs. Feeley looked around at her home to size up the looks of the place since her remodeling job. The piano had been moved to the opposite wall to allow the curtains of the cubicles to pull easily. Miss Tinkham’s small white radio occupied a prominent position near the brass bed. Mrs. Rasmussen’s table with the fancy shiny legs gave the place a lift too.
    ‘Sure looks elegant, don’t it?’ Mrs. Feeley gloated. ‘How’s about a beer?’
    The ladies were rocking and sipping cosily, admiring their handiwork so intently that they did not hear the young man come up the steps.
    ‘Guzzling as usual!’ he yelled, and smothered Mrs. Feeley in a large embrace.
    ‘Danny!’ Mrs. Feeley shrieked when she could get her face free. ‘Where you been, you rascal?’
    ‘Military secret!’ Danny replied, turning from his aunt to greet Mrs. Rasmussen, whom he knew of old. Mrs. Feeley looked around to introduce him to Miss Tinkham, but she had suddenly plunged behind the curtains of her room. She emerged in a few minutes with a touch of rouge on her cheeks, wearing an extra string of beads.
    ‘So this is Danny!’ she cried, pumping the somewhat startled Danny’s hand. ‘Your dear aunt has been so worried about you! Why, you are even handsomer than your photograph!’
    He was indeed a very personable young man, deeply tanned and very clean-cut as to features and build. Apparently he was fond of his aunt.
    ‘What have you got to say for yourself, Dazzle Pants?’ he asked her as she brought him some beer.
    ‘What have you got to say is more like it!’ his aunt snorted. ‘Not so much as a card from you all these months!’
    ‘Aw, you wouldn’t like the little old cards we send out these days! “I am well. I am not well. Check the one you mean.” They wouldn’t interest you! I