"Gee, no! It's white stuff--looks like flour; mebbe it is flour fixed up with perfume. Mary Warner had some at school last week and showed some of the girls at recess how to put it on. I was behind a tree and saw them but they didn't see me." "I thought some of the girls looked pale--so that was what made them look so white! But how do you know all about fixing up to be a prima donna? Where did you learn?" She looked at him admiringly, justly appreciating his superior knowledge. "Oh, when I had the mumps last winter I used to read the papers every day, clean through. There was a column called the 'Hints to Beauty' column, and sometimes I read it just for fun, it was so funny. It told about fixing up the face and mentioned a famous singer and some other people who always looked beautiful because they knew how to fix their faces to keep looking young. But I wouldn't like to see any one I like fix their faces like it said, for all that stuff----" "But do you think all prima donnas put such things on their faces?" she interrupted him. "Guess so." "What was it, Davie?" "Cold cream, paint, powder--here, where are you going?" he asked as she started for the door. "I'll be out in a minute; you wait here for me." "Cold cream, paint, powder," she repeated as she closed the door and left David outside. "Cream's all in the cellar." She took a pewter tablespoon from a drawer, opened a latched door in the kitchen and went noiselessly down the steps to the cellar. There she lifted the lid from a large earthen jar, dipped a spoonful of thick cream from the jar, and began to rub it on her cheeks. "That's _cold_ cream, anyhow," she said to herself. "It certainly is cold. Ach, I don't like the feel of it on my face; it's too sticky and wet." But she rubbed valiantly until the spoonful was used and her face glowed. "Now paint, red paint--I don't dare use the kind you put on houses, for that's too hard to get off; let's see--I guess red-beet juice will do." She stooped to the cool, earthen floor, lifted the cover from a crock of pickled beets, dipped the spoon into the juice and began to rub the colored liquid upon her glowing cheeks. "If I only had a looking-glass, then I could see just where to put it on. But I don't dare to carry the juice up the steps, for if I spilled some just after Aunt Maria has them scrubbed for Sunday she'd be cross." She applied the red juice by guesswork, with the inevitable result that her ears, chin, and nose were stained as deeply as her cheeks. "Now the powder, then I'm through." She tiptoed up to the kitchen again, took a handful of flour from the bin and rubbed it upon her face. "Ugh, um," she sputtered, as some of the flour flew into her eyes and nostrils. "I guess that was too thick!" Then she knelt on a chair and looked into the small mirror that hung in the kitchen. She exclaimed in horror and disappointment at the vision that met her gaze.