"
"I've washed once this mornin'. It's clean enough," Grandpa protested,
but in vain. He was planted in a chair, and Grandma Keeler, with rag and
soap and a basin of water, attacked the old gentleman vigorously, much
as I have seen cruel mothers wash the faces of their earth-begrimed
infants. He only gave expression to such groans as:
"Thar', ma! don't tear my ears to pieces! Come, ma! you've got my eyes
so full o' soap now, ma, that I can't see nothin'. Phew, Lordy! ain't ye
most through with this, ma?"
Then came the dyeing process, which Grandma Keeler assured me, aside,
made Grandpa "look like a man o' thirty;" but to me, after it he looked
neither old nor young, human nor inhuman, nor like anything that I had
ever seen before under the sun.
"There's the lotion, the potion, the dye-er, and the setter," said
Grandma, pointing to four bottles on the table. "Now whar's the
directions, Madeline?"
These having been produced from between the leaves of the family Bible,
Madeline read, while Grandma made a vigorous practical application of
the various mixtures.
"This admirable lotion"--in soft ecstatic tones Madeline rehearsed the
flowery language of the recipe--"though not so instantaneously startling
in its effect as our inestimable dyer and setter, yet forms a most
essential part of the whole process, opening, as it does, the dry and
lifeless pores of the scalp, imparting to them new life and beauty, and
rendering them more easily susceptible to the applications which follow.
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