spirited little creature, I should like to see a husband
presume to interfere with me in those things. Here, take mine."

Rosa hesitated a little. "Well--no--I think not."

Miss Lucas laughed at her, and quizzed her so on her allowing a man to
interfere in such sacred things as dress and cosmetics, that she came
back irritated with her husband, and gave him a short answer or two.
Then he asked what was the matter.

"You treat me like a child--taking away my very puff."

"I treat you like a beautiful flower, that no bad gardener shall wither
whilst I am here."

"What nonsense! How could that wither me? It is only violet powder--what
they put on babies."

"And who are the Herods that put it on babies?"

"Their own mothers, that love them ten times more than the fathers do."

"And kill a hundred of them for one a man ever kills. Mothers!--the most
wholesale homicides in the nation. We will examine your violet-powder:
bring it down here."

While she was gone he sent for a breakfast-cupful of flour, and when she
came back he had his scales out, and begged her to put a teaspoonful of
flour into one scale and of violet powder into another. The flour kicked
the beam, as Homer expresses himself.

"Put another spoonful of flour."

The one spoonful of violet powder outweighed the two of flour.

"Now," said Staines, "does not that show you the presence of a mineral
in your vegetable powder? I suppose they tell you it is made of white
violets dried, and triturated in a diamond mill. Let us find out what
metal it is. We need not go very deep into chemistry for that." He
then applied a simple test, and detected the presence of lead in large
quantities. Then he lectured her: "Invisible perspiration is a process
of nature necessary to health and to life. The skin is made porous for
that purpose. You can kill anybody in an hour or two by closing the
pores. A certain infallible ass, called Pope Leo XII., killed a little
boy in two hours, by gilding him to adorn the pageant of his first
procession as Pope. But what is death to the whole body must be
injurious to a part. What madness, then, to clog the pores of so
large and important a surface as the face, and check the invisible
perspiration: how much more to insert lead into your system every day
of your life; a cumulative poison, and one so deadly and so subtle, that
the Sheffield file-cutters die in their prime, from merely hammering on
a leaden anvil. And what do you gain