"It's bad enough to be pale without having a few of last summer's
freckles left to make it worse," she cried.

There were lessons to be prepared for the morrow, but the reflection in
the mirror had so disturbed her that she cast lessons aside and
commenced reading a story in a new magazine. The heroine was described
as having a wonderful complexion, as fair, as pink and white, as perfect
in coloring as a sea-shell.

"Of course!" said Ida, "and that's the sort I wish I had."

Her eyes strayed from the story of the beautiful heroine to the
advertising column.

"Raise mushrooms," read one advertisement, next: "Try our patent
collar-button," then: "Write poems for us."

"How stupid!" she said. "Who'd want to raise mushrooms, I'd like to
know? Who wants their old collar-buttons? And for mercy's sake, how many
people who read those advertising columns can write poetry?"

She was about to toss the magazine upon the couch, when two words in
large print caught her attention.

"Banish freckles--"

"What's that?" she whispered.

"Banish freckles and have a perfect complexion," she read. "Send fifty