Crossed Trails in MexicoMexican Mystery Stories #3
"Oh, I'm afraid my blue crêpe'll be a mass of wrinkles," Peggy exclaimed as she hurried over and began unpacking her clothes.

"Get my dress--the pink taffeta--out, too," Jo Ann called out on her way to the bathroom. "It's in your suitcase. I'll have my bath in two jiffies and be in my dress in another one."

When she reappeared in the room a few minutes later, garbed in a negligee whose rose color matched her fresh glowing cheeks, she found that Miss Prudence and Carlitos had gone to the dining room and that Florence and Peggy were standing lamenting over the wrinkled state of their dinner dresses.

"Our dresses are terribly rumpled, and yours is the worst of the three," Peggy remarked with a worried frown. "I hate for us to disgrace Lucile by coming to her party looking like wrecks of the Hesperus."

"We won't have time to send them out to a pressing shop or even to the maid here in the hotel--we'd never get them back in time to wear," added Florence.

"Oh, stop worrying!" Jo Ann sang out, as she ran the comb through her curls. "I'll press all three dresses while you're getting your baths. You have a small electric iron in your bag, didn't you say, Florence?"

"Yes. It's really a toy that I'm taking as a present to one of the little girls in my neighborhood. The cord's so short--I doubt if you can use the iron."

"Get it out and I'll use it all right." Jo Ann's voice was confident.

When Florence handed the iron to her and she saw how short the cord was, she began to feel dubious, though her determination did not waver. She'd manage some way. After a hasty look about the room she saw there was only one usable light socket in the room--the high ceiling one above the bed.

"I'll have to attach the iron to that socket." She pointed to the ceiling light.

Florence looked at the diminutive cord and laughed. "You can't do it."

"If you'll hold me steady, you'll see." Jo Ann climbed up on the foot of the bed. "Hold my legs, now." She stood tiptoe on this perch and after many efforts succeeded in putting the plug into one of the center sockets.

That done, she stepped down on a newspaper on the bed, but to her disappointment she saw that the cord lacked at least four feet.

Peggy 
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