and pink and the ears were well displayed, whereas before they had
been practically hidden. She was also relieved of those foolish
bangs hanging down in her eyes. This, I should have stated,
occurred in the period when womankind of whatsoever age and also
some men wore bangs, a disease from which all have since recovered
with the exception of racehorses and princesses of the various
reigning houses of Europe. And now my little cousin was shut of
those annoying bangs, and her forehead ran up so high that you had
to go round behind her to see where it left off.

Filled with a joyous sense of achievement and conscious of a kindly
deed worthily performed, I took my little cousin by her hand and
led her home.

My mother was waiting for us at the front door. She seemed
surprised when I took off my hat and gave her a look, but that
wasn't a circumstance to her surprise when I proudly took off my
little cousin's cap. She uttered a kind of a strangled cry and my
cousin's mother came running, and the way she carried on was
scandalous and illtimed. I will draw a veil over the proceedings
of the next few minutes. At the time it would have been a source
of great personal gratification and comfort to me if I could have
drawn a number of veils, good, thick, woolen ones, over the
proceedings. My mother wept, my aunt wept, my little cousin wept,
and I am not ashamed to state that I wept quite copiously myself.
But I had more provocation to weep than any of them.

When this part of the affair was over my mother sent me back to
the barber with a message. I was to say that a heart-broken woman
demanded to have the curls of which her darling child had been