denuded. I believe that there was some idea entertained of sewing
them into a cap and requiring my cousin to wear the cap until new
ones had sprouted. Even to me, a mere child of eight, this seemed
a foolish and totally unnecessary proceeding, but the situation
had already become so strained that I thought it the part of
prudence to go at once without offering any arguments of my own.
I felt, anyhow, that I would rather be away from the house for a
while, until calmer second judgment had succeeded excitement and
tumult.

The man who owned the barber shop seemed surprised when I delivered
the message, but he told me to come back in a few minutes and he'd
do what he could. I drifted on down to the confectionery store at
the corner to forget my sorrows for the moment in a worshipful
admiration of a display of prize boxes and cracknels in

glass-front cases--you should be able to fix the period by the
fact that cracknels and prize boxes were still in vogue among the
young. When I returned the head barber handed me quite a large
box--a shoebox--with a string tied round it. It did not seem
possible to me that my cousin could have had a whole shoebox full
of curls, but things had been going pretty badly that afternoon
and my motives had been misjudged and everything, so without any
talk I took the box and hurried home with it. My mother cut the
string and my aunt lifted the lid.

I should prefer again to draw a veil over the scenes that now
ensued, but the necessity of finishing this narrative requires me
to state that it being a Saturday and the head barber being a busy
man, he had not taken time to sort out my cousin's curls from among