Harry Edgham laughed again.

It was the next morning when Aunt Maria appeared at the early
breakfast with a pompadour. Her thin frizzes were carefully puffed
over a mystery which she had purchased the afternoon before.

Maria, when she first saw her aunt, stared open-mouthed; then she ate
her breakfast as if she had seen nothing.

Harry Edgham gave one sharp stare at his sister-in-law, then he said:
"Got your hair done up a new way, haven't you, Maria?"

"Yes, my hat didn't set well on my head with my hair the way I was
wearing it," replied Aunt Maria with dignity; still she blushed. She
knew that her own hair did not entirely conceal the under structure,
and she knew, too, why she wore the pompadour.

Harry Edgham recognized the first fact with simple pity that his
sister-in-law's hair was so thin. He remembered hearing a hair-tonic
recommended by another man in the office, and he wondered privately
if Maria would feel hurt if he brought some for her. Of the other
fact he had not the least suspicion. He said: "Well, it's real
becoming to you, Maria. I guess I like it better than the other way.
I notice all the girls seem to wear their hair so nowadays."

Aunt Maria smiled at him gratefully. When her sister had married him,
she had wondered what on earth she saw in Harry Edgham; now he seemed
to her a very likeable man.

When Maria sat in school that morning, her aunt's pompadour diverted