carefully dressed man with a diminutive pointed gray beard and
formal curled mustache. He spoke with what Linda supposed was a
French accent, and his manners, at least to them, were beautiful.
But because the girl had not put out the blue flames quickly enough
he turned to her with a voice of quivering rage.

It was so unexpected, in the middle of his bowing and smooth
assurances, that Linda was startled, and had to think about him all
over. The result of this was a surprising dislike; she hated, even,
to see him touch her mother, as he unnecessarily did in directing
them into the enclosure for the permanent wave.

The place itself filled her with the faint horror of instruments and
the unknown. Above the chair where Mrs. Condon now sat there was a
circle in the ceiling like the base of a chandelier and hanging down
from it on twisted green wires were a great number of the strangest
things imaginable: they were as thick as her wrist, but round,
longer and hollow, white china inside and covered with brown
wrapping. The wires of each, she discovered, led over a little wheel
and down again to a swinging clock-like weight. In addition to this
there were strange depressing handles on the wall by a dial with a
jiggling needle and clearly marked numbers.

The skill of the girl who had washed her mother's hair, however, was
slight compared with M. Joseph's dexterity. The comb flashed in his
white narrow hands; in no time at all every knot was urged out into
a shining smoothness. "Just the front?" he inquired. Not waiting for
Mrs. Condon's reply, he detached a strand from the mass over her
brow, impaled it on a hairpin, while he picked up what might have
been a thick steel knitting-needle with one end fastened in the