3
Felix was accustomed, by masculine prerogative, to get up first on cold mornings and shake down the fire and make the coffee. But this morning, having dreamed that he had arisen and performed these duties (a very realistic dream—he had heard the noise of the poker among the coals and smelled the fragrance of hot coffee!) he awoke to see Rose-Ann coming toward him with a cup and saucer, on a lacquered tray.
“Your morning draught, my lord!”
“Rose-Ann!” he said angrily. She should have let him make that coffee....
She knelt and offered him the cup, with the air of a page-boy. Then it was that he saw that her hair was shorn. Short bronze locks fell clustering about her face in tiny curls, making it boyish, and yet, it seemed, more girlish than ever. She turned sideways as he stared, and tilted her head. For the first time its proud contour stood fully and beautifully revealed. “Isn’t that better than an old top-knot?” she said.
“But how—” he began.
“Borrowed scissors from neighbour,” she replied. “What are neighbours for, if not to depend on in an emergency?”
“Why is this an emergency?” he demanded, still withholding his approval. “Couldn’t you wait and go to the barber?” Some of the edges, he noted, were rather jagged.
“No, Felix. Don’t you remember Browning’s poem about the Statue and the Bust? One puts off things. ‘So days grew months, years.’ Moral: do it now.—But do you like me this way, Felix?”
“Of course I like you.” And then, since he did, he added: “Tremendously!”
“You—you approve?”
“Yes, but what of that? Can’t you do what you like whether I approve or not? Aren’t you a free woman?” he teased her.
“That’s what I said to myself. And so I did it. But—I’m glad you like it, Felix, because—because I’m not sure whether I do or not!”
He laughed. “It will grow again.”
“No—I shan’t let it grow again. I’m going to like it, I know—eventually; perhaps very soon. It’s just at first.... But I suppose that’s the way with freedom!... Drink your coffee, Felix, before it gets cold. I’ll bring mine over there, too. Do you love me—very much? Look out—you’ll spill the coffee!”