Then silence fell upon the room, and for a long half hour the stillness was only broken by the clatter of the loose-jointed scissors, and an occasional moan from Grant, when the blunt points collided with his skin with more than ordinary vigor. With one hand clutching the boy's yellow head for support, Marjorie stood over him, clipping and trimming, then stopping to contemplate the result of her labors, before attacking a new spot. She had started out upon her undertaking valiantly enough; but a dozen reckless slashes had begun to awaken some slight misgivings in her mind, and she proceeded more slowly and with frequent pauses, while an anxious pucker about her brows showed that she was not entirely satisfied with her work. Worst of all, Grant was beginning to grow restive.
"'Most through?" he had inquired some time before.
But Marjorie had consoled him with assurances of his speedy release; and he had resigned himself to the inevitable and sat quiet for ten minutes longer. Then he burst out again.
"Say, Marjorie," he protested; "you scratch like fun; and you've been long enough about it to cut a dozen hairs. Hurry up, there!"
"I'm almost through," she answered hastily. "Your hair's so tough it takes me longer than I thought 'twould."
"How's it going to look?"
"Lovely!" responded Marjorie, with a fervor which she was far from feeling, while she made a few hurried clips at a long lock which, in some way, had escaped her vigilance. "There!" she added. "That's all. You can get up."
Grant rose and shook himself; then, with the apron still hanging about his neck, he marched to the nearest mirror and gazed at the reflection of his shorn head. It was a strange picture that met his eyes. His head was encircled with narrow furrows, where the scissors had done their work so well that not a spear of hair rose above the bare skin. These ridges were intermingled with patches of stubble of varying length; while, here and there, a long lock had escaped entirely, and, in the lack of its former support, now stood out from his scalp at an aggressive angle, like the fur on the back of an angry cat. The whole effect resembled nothing so much as a piece of half-cleared woodland, where the workman's axe had here levelled everything to the ground, here left a clump or two of bushes, and here spared an occasional giant tree which towered far above its fallen comrades, in the conscious pride of its unimpaired strength.
The result was novel; but Grant appeared to fail to appreciate it, for when he turned back to face Marjorie again his brown eyes were blazing, and he was well-nigh speechless with indignation.
"You beastly fraud!" he shouted, while he rubbed his hand over his denuded pate, with a tenderly caressing motion, as if to console it for its appearance.