“That’s about it,” her father agreed. “If you had any scissors with you, I’d start right in now and cut your hair.”
Sylvia said she had scissors in her bag; and presently she and her father retired to the outer gloom of the junction, where, undisturbed by a single curious glance, Sylvia’s curls were swept away by the wind.
“I’ve not done it quite so neatly as I might,” said her father, examining the effect under a wavering gas-jet. “I’ll have you properly cropped to-morrow at a hairdresser’s.”
Sylvia felt cold and bare round the neck, but she welcomed the sensation as one of freedom. How remote Lille seemed already—utterly, gloriously far away! Now arose the problem of her name.
“The only boy’s name I can think of that’s anything like Sylvia is Silas, and that’s more Si than Sil. Wait a bit. What about Silvius? I’ve seen that name somewhere. Only, we’ll call you Sil for short.”
“Why was I ever called Sylvia?” she asked.
“It was a fancy of your mother’s. It comes in a song called ‘Plaisir d’amour.’ And your mother liked the English way of saying it. I’ve got it. Sylvester! Sylvester Snow! What do you want better than that?”
When the train approached Boulogne, Henry Snow gave up talking and began to juggle with the ten-centime piece; while they were walking along to the boat he looked about him furtively. Nobody stopped them, however; and with the kind of relief she had felt when she had brought her album safely over the frontier Sylvia saw the coast of France recede. There were many English people on the boat, and Sylvia watched them with such concentration that several elderly ladies at whom she stared in turn thought she was waiting for them to be sick, and irritably waved her away. The main impression of her fellow-travelers was their resemblance to the blind beggars that one saw sitting outside churches. She was tempted to drop a sou in one of the basins, but forbore, not feeling quite sure how such humor would appeal to the English. Presently she managed to engage in conversation an English girl of her own age, but she had not got far with the many questions she wanted to ask when her companion was whisked away and she heard a voice reproving her for talking to strange little girls. Sylvia decided that the strangeness of her appearance must be due to her short hair, and she longed for the complete transformation. Soon it began to rain; the shores of that mysterious land to which she actually belonged swam toward her. Her father came up from below, where, as he explained, he had been trying to sleep off the effects of a bad night. Indeed, he did not recover his usual jauntiness until they were in the train, traveling through country that seemed to Sylvia not very different from the country of France. Would London, after all, prove to be very different from Lille? Then slowly the compartment grew dark, and from time to time the train stopped.
“A fog,” said her father, and he explained to her the meaning of a London fog.
It grew darker and darker, with a yellowish-brown darkness that was unlike any obscurity she had ever known.