"Looking at you reminds me—I need a haircut," he remarked. "Should have got one aboard, but didn't think of it Joy told me if I come home without it she'll braid it in pigtails and tie it up with pink ribbons, and you're shaggier than I am. You've got to get one or else buy yourself a violin. What say we do it now?"
"Have we got time enough?"
"Plenty." Then, to the driver: "Stop at the first barber shop you see, please."
"Yes, sir. There's a good one a few blocks further along."
The bug sped down Maple Street, turned sharply into plainly-marked Twelfth Avenue. Neither Lensman saw the sign.
"Here you are, sir."
"Thanks."
There were two barbers and two chairs, both empty. The Lensmen, noticing that the place was neatly kept and meticulously clean, sat down and resumed their discussion of two extremely unusual infants. The barbers went busily to work.
"Just as well, though—better, really—that the kids didn't marry each other, at that," Kinnison concluded finally. "The way it is, we've each got a grandson—it'd be tough to have to share one with you."
Samms made no reply to this sally, for something was happening. The fact that this fair-skinned, yellow-haired blue-eyed barber was left-handed had not rung any bells—there were lots of left-handed barbers. He had neither seen nor heard the cat—a less-than-half-grown, gray, tiger-striped kitten—which, after standing up on its hind legs to sniff ecstatically at his nylon-clad ankles, had uttered a couple of almost inaudible "meows" and had begun to purr happily. Crouching, tensing its strong little legs, it leaped almost vertically upward. Its tail struck the barber's elbow.