"Look here, sir," said Mr. Earle; "you're not as good a barber as a lady had a right to expect. Give me the scissors, and let me put a more artistic finish to your work. We must send her home looking less like a hearth broom than she does at the present moment."
They all laughed again at that, and the color began to come back into Esther's cheeks. This was something rather exciting, and it had driven away her fears for the time being. She sat quite still whilst Mr. Earle snipped and cut, and walked round and round her, and quarreled with Mr. Trelawny about the proper way of trimming a lady's hair; and in the end they put her upon the sofa, and told her to look at herself in the great mirror opposite. When she did this she began to laugh out loud.
"Will it always stand on end like that?" she asked, for the wave in her hair made it set off from her face and stand round it rather like the aureole round the heads of saints in the church windows. "I don't think Genefer will think it tidy like that. Can't I brush it and make it lie smooth, like Mr. Earle's?"
They got a brush, but the hair set them at defiance, and stood out in its own way. But it was delightful to have no heavy mane hanging down behind. Esther declared her headache almost gone, and so she was allowed to go out and find the boys, who had been set to play by themselves for an hour.
The shrieks of delight they set up at sight of Esther with her cropped head made her laugh and glow like a child; and she looked altogether so much brighter and merrier that the two gentlemen exchanged glances and nodded their heads, as though quite satisfied with the high-handed measure they had taken.
"We shall call you Roundhead now!" cried Puck, dancing round her in an ecstasy of amusement; but Mr. Trelawny came up and took him by the ears, saying in his gruffest way,—
"You will call your cousin by her proper name, or you will never come to my house again. Now, do you understand?"
"Do you mean really?" asked Puck, wriggling away and facing round.
"I mean really and truly," was the emphatic answer. "You've got to learn manners, you two, whilst you are here; and if Mr. Earle knocks some knowledge into your thick skulls, I'll knock a little respect for other people into your democratic little minds. So mind, if you don't behave yourselves properly to your cousin, and speak to her properly too, you'll never have the chance of coming to the Crag again."