Aunt Achsa pattered after her.
“Child! Child!” she called through the door. “Here’s a letter for you. I was that taken back when I saw you I forgot to give it you.” She slipped the letter through the inch of opening that Sidney, now tearful, vouchsafed her.
The letter was from Trude. To poor Sidney this was the crowning humiliation; it was exactly as though Trude could look out from the pages and see the mutilated locks. Trude had always loved her hair and had often brushed it for her for the simple delight of fingering its wavy strands. More than once Trude had said: “You’re lucky to have this hair, kid. Look at mine.” Now she would gasp in horror as Aunt Achsa had done. “You should not have done it, Sidney—at least without consulting one of us.” It was not the deed itself even Trude would censure—it was her independence. Oh, how terribly difficult it was to be like Mart!
Trude had written to her almost daily, sketchy letters full of the news of what she was doing at the Whites. Sidney could not know that Trude purposely made them lively and wrote them often because she believed Sidney was homesick. In this letter her concern had reached the height of sacrifice.
“If you’re ready to go home, have had enough of Cape Cod, just say the word, little sister, and I’ll join you at Middletown. Perhaps you have been with Cousin Achsa long enough—you do not want to impose upon her hospitality. She may have other friends she wants to invite to her house. But you must decide at once for Mrs. White is making plans for the next few weeks and will want to know if I am going to be here. She is perfectly wonderful to me and I think she likes to have me here and that I help her a little, but if you want me to join you at home she will understand.
“Why in the world haven’t you written to me? I shall scold you soundly for that when we are together. Be a good girl and remember how much we all love you. I shall expect a letter within three days at most telling me what you want to do.”
Sidney gasped. Her barbered hair, Aunt Achsa, were forgotten for the moment. Go home—leave all her fun and Sunset Lane and Mart—and Lavender? Her consternation gave no room for the thought that two weeks had indeed worked a strange conversion. Why, she would sit right down and write to Trude that she did not want to go home. That was silly!
Then she thought of the hurt on Aunt Achsa’s face only a few moments before when she had flung her angry retort at her. And Aunt Achsa had been so good to her! Why, that cherry pie that had come to such a disastrous end Aunt Achsa was baking just because she had said she adored cherry pies. That was Aunt Achsa’s way of showing affection. That Aunt Achsa had trusted her—she had given her complete freedom in the two last whirlwind weeks because she had trusted her. And how ungrateful, now, Aunt Achsa must think her. Well, she had punished her own self for now, of course, Aunt Achsa would want her to go.
CHAPTER XII
SIDNEY BELONGS
Sidney was too deep in her slough of despond to see that behind Mr. Dugald’s shock of surprise was a smiling admiration of her bobbed head. And even Lavender avowed at once that it “looked swell.” Two hours before Sidney would have gloried in their approval but with Trude’s letter in her pocket and the humiliating memory of her silly retort to Aunt Achsa she was beyond feeling pleasure at anything.