The barber took up a pair of gleaming shears. Edina’s eyes met Billie’s in an agonized look of appeal.
Billie smiled reassuringly, but remained adamant.
“She is the boyish type, don’t you think?” she said, cajoling the barber. “It seems to me her hair would look nice short, quite short, and maybe tucked behind the ear on the left side.”
“Leave it to me,” returned the little dark man with a flourish of the shears. “I will make her ravissant. So she will not know herself. Now then! Attend!”
At the first rip of the shears through her heavy tresses, Edina shrank deep into her seat and shut her eyes tight. She did not open them again until the barber announced in a pleased tone that all was finished.
“Will you please to look at yourself in the mirror, Miss?”
Edina looked, batted her eyes and looked again.
“It ain’t so bad,” was her final pronouncement. “But it ain’t me!”
Billie thought the haircut a triumph of art. It was cut short in the back, fitting Edina’s admirably shaped head like a soft black cap. In the front it was longer, but not too long, falling back from the girl’s broad forehead like the sweep of a raven’s wing.
Billie reached forward and tucked a lock of ebony hair behind a shapely ear.