Anna forgot that she ought to be on her way home and pulled her braid over her shoulder and looked at it admiringly.
“I wish you would undo it and let me see it all spread out,” Mrs. Langley said almost eagerly. And Anna was more than ready to gratify her curiosity.
Untying the bow at the end of the long, heavy, wavy plait, she loosed the strands and spread out the silky yellow mass until it enveloped her like a golden mantle. Mrs. Langley leaned towards her, gazing on the splendour in fascination, reaching out presently to stroke it with her lean witch’s fingers. And whenever Anna made a move to gather it in she uttered a cry of protest. And the vain girl yielded and forgot everything except to wish that there were a mirror in the room.
But when the clock struck five, she started, quite aghast. Seizing her hat and jacket, she said an hasty farewell and fled, the cloud of her hair all about her.
As she went, people rushed to their windows to see the girl’s wonderful hair, gazing spell-bound until she was out of sight. Afterwards, when they got their breath, some said the other Miller girl had assurance to flaunt her single charm thus boldly. But no one so took the matter to heart as the Reverend Russell Langley, who met her as he returned from a call at the Hollow.
Anna hadn’t time even to pause, and Mr. Langley thought she was ashamed to do so. He took it for granted that the girl had set out from home with this almost immodest splendour of yellow tresses all about her simply to display it, and he felt bewildered and ashamed and grieved. He shook his head sadly. He had known that Anna was vain—everyone knew it. But her vanity had always seemed innocent and harmless, a part of her droll charm. The girl had seemed too unselfish, too eagerly active in behalf of others, to have leisure or desire for deliberate advertising of her own beauty. She was, he had to acknowledge now, quite different from Rusty. He began to understand why people referred to her as the other Miller girl.
Reaching home, he found, after much searching, a sermon on humility he had preached fifteen years before. Putting aside the sermon he had ready for the morrow, he began to revise this. Revision turned out to mean re-writing practically the whole discourse, and it was midnight before he rose from his desk. The new sermon was less severe and dogmatic than the one of the man of thirty which it replaced, but its tone was wholesome and effective. And though the preached hoped that Anna Miller would not realise that her vanity had been the occasion of it, he trusted that she would nevertheless take the precepts to heart.
As it was, Anna listened gravely, as she almost invariably did, to every word of the sermon. But she did not forget to flop her yellow braid over her shoulder and as the choir rose to sing, and her sweet, true voice rang out, the girl was not unaware that she was conspicuous for that as well as for her personal appearance.
But she had forgotten all that when she went in to see Mrs. Lorraine that afternoon to thank her for allowing Alice to make it possible for her to go to her friend. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Lorraine had been shocked when Alice came home Friday evening and told her of the offer she had made to take Anna’s place at Miss Penny’s while she was away. She declared that Alice should not do it. The bitterness which had seemed to disappear had come back, and Alice had been greatly disturbed. Mrs. Lorraine had finally yielded grudgingly, but she felt hurt and injured and there had been a perceptible coolness between mother and daughter since. They had never been close together, but of late they had been nearer to one another than ever before. The more Alice associated with Anna and Miss Penny, the more yearningly her heart went out towards her mother, and this coldness that was almost estrangement hurt her keenly.
She was grateful that Anna did not feel any want of cordiality in her mother. Mrs. Lorraine received her thanks quietly and when Anna explained the situation listened intently and questioned her sympathetically. And she asked, almost impulsively, if Anna wasn’t tired out.