"They'll find out they don't know me as well as they thought, that's all."
"Meg, tell me, what did Hannah say when she saw your poor shorn head?"
"Hannah, as usual, referred to my Maker, and said that had He intended me to have short hair He would either have caused it not to grow or afflicted me with some disease which necessitated shearing; and she added that such havers are just flying in the face of Providence."
"So they are."
"All the more reason to cover them up, and I wish to impress the children."
"Those children will be sadly browbeaten, I can see, and as for their poor aunt, she won't be able to call her soul her own."
"That," Meg said, triumphantly, "is precisely why I'm so eager to come. When you've been an underling all your life you can't imagine what a joy it is to be top dog occasionally."
"In that respect," Jan said firmly, "it must be turn and turn about. I won't let you come unless you promise—swear, here and now—that when I consider you are looking fagged—'a wispy wraith,' as Daddie used to say—if I command you to take a day in bed, in bed you will stay till I give you leave to get up. Unless you promise me this, the contract is off."
"I'll promise anything you like. The idea of being pressed to remain in bed strikes me as merely comic. You have evidently no notion how persons in a subordinate position ought to be treated. Bed, indeed!"
"I think you might have waited till I got back before you parted with your hair." Jan's tone was decidedly huffy.