Her heart was thumping in her ears, and she panted with excitement.
She had a good large basin in her room and a foot-bath. She chose the foot-bath and what was in the jug filled it half full of the strong brown ale of Oxford.
What a smell it had!
Jane-Anne knelt down, unplaited her hair and shook it forward over her face. She held her nose tightly with one hand and with the other plunged her heavy mane into the foaming beer. The smell was overpowering. She was obliged to let go of her nose for she was choking, and as she did so the beer, forced higher in the foot-bath by the mass of hair, splashed her in the face.
Gasping and choking, she persevered; she laved her head with beer, she rubbed it in with both hands, rejoicing that it made a beautiful lather, and she spat out vigorously what had been forced into her open mouth while she held her nose.
It was a horrible experience, but the blood of the Spartans ran in Jane-Anne's veins, and she endured till every hair and a large proportion of her upper garments was thoroughly saturated with beer.
At last she felt the treatment had had full justice, and she drew out what appeared to be yards of sticky, sodden pulp that had once been human hair.
"Of course it won't curl till it's dry," she said to herself, and proceeded to sprinkle more beer about her bedroom in her efforts to free her hair from that nourishing beverage.
But it wouldn't dry.
Her bedroom already smelt like ten public-houses rolled into one, and brown stains were everywhere.