Hazel sniffed and looked for her handkerchief. As she failed to find it, the Doctor applied his own huge square of linen to the dripping, reddened eyes, and tenderly stroked the smooth-shaven head.
Hazel had her vanities like all girls, and her long dark braids had been one of them. After the fever, she had been shorn of what scanty locks had been left to her, and many a time she had wondered what the girls would say when they saw her. After all, the new plan might be endured, for the sake of the hair and her looks.
She sniffed again, and this time a good many tears were drawn up into her nose. The Doctor, taking no notice of the subsiding flood, proceeded,--
"My patients always look so comical when the fuzz is coming out. It's like chicken-down all over the head--"
"Fuzz!" exclaimed Hazel, with a dismayed, wide-eyed look; "must I have fuzz for hair?"
"Why, of course, for about five months," was the Doctor's matter-of-fact reply. "Then," he continued, apparently unheeding the look of relief that crept over Hazel's face, "you are apt to have the hair come out curly."
"Oh!"
"Yes, and it really grows very fast--that is," he said, resorting to wile, "if any one is strong and well; but if the general health is not good, why--hem!--the hair is n't apt to grow!"
"Goodness! I don't want to be bald all my life!"
"No, I thought not, and for that very reason it did seem the best thing for you to get into the country where you can get well and strong as fast as ever you can."