“Yes, give you seventy-five dollars willingly;” she said. “But it seems very mean and selfish in me to take it,” she continued; and Rossie, fearful lest the bargain should fall through, answered eagerly:
“Oh, no, it don’t. I want the money very much indeed. I am anxious to sell it, and, if you do not buy it, I shall go to some one else. But you must not ask me why,—I can’t tell that; only, it is not for myself,—it’s for a friend; I don’t think the hair worth seventy-five dollars, but that is what I must have, and so I asked it. Maybe if you can give me fifty, and loan me twenty-five, I can pay it when my allowance is due.”
“You conscientious little chit,” Bee said, laughingly, “you have not yet learned the world’s creed,—take all you can get. I am willing to give you seventy-five dollars, and, even at that price, think it cheap. But you are a little girl, and will not look badly with short hair.”
With her natural shrewdness and her knowledge of some of Everard’s shortcomings, Bee guessed that it was for him the sacrifice was made, and, when the barber’s scissors gleamed among the shining tresses, she saw that they did not cut too close and make the girl a fright. But the loss of her hair changed Rossie very much, and when she went back to the Forrest House she shrank from the eyes of the servants, and stole up to her own room, where she could inspect herself freely, and see just how she looked.
“Oh, how ugly I am, and how big my eyes are!”, she said, and two hot tears rolled down her cheeks; but she resolutely dashed them away, and thought, “His mother would be so glad if she knew I was doing it for him.”
And the memory of the dead woman, who had been so kind to her, helped her. For her sake she could bear almost anything, and, putting on her hat, she left the house again, going this time to the office of the family lawyer, Mr. Russell, a kind, elderly man, who was very fond of Rossie, and at once put aside his papers when she came in.
“Can I do anything for you to-day?” he asked, and she replied:
“I’ve come to ask you to write me just such a receipt as you would write if somebody owed you seventy-five dollars and you paid it in full. Don’t ask me anything, only write it, and make it read as if the debtor didn’t owe the creditor a penny after the date.”
Mr. Russell looked curiously at the flushed face raised so eagerly to him, and in part guessed her secret. Like Bee, he knew of Everard’s expensive habits, and suspected that this money had something to do with him. But he merely said:
“What name shall I use? The receipt will read like this: ‘Received of,—blank,—seventy-five dollars,’ and so forth. Now, how shall I fill the blank?”