THE FALSE HAIR:
A TALE.
'Pray remember, Monsieur Lagnier, that I wish particularly to go out this morning. It is now past one o'clock, and if you continue endeavouring to do what is quite impossible, my hair will never be dressed. You had much better plait it as usual.'
Adelaide de Varenne pronounced these words in a tone of pettishness very unusual with her, as, giving vent to a long sigh of impatience and weariness, she glanced hastily at the mirror on her toilet-table, and saw there reflected the busy fingers of M. Lagnier, the hairdresser, deliberately unfastening her hair, and preparing once more to attempt the arrangement, which repeated failures had declared to be an impossibility. He looked up, however, as he did so, and seemed to read the expression of her features, for a comic mixture of astonishment and dismay immediately overspread his own.
'Fifteen years,' he exclaimed, 'I have had the honour of daily attending mademoiselle, and she never was angry with me before! What can I have done to offend her?'
'Oh, nothing very serious,' replied the young girl, good-naturedly; 'but really I wish you would not dally so long. It is of very little consequence, I think, how one's hair is worn.'
'Why, certainly every style is equally becoming to mademoiselle,' was the old man's polite reply. 'Nevertheless, I had set my heart upon arranging it to-day according to the last fashion: it would suit mademoiselle à ravir.' Adelaide laughed.
'But you see it is impossible,' she said. 'I have so very little hair; and I am sure it is not my fault—nor,' she added archly, 'the fault of all those infallible pomades and essences recommended to me by somebody I know.' M. Lagnier looked embarrassed.