“You just washed it yesterday!” Peggy said. “Are you doing it again—or still?”
Jean grinned, her eyes shut tight against the soapsuds. “Again, I’m afraid,” she answered. “Maybe it’s a nervous habit!”
“It’s a wonder you’re not bald, with all the rubbing you give your hair,” Peggy said with a laugh.
“Well, if I do go bald, at least it will be with a clean scalp!” Jean answered with a humorous crinkle of her freckled nose. Taking a deep breath and puffing out her cheeks comically, she plunged her head into the basin and rinsed off the soap with a shampoo hose. When she came up at last, dripping-wet hair was tightly plastered to the back of her head.
“There!” she announced. “Don’t I look beautiful?”
After a brisk rubdown with one towel, Jean rolled another dry towel around her head like an Indian turban. Then, having wrapped herself in an ancient, tattered, plaid bathrobe, she led Peggy out of the steamy room and into her cozy, if somewhat cluttered, bedroom. When they had made themselves comfortable on the pillow-strewn daybeds, Jean came straight to the point.
“So the grand debate is still going on, is it? When do you think they’ll make up their minds?” she asked.
“How do you know they haven’t decided anything yet?” Peggy said, in a puzzled tone.
“Oh, that didn’t take much deduction, my dear Watson,” Jean laughed. “If they had decided against the New York trip, your face would be as long as Socks’s nose, and it’s not half that long. And if the answer was yes, I wouldn’t have to wait to hear about it! You would have been flying around the room and talking a mile a minute. So I figured that nothing was decided yet.”
“You know, if I were as smart as you,” Peggy said thoughtfully, “I would have figured out a way to convince Mother and Dad by now.”