She seemed
surprised when I took off my hat and gave her a look, but that
wasn't a circumstance to her surprise when I proudly took off my
little cousin's cap. She uttered a kind of a strangled cry and my
cousin's mother came running, and the way she carried on was
scandalous and illtimed. I will draw a veil over the proceedings
of the next few minutes. At the time it would have been a source
of great personal gratification and comfort to me if I could have
drawn a number of veils, good, thick, woolen ones, over the
proceedings. My mother wept, my aunt wept, my little cousin wept,
and I am not ashamed to state that I wept quite copiously myself.
But I had more provocation to weep than any of them.
When this part of the affair was over my mother sent me back to
the barber with a message. I was to say that a heart-broken woman
demanded to have the curls of which her darling child had been
denuded. I believe that there was some idea entertained of sewing
them into a cap and requiring my cousin to wear the cap until new
ones had sprouted.
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