The girls in books lose their hair in fevers or sell it to get money for some good deed, and I’m sure I wouldn’t mind losing my hair in some such fashion half so much.
But there is nothing comforting in having your hair cut off because you’ve dyed it a dreadful color, is there?
I’m going to weep all the time you’re cutting it off, if it won’t interfere.
It seems such a tragic thing.”
Anne wept then, but later on, when she went upstairs and looked in the glass, she was calm with despair.
Marilla had done her work thoroughly and it had been necessary to shingle the hair as closely as possible.
The result was not becoming, to state the case as mildly as may be.
Anne promptly turned her glass to the wall.
“I’ll never, never look at myself again until my hair grows,” she exclaimed passionately.
Then she suddenly righted the glass.
“Yes, I will, too.
I’d do penance for being wicked that way.
I’ll look at myself every time I come to my room and see how ugly I am.
And I won’t try to imagine it away, either.
I never thought I was vain about my hair, of all things, but now I know I was, in spite of its being red, because it was so long and thick and curly.
I expect something will happen to my nose next.”
Anne’s clipped head made a sensation in school on the following Monday, but to her relief nobody guessed the real reason for it, not even Josie Pye, who, however, did not fail to inform Anne that she looked like a perfect scarecrow.
“I didn’t say anything when Josie said that to me,” Anne confided that evening to Marilla, who was lying on the sofa after one of her headaches, “because I thought it was part of my punishment and I ought to bear it patiently.
It’s hard to be told you look like a scarecrow and I wanted to say something back.
But I didn’t.
I just swept her one scornful look and then I forgave her.
It makes you feel very virtuous when you forgive people, doesn’t it?
I mean to devote all my energies to being good after this and I shall never try to be beautiful again.
Of course it’s better to be good.
I know it is, but it’s sometimes so hard to believe a thing even when you know it.
I do really want to be good, Marilla, like you and Mrs. Allan and Miss Stacy, and grow up to be a credit to you.
Diana says when my hair begins to grow to tie a black velvet ribbon around my head with a bow at one side.
She says she thinks it will be very becoming.
I will call it a snood—that sounds so romantic.
But am I talking too much, Marilla?
Does it hurt your head?”
“My head is better now.
It was terrible bad this afternoon, though.
These headaches of mine are getting worse and worse.
I’ll have to see a doctor about them.
As for your chatter, I don’t know that I mind it—I’ve got so used to it.”
Which was Marilla’s way of saying that she liked to hear it.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
An Unfortunate Lily Maid
OF course you must be Elaine, Anne,” said Diana.
“I could never have the courage to float down there.”
“Nor I,” said Ruby Gillis, with a shiver.
“I don’t mind floating down when there’s two or three of us in the flat and we can sit up.
It’s fun then.
But to lie down and pretend I was dead—I just couldn’t.
I’d die really of fright.”
“Of course it would be romantic,” conceded Jane Andrews, “but I know I couldn’t keep still.
I’d be popping up every minute or so to see where I was and if I wasn’t drifting too far out.
And you know, Anne, that would spoil the effect.”
“But it’s so ridiculous to have a redheaded Elaine,” mourned Anne.