‘Very well,’ said the little lady, apparently satisfied with the identification, ’I want my hair cut.  It is like a sheaf of corn.  It is like a court train.  It is like seven horses’ manes tied together, if they were red.  It is like a comet’s tail.’

It is probable that the hairdresser only took in that part of this speech upon which he was in the habit of concentrating his attention, and that the force of the similes which followed one another like electric shocks escaped him altogether.  He was about to show the new customer into the ladies’ room, where his staid and elderly sister was accustomed to officiate, but she drew back with decision.

’No, not at all; I have come to have my hair cut by Mr. Saintou, and I want to have it done in the room with the long row of chairs where the long row of men get shaved every morning.  I told my sister I should sit there.  You have no men in at this time of day, have you, Mr. Saintou?  Now I shall sit here in the middle chair, and you shall wash my hair.  My father is the baker round the corner.  He makes good bread; do you wash people’s hair as well?  Will you squirt water on it with that funny tube?  Will you put it in my eyes?  Now, I am up on the chair.  Don’t put the soap in my eyes, Mr. Saintou.’

Saintou was not a man easily surprised.  ’Permit me, mademoiselle, would it not be better to remove the hat?  Mon Dieu!  Holy Mary, what hair!’ For as the Eastern women carry their burdens on the crown of the head to ease the weight, so, when the large hat was off, it appeared that the baker’s daughter carried her hair.

‘Like the hair of a woman on a hair-restorer bottle, if it were red,’ remarked the girl in answer to the exclamation.

’No, mademoiselle, no, it is not red.  Mon Dieu! it is not red.  Holy Mary! it is the colour of the sun.  Mon Dieu, what hair!’ As he untwined the masses, it fell over the long bib, over the high chair, down till it swept the floor, in one unbroken flood of light.

‘Wash it, and cut it, and let me go home to make my father’s dinner,’ said the quick voice with decision.  ’My father is the baker round the corner, and he takes his dinner at two.’

‘Is it that mademoiselle desires the ends cut?’ asked the hairdresser, resuming his professional manner.

‘Which ends?’

‘Which ends?’ he exclaimed, baffled.  ‘Mon Dieu! these ends,’ and he lifted a handful of the hair on the floor and held it before the eyes of the girl.

’Good Heavens, no!  Do you think I am going to pay you for cutting those ends?  It’s the ends at the top I want cut.  Lighten it; that’s what I want.  Do you think I am a woman in a hairdresser’s advertisement to sit all day looking at my hair?  I have to get my father’s dinner.  Lighten it, Mr. Saintou; cut it off; that’s what I want.’

‘Mon Dieu, no!’ Saintou again relapsed from the hairdresser into the man.  He too could have decision.  He leant against the next chair and set his lips very firmly together.  ‘By all that is holy, no,’ he said; ’you may get some villain Englishman to cut that hair, but me, never.’