In a recurrence of her surprising concern of the day before Mrs. Condon declined to leave her dearest Linda alone; and, their arms caught together in a surging affection, they walked down Fifth Avenue toward the hairdresser's. There was a diffused gray sparkle of sunlight—it was early for the throngs—through which they passed rapidly to the accompaniment of a rapid eager chatter. Linda wore a deep smooth camel's hair cape, over which her intense black hair poured like ink, and her face was shaded by a dipping green velvet hat. Her mother, in one of the tightly cut suits she affected, had never been more like a perfect companion.

They saw, in the window of a store for men, a set of violent purple wool underwear, and barely escaped hysterics at the thought of Mr. Moses Feldt in such a garb. They giggled idiotically at the spectacle of a countryman fearfully making the sharp descent from the top of a lurching omnibus. And then, when they had reached the place of Mrs. Condon's appointment, stopped at the show of elaborately waved hair on wax heads and chose which, probably, would resemble the elder and which, in a very short while now, Linda.

There was an impressive interior, furnished in gray panels and silvery wood; and the young woman at the desk was more surprisingly waved than anything they had yet seen. M. Joseph would be ready almost immediately; and in the meanwhile Mrs. Condon could lay aside her things in preparation for the hair to be washed. She did this while Linda followed every movement with the deepest interest.

At the back of the long room was a succession of small alcoves, each with an important-looking chair and mirror and shelves, a white basin, water-taps and rubber tubes. Settled, in comfort, Mrs. Condon's hair was spread out in a bright metal tray fastened to the back of the chair, and the attendant, a moist tired girl in a careless waist, sprayed the short thick gold-colored strands.

“My,” she observed, “what some wouldn't give for your shade! Never been touched, I can see, either. A lady comes in with real Titian, but yours is more select. It positively is Lillian Russell.” While she talked her hands sped with incredible rapidity and skill. “The gentlemen don't notice it; of course not; oh, no! There was a girl here, a true blonde, but she didn't stay long—her own car, yes, indeed. Married her right out of the establishment. There wasn't any nonsense to her.

“So this is your little girl! I'd never have believed it. Not that she hasn't a great deal of style, a great deal—almost, you might say, like an Egyptian. In the movies last night; her all over. It's a type that will need studying. Bertha Kalich. But for me—”

Already, Linda saw, this part of the operation was done. The girl wheeled into position a case that had a fan and ring of blue flickering flames, and a cupped tube through which hot air was poured over her mother's head. M. Joseph strutted in, a small carefully dressed man with a diminutive pointed gray beard and formal curled mustache. He spoke with what Linda supposed was a French accent, and his manners, at least to them, were beautiful. But because the girl had not put out the blue flames quickly enough he turned to her with a voice of quivering rage.

It was so unexpected, in the middle of his bowing and smooth assurances, that Linda was startled, and had to think about him all over. The result of this was a surprising dislike; she hated, even, to see him touch her mother, as he unnecessarily did in directing them into the enclosure for the permanent wave.

The place itself filled her with the faint horror of instruments and the unknown. Above the chair where Mrs. Condon now sat there was a circle in the ceiling like the base of a chandelier and hanging down from it on twisted green wires were a great number of the strangest things imaginable: they were as thick as her wrist, but round, longer and hollow, white china inside and covered with brown wrapping. The wires of each, she discovered, led over a little wheel and down again to a swinging clock-like weight. In addition to this there were strange depressing handles on the wall by a dial with a jiggling needle and clearly marked numbers.

The skill of the girl who had washed her mother's hair, however, was slight compared with M. Joseph's dexterity. The comb flashed in his white narrow hands; in no time at all every knot was urged out into a shining smoothness. “Just the front?” he inquired. Not waiting for Mrs. Condon's reply, he detached a strand from the mass over her brow, impaled it on a hairpin, while he picked up what might have been a thick steel knitting-needle with one end fastened in the middle of a silver quarter. The latter, it developed, had a hole in it, through which he drew the strand of hair, and then wrapped it with an angry tightness about the long projection.

At this exact moment a new girl, but tired and moist, appeared, took a hank of white threads from a dressing-table, and tied that separate lock firmly. This, Linda counted, was repeated fifteen times; and when it was accomplished she was unable to repress a nervous laughter. Really, her mother looked too queer for words: the long rigid projections stood out all over her head like—like a huge pincushion; no, it was a porcupine. Mrs. Condon smiled in uncertain recognition of her daughter's mirth.

Then Linda's attention followed M. Joseph to a table against a partition, where he secured a white cotton strip from a film of them soaking in a shallow tray, took up some white powder on the blade of a dessert knife and transferred it to the strip. This he wrapped and wrapped about the hair fastened on a spindle, tied it in turn, and dragged down one of the brown objects on wires, which, to Linda's great astonishment, fitted precisely over the cotton-bound hair. Again, fifteen times, M. Joseph did this, fastening each connection with the turn of a screw. When so much was accomplished her mother's hair, it seemed, had grown fast to the ceiling in a tangle of green ends. It was the most terrifying spectacle Linda had ever witnessed. Obscure thoughts of torture, of criminals executed by electricity, froze her in a set apprehension.

The hair-dresser stepped over to the dials on the wall, and, with a sharp comprehensive glance at his apparatus, moved a handle as far as it would go. Nothing immediately happened, and Linda gave a relaxing sigh of relief. M. Joseph, however, became full of a painful attention.

---