Lovey paused to look at her. Selma was like a child again as she sat on the stool in her underclothes. Lovey poured herself a cup of coffee, leaving it black. She picked up the plate of cake and offered it to Selma, who took a slice and ate it greedily in three bites that were so quickly consecutive as to appear almost one bite. She took another piece before Lovey set the plate down on the sewing table beside the stool, so that it was within Selma’s reach. Lovey pinched off the corner of a cake slice and tasted it critically. “Lemony,” she said.

Selma nodded. “Pauline did it for me, because she knows.” She ate a third slice and licked her fingers, greasy from the butter in the cake. “I don’t know, Lovey.”

“Of course you do!” Lovey said, frowning and drawing in her chin. There was a knock at the hall door. “Who is it?” Lovey asked crankily as she went to the door and opened it, revealing Nell Kendrick’s personal maid, brought out by her from Highboro.

“It’s me, Bianca,” the woman said. “I come to do the hair.” Bianca was complacent about her skill in dressing hair. She carried her special comb and brush, although similar items were to be found on Selma’s dresser top, and Bianca knew it; but she knew, too, that it added to her reputation if she insisted on using her own tools. In a large apron pocket she carried a special pair of scissors and curling irons, and behind her stood Buttercup with a kettle of hot water and a deep, wide china bowl. Buttercup put her burdens down on a side table and went out.

Bianca set her equipment on the dresser, and then with scant grace told Selma to sit down on a straight-backed chair she had dragged over to the dresser, and to be so good as to move and talk as little as possible. Mercilessly, on the common theory that what hurt was good, Bianca combed and brushed, pulled, twisted, and fluffed Selma’s hair until she had tamed it. Presently Buttercup returned with her sister Posie, who carried an oil lamp that had been lighted with a straw from the kitchen stove, and which Bianca needed to heat her curling irons.

When the tongs were hot enough, she withdrew them from the lamp chimney and wiped off the smoke film on her apron before gripping a rope of hair with the tongs and rolling it over the tongs to cook until a curl was made and held. Then Bianca loosened the tongs and slipped them carefully out, leaving a stiff, unnatural curl to be admired by those who stood watching.