After he’d been home a couple weeks or more Shelley begun to notice little Keats more closely.  He looked so much like Shelley had at that age and had the same set-on manner in the house that Shelley got suspicious he was leading the same double life he had once led himself.

He asked his mother when she was going to take Keats to a barber, and his mother burst into tears in the old familiar way, so he said no more to her.  But that afternoon he took little Keats out for a stroll and closely watched his manner toward some boys they passed.  They went on downtown and Shelley stepped into the Owl cigar store to get a Lord Byron.  When he come out little Keats was just finishing up a remark to another boy.  It had the familiar ring to Shelley and was piquant and engaging even after three years in the trenches, where talk is some free.  Keats still had the angel face, but had learned surprisingly of old English words.

Then Shelley says to him:  “Say, kid, do you like your curls?” And little Keats says very warmly and almost shedding tears:  “They’re simply hell!”

“I knew it,” says Shelley.  “Have many fights?”

“Not so many as I used to,” says Keats.

“I knew that, too,” says Shelley.  “Now, then, you come right along with me.”

So he marches Keats and curls down to Henry Lehman’s and says:  “Give this poor kid a close haircut.”

And Henry Lehman won’t do it.  He says that Mrs. Plunkett, the time of the scandal about Shelley, had warned every barber in town that she would have the law on ’em if they ever harmed a hair on the head of a child of hers; and he was a law-abiding citizen.  He didn’t deny that the boy needed a haircut the worst way in the world, but at his time of life he wasn’t going to become an outlaw.

Keats had nearly broke down at this.  But Shelley says:  “All right; come on over to the other place.”

So they go over to Katterson Lee, the coloured barber, and Katterson tells ’em the same story.  He admits the boy needs a haircut till it amounts to an outrage, but he’s had his plain warning from Shelley’s ma, and he ain’t going to get mixed up with no lawsuit in a town where he’s known to one and all as being respectable.

Shelley then threatened him with bodily harm if he didn’t cut that hair off quick, and Katterson was right afraid of the returned soldier, that had fixed so many Germans right, but he was more afraid of the law, so he got down on his knees to Shelley and begged for his life.

Little Keats was now blubbering, thinking he wasn’t going to be shut of his disgrace after all, but Shelley says:  “All right, kid; I’ll stand by you.  I’ll do it myself.  Get into that chair!”

Of course Katterson couldn’t prevent that, so Keats got sunny again and climbed into the chair, and Shelley grabbed a pair of shears and made a sure-nuff boy of him.  He got the curls off all right, but when it come to trimming up he found he couldn’t do a smooth job, and Katterson wasn’t there to give him any hints, having run from his shop at the beginning of the crime so he would have a good alibi when hauled into court.  So Shelley finally took up a pair of clippers, and having learned to clip mules he soon had little Keats’ whole scalp laid bare.  It must of been a glorious sight.  They both gloated over it a long time.