Maria repeated what she had told Evelyn.

“Stuff!” said Aunt Maria.  “It will make the hair grow farther back straining it off your forehead that way, I can tell you that.  You don’t use common-sense, and as for your headache, I guess the hair didn’t make it ache.  It’s the first I’ve heard of it.  You look like a fright, I can tell you that.”

“Well, I can’t help it,” said Maria.  “I shall have to behave well to make up.”

“Maria Edgham, you don’t mean to say you are going to school looking as you do now!”

Maria laughed, and buttered a gem.

“You look old enough to be your own grandmother.  You have spoiled your looks.”

“Looks don’t amount to much,” said Maria.

“Maria Edgham, are you crazy?”

“I hope not.”

“I told sister she didn’t look so pretty,” said Evelyn.

“Look so pretty?  She looks like a homely old maid.  Your nose looks a yard long and your chin looks peaked and your mouth looks as if you were as ugly as sin.  Your forehead is too high; it always was, and you ought to thank the Lord that he gave you pretty hair, and enough of it to cover up your forehead, and now you’ve gone and strained it back just as tight as you can and made a knot like a tough doughnut at the back of your head.  You look like a crazy thing, I can tell you that.”

Maria said nothing.  She ate her breakfast, while Aunt Maria and Evelyn could not eat much and were all the time furtively watching her.

Aunt Maria took Evelyn aside before the sisters left for school, and asked her in a whisper if she thought anything was wrong with Maria, if she had noticed anything, but Evelyn said she had not.  But she and Aunt Maria looked at each other with eyes of frightened surmise.

When Maria had her hat on she looked, if anything, worse.

“Good land!” said Aunt Maria, when she saw her.  “Well, if you are set on making a spectacle of yourself, I suppose you are.”

After the girls had gone she went into the other side of the house and told Eunice.  “There she has gone and made herself look like a perfect scarecrow,” she said.  “I wonder if there is any insanity in her father’s family?”

“Did she look so bad?” asked Eunice, with a stare of terror at her sister-in-law.

“Look so bad!  She looked as old and homely as you and I every bit.”

Maria made as much of a sensation on the trolley as she had done at home.  The boy who had persecuted her the night before with his attentions bowed to Evelyn, and glanced at her evidently with no recognition.  After a while he came to Evelyn and asked where her sister was that morning.  Maria laughed, and he looked at her, then he fairly turned pale, and lifted his hat.  He mumbled something and returned to his seat.  Maria was conscious of his astonished and puzzled gaze at her all the way.  When she reached the academy the other teachers—­that is, the women—­assailed her openly.  One even attempted to loosen by force Maria’s tightly strained locks.