“It’s perfectly darling,” confided the idolized Dozia (any girl with that story on her person would be idolized although Dozia was individually popular).  “The place, I mean.  It’s fitted up——­”

“Were—­you in?” gasped Winifred Ayres.

“No, of course I was not in,” disdained Dozia.  “No one who ever knew the trickery of Dolorez Vincez would enter that place.”

“Why?” asked the innocent Nettie Brocton.  “Would she really do something dreadful——­”

“She would, really,” declared Jane, her tone not easy to interpret.  “She could turn your hair a bright red like mine by mere chemical action of her ventilating system.”

“Really!” implored the dimply girl.

“Pos-i-tive-ly!” declared Jane.  “But don’t attempt it dear.  She would send your dad an awful bill for doing a stunt like that.  Think of the price of hair like mine!”

That suggestion brought disaster to Jane, for Ted Guthrie swayed at the very end of the bench and the whole line almost went over backwards.  It was in Ted’s attempt to punish Jane for her vanity that the sudden sweep, like a current in physics, jerked feet from the ground and upset balance generally.  Some seconds elapsed (and each was precious) before things again settled down, including Velma’s crochet balls, Janet’s book, pad, and pencil, Dozia’s small bottle of salted peanuts as well as other sundries and supplies.

“Please finish the yarn,” implored Nettie Brocton.  “Do tell us, Dozia, how the place is fitted up.”

“First tell us, please,” insisted judicial Judith, “how do you know how it is fitted up?  Does our plumber plumb there?”

During all this nonsense Jane cast many a furtive glance along Linger Lane, expecting the obnoxious Shirley to loom up large and lanky by the way, but as yet she had not darkened the shadowy path.  If Jane could run off to the Rockery, that landmark between freshman and later college campus lines, there to meet and have done with the demands of her erstwhile tormentor.  But no, Judith was openly demanding Jane’s concentration on the bench, and every point made by Dozia in her tale of the beauty shop Judith flung at Jane in direct challenge for stricter attention.  She was not going to escape if Judith Stearns knew it, and she surmised the intention.

It had finally been told to tingling ears that the poisoned beauty shop, as Winifred Ayres, the writer, had already dubbed the place, was done in wonderful mirrors, and shiny faucets, windy wizzing hair fans and electric permanent wavers and curlers; and when the full description had been given, more girls than one sighed, groaned and grumbled.

“To think it has to be taboo,” spoke Ted Guthrie.  “Dol was always a wizard, and now thus equipped she might have a lovely way of fanning me thin.”

“And fattening me nice and fluffy with the same fan,” sighed Winifred.

“My freckles might float away like powder from the butterfly’s wings,” with a weird fluttering of Dozia’s long arms.