“But you never tried me,” said Nat, making a funny move as if to catch an armful of thin air.  “I am an authority on faints.  Every girl at school says I’m a perfect dear, for catching falls at commencement time.  They all keel over then.”

They were in front of the barber shop now.  Mike opened the door with such a bow Tavia could scarcely repress a smile.

Ned made the arrangements, and Tavia mounted the high chair, allowed Mike, the Italian, to tuck the apron around her neck, then all she could see was a very queer looking girl in the glass in front of her.

“Just trim it evenly,” said Dorothy, walking up to the chair, and feeling it was hardly safe to trust the boys with the order.

Carefully the barber let down the heavy coil.

“What!” he exclaimed, seeing it was only “half a head.”  “Fire, you been in explosion?”

“Sure!” answered Ned, mechanically.

Then Mike went through a series of groans, grunts and jabs at the air.

“So shame,” he wailed.  “The hair is so fine—­like gold, brown gold.”

With many a sigh and groan the barber plied his shears, stopping constantly to give vent to his feelings with a shrug of his broad shoulders and deep gutteral mutterings.

“Oh, quit gargling your throat, Mike, and get through with the job.  The young lady is alive, you see, and expects to get back to the Cedars in time for breakfast,” said Ned.

“I am sure that will do,” said Dorothy at last, whereat Tavia gladly got out of the stuffy chair.

“Great!” both boys exclaimed in admiration as they saw how “smart” Tavia looked.

“It is becoming,” said Dorothy.

“Handy,” commented Tavia.

Presently the party was driving off again, Tavia indulging in the laughs she dared not take part in with the scissors at her ear, while Dorothy “scolded” the boys for making such sport of a poor foreigner.

“Poor indeed!” Ned echoed.  “I wish we had some of his cash on hand.  I mean the ready stuff.  I have yet to make the acquaintance of a poor barber; especially the imported kind.”

It was a jolly ride home—­and the evening that followed was one full of pleasure.

[Illustration with caption:  ‘I am sure that will do,’ said Dorothy at last]

CHAPTER XXIII

IN SOCIAL ELEMENTS

Dorothy wore her “heavenly” blue dress, while Tavia “blazed out” in her sunset costume.  As Dorothy had predicted Mrs. White was radiant in her beautiful amethyst chiffon, so that the elementary evening “panned out” exactly as scheduled,

Mrs. White was a handsome woman.  As Ruth Dale, youngest sister of Major Dale, she had been a belle, and now as Mrs. Winthrop White she was acknowledged a social leader and a favorite.

Her hair had the same brightness that made Dorothy’s so attractive, except that years had tarnished that of Mrs. White, while her niece had seen only sunshine in life to polish the golden warp that beauty loves to spin.  There were many features in both that marked relationship, and it was always declared that Dorothy was a Dale both in character and features.