me," whispered Maggie, pulling his sleeve as she
passed him; and Tom followed willingly enough.

"Come upstairs with me, Tom," she whispered, when they were outside the
door. "There's something I want to do before dinner."

"There's no time to play at anything before dinner," said Tom, whose
imagination was impatient of any intermediate prospect.

"Oh yes, there is time for this; _do_ come, Tom."

Tom followed Maggie upstairs into her mother's room, and saw her go at
once to a drawer, from which she took out a large pair of scissors.

"What are they for, Maggie?" said Tom, feeling his curiosity awakened.

Maggie answered by seizing her front locks and cutting them straight
across the middle of her forehead.

"Oh, my buttons! Maggie, you'll catch it!" exclaimed Tom; "you'd better
not cut any more off."

Snip! went the great scissors again while Tom was speaking, and he
couldn't help feeling it was rather good fun; Maggie would look so
queer.

"Here, Tom, cut it behind for me," said Maggie, excited by her own
daring, and anxious to finish the deed.

"You'll catch it, you know," said Tom, nodding his head in an admonitory
manner, and hesitating a little as he took the scissors.

"Never mind, make haste!" said Maggie, giving a little stamp with her
foot. Her cheeks were quite flushed.

The black locks were so thick, nothing could be more tempting to a lad
who had already tasted the forbidden pleasure of cutting the pony's
mane. I speak to those who know the satisfaction of making a pair of
shears meet through a duly resisting mass of hair. One delicious
grinding snip, and then another and another, and the hinder locks fell
heavily on the floor, and Maggie stood cropped in a jagged, uneven
manner, but with a sense of clearness and freedom, as if she had emerged
from a wood into the open plain.

"Oh, Maggie," said Tom, jumping round her, and slapping his knees as he
laughed, "Oh, my buttons! what a queer thing you look! Look at yourself
in the glass; you look like the idiot we throw out nutshells to at
school."

Maggie felt an unexpected pang. She had thought beforehand chiefly of
her own deliverance from her teasing hair and teasing remarks about it,
and something also of the triumph she should have over her mother and
her aunts by this very decided course of action; she didn't want her
hair to look pretty,--that was out of the question,--she only wanted
people to think her a clever little girl, and not to