said Mary, "they said that mother's aunt was coming to tea, so
she had curled them before they came out. I told them I would excuse it
for this once, but that I should send any one home who came such a
figure on Sunday."

Elizabeth and Jane, be it observed, were George Hewlett's daughters, the
most civilised, if the dullest-witted, of the flock. Polly, Betsy, and
Judy were the children of Dan Hewlett. As a rule, all the old women of
the parish were called Betty, all the middle-aged Lizzie, and the girls
Elizabeth.

"It is worse on week-days," said Dora. "One would think it was a
collection of little porcupines!"

"And so dirty," began Sophy, but she was hushed up, for Edmund was seen
approaching, and Mary never allowed him to be worried with the small,
fretting details of school life.

It was a time when it was the fashion for young ladies up to their teens
to have their hair curled in ringlets round their heads or on their
shoulders. Sophy's hair curled naturally, and had been "turned up" ever
since she had come to live at home in the dignity of fourteen, but she
and both her sisters wore falls of drooping ringlets in front, and in
Mary's case these had been used to be curled in paper at night, though
she would as soon have been seen thus decorated by day as in her
night-cap. But there was scarcely another matron in the parish who did
not think a fringe of curl-paper the proper mode of disposing of her
locks when in morning _desabille_, unless she were elderly and wore a
front, which could be taken off and put on with the best cap.

Maid-servants wore short curls or smooth folds round side-combs under
net caps, and this was the usual trim of the superior kind of women.
The working women wore thick muslin white caps, under which, it was to
be hoped, their hair was cut short, though often it straggled out in
unseemly elf-locks. Married women did not go bareheaded, not even the
younger ladies, except in the evening, when, like their maiden sisters,
they wore coils of their back hair round huge upright ornamental combs
on the summit of their heads.

But the children's heads were deservedly pain and grief to the Carbonel
senses, and Mary was impelled to go and make a speech in school,
desiring that no more curl-papers should appear there on Sundays, and
recommending that all hair should be kept short, as her own and her
sister's had been, till the fit age for the "turning up" was attained.
She called up Susan