Don't be afraid: you will be handsome to-day!" said Czipra, in naive
reproach to the young fellow.

Lorand jestingly put his arm round her waist.

"It will be all of no avail, my dear Czipra, because we have to thrash
corn to-day, and my hair will all be full of dust. Rather, if you wish
to do me a favor, cut off my hair."

Czipra was ready for that, too. She was Lorand's "friseur" and Topandy's
"coiffeur." She found it quite natural.

"Well, and how do you wish your hair? Short? Shall I leave the curls in
front?"

"Give me the scissors: I will soon show you," said Lorand, and, taking
them from Czipra's hand, he gathered together the locks upon his
forehead with one hand and with the other cropped them quite short,
throwing what he had cut to the ground.--"So with the rest."

Czipra drew back in horror at this ruthless deed, feeling as pained as
if those scissors had been thrust into her own body. Those beautiful
silken curls on the ground! And now the rest must of course be cut just
as short.

Lorand sat down before her in a chair, from which he could look into the
glass, and motioned to her to commence. Czipra could scarcely force
herself to do so. So to destroy the beauty of that fair head, over which
she had so often stealthily posed in a reverie! To crop close that thick
growth of hair, which, when her fingers had played among its electric
curls, had made her always feel as if her own soul were wrapt together
with it. And she was to close-crop it like the head of some convict!

Yet there was a kind of satisfaction in the thought that another would
not so readily take notice of him. She would make him so ugly that he
would not quickly win the heart of the new-comer. Away with that
Samsonian strength, down to the last solitary hair! This thought lent a
merciless power to her scissors.

And when Lorand's head was closely shaven, he was indeed curious to see.
It looked so very funny that he laughed at himself when he turned to the
glass.

The girl too laughed with him. She could not prevent herself from
laughing to his face; then she turned away from him, leaned out of the
window, and burst into another fit of laughter.

Really it would have been difficult to distinguish whether she was
laughing or crying.

"Thank you, Czipra, my dear," said Lorand, putting his arm round the
girl's waist. "Don't wait with dinner for me to-day, for I shall be
outside on the threshing-floor."

Thereupon he left the room.