“I am not going to have your hands spoilt with apple juice,” said she. “Besides, if you go to bed early ’twill make you grow faster and keep your cheeks red.” There was an unusual softness in Sarah Buckley’s voice, and she colored and smiled foolishly, as if she were ashamed of it. Ichabod Buckley sat on the hearth whittling chips with lightning jerks of his clasp-knife. He did everything swiftly. “Do as your mother bids you,” he said to Persis. He chuckled nervously, and looked meaningly at his wife. Persis went laggingly out of the room. “Stand up straight,” ordered her mother. “The first thing you know you’ll be all bent over like an old woman.” Persis threw back her weak girlish shoulders until her slender back hollowed. She had been trained to obedience. She clattered slowly up the stairs in her little heavy shoes, still trying to keep her shoulders back, when her mother called again. “Come back here, Persis,” called her mother, and Persis returned to the kitchen. “Sit down here,” said her mother, pointing to a chair, and Persis sat down. She did not ask any questions; she felt a curious terror and intimidation. She waited, sitting meekly with her eyes cast down. She heard the snip of shears and the rattle of stiff paper at her back, then she felt a sharp tug at her hair. She winced a little. “You keep still,” said her mother at her back, rolling a lock of hair vigorously. “I ain’t going to have your hair as straight as a broom if I can help it.” When Persis went to bed her head was covered with hard papered knots of hair, all straining painfully at the roots. When she laid her head uncomfortably on her pillow, she remembered in a bewildered way how her mother had smoothed and smoothed and smoothed her hair in former days, and how she had said many a time that rough and frowsy locks were not modest or becoming. Her first conviction of the inconsistency of the human heart was upon little Persis Buckley, and she was dazed. The whole of this strange experience did not seem real enough to last until the next day.