And she will answer, "You always get yourself cropped like a convict
just when your hair was beginning to look nice."
And I shall say, "I can't help that; it's got to be done." And then I
shall go and get it done.
But I wonder if my wife is right after all. There used to be a nice
wave in my front hair, a wave into which you could lay two fingers. Is
that there still? No, it's gone. In fact there is not sufficient front
hair to make a wave with. It's odd how gradually these things happen.
I could have sworn that I had that wave, and there is a photograph
of me in the drawing-room with a fully-developed tidal bore; and I
went on brushing my front hair and combing it and thinking of it all
the time as constituting a wave, and lo it had vanished, leaving me
under the impression that it was still there and accountable for the
pleasing effect I produced in general society.
But if it wasn't the wave that produced this effect, what could it
have been? My voice? Perhaps. My moustache? I doubt it. My teeth?
Possibly. See advertisements of tooth powders _passim_. You know how
it's done, in the before and after style. Before you use Dentoline you
apparently do not possess so much as a front tooth. After you have
used it once you are in possession of thirty-two regular and brilliant
white teeth, and it seems plain that no dentist will ever make his
fortune out of your mouth. All this, however, has nothing to do with
getting my hair cut. But it brings me to an analogous consideration.
When I tell my wife I am going to get my teeth attended to, does she
try to restrain me from the fatal deed? Not she. She urges me to it,
and leaves me no loophole for escape. She indulges in reminiscences
of herself and the children defying pain in the dentist's chair, and
heartens me with the statement that the instrument she likes best is
the one that goes _berr-r-r-r_ and makes you jump.
Let me now resume my commentary on hair-cutting. I wonder if I am
sufficiently chatty with my hair-cutter. Most men talk to their
hair-cutter all the time. They discuss politics and revolutions and
Britain's unconquerable might, while I, having made a blundering start
with the weather, am brought up with a round turn on the Bolsheviks
and President WILSON'S manner of dealing with the situation. I cannot
lay bare my inmost thoughts about the League of Nations while someone
is running a miniature mowing-machine along the back of my neck ...
At this moment my wife entered the room.
"My dear," I said, "I am going to get my hair cut."
She gave me one mind-piercing look and said, "It's time you did. I've
been noticing it for the last day or two."
Nothing, you see, about convicts. Isn't that like a woman, never to
say the thing you expect her to say? It's taken all the pleasure out
of my visit to the barber. In fact I don't think I shall go at all.
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMAN.
_First Voter_. "SO MR. JONES HAS BEEN ELECTED. YOU VOTED FOR HIM, OF
COURSE?"
_Second Voter_. "NO, I VOTED FOR THE OTHER MAN. YOU SEE, MR. JONES
SUPPORTED WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE, WHICH I ABHOR."]
* * * * *