Peggy’s hair was so thick that she had to wear it in two plaits instead of one; so long that when she sat down and let these fall over her shoulders, their ends curled up in her lap. Nell, whose own hair hung lank and short about her neck, was never tired of playing with them, pushing a finger in and out between twists so sleek and smooth that they felt like a rope come alive.

The two girls were in their favourite place, the hay-loft. For here, if you pulled the ladder up after you, nobody could follow you; though you could see what was going on in the yard below: the men with the horses and carts, or customers taking a short cut to the shop. But you were quite safe from the other girls; and that was what she and Peg wanted — to be alone together. The others teased so that it made you simply furious. F’r instance, once when Peggy said she’d ever so much rather have had fair hair than dark, and she, Nell, cried out at her, the other girls pulled faces, and winked, and turned their eyes up to heaven till you could have killed them.

Here, she and Peg sat with their behinds burrowed into the hay, most comfortable, and all alone.

To-day was rather a special day; for Nell had something in her blazer-pocket so secret and important that it almost burned her through the stuff. This was a present for Peggy, and . . . well, now the moment to give it had come, she was feeling just a teeny bit uneasy. How dreadful if Peg didn’t like it — after all the trouble she had had to buy it. Her pocket-money — she got threepence a week, got it honestly, not like one girl they knew, who sometimes sneaked a threepenny-bit from her father’s till, under the old bookkeeper’s nose. Well, for three whole weeks now, she, Nell, hadn’t spent a penny of HER threepence (instead of at once blueing it on chocs; she’d almost forgotten what they tasted like) and with her savings she’d bought Peggy . . . a hair-slide. Ninepence-halfpenny the exact price was, and she’d been fairly stuck how to raise the extra halfpenny without waiting another week. In the end, there had been nothing for it but to pinch a stamp from her father’s desk, and sell it.

This slide was now in her pocket, neatly wrapped in fine tissue paper. But the longer it stayed there the more unsure she grew. The point was, it was intended for a place on Peggy’s head . . . well, for the one piece of her that wasn’t QUITE as pretty as the rest. This was at the back of her neck where the plaits went off, each on its own side. They seemed to leave such a big gap of white skin showing . . . perhaps because they were so dark themselves. Peggy of course didn’t know this — you couldn’t see yourself behind — but she, Nell, did; and every time the patch caught her eye, it gave her a slight stab that there should be ANYTHING about Peg that wasn’t quite perfect. Once, too, she’d heard Madge Brennan make a simply horrid remark about people who went bald very young. Peggy didn’t understand; but she did, and bled for her. It was then she’d made up her mind to get the slide.

Another worrying thing was that she’d been lured away from the plain, useful one she had gone into the shop meaning to buy, and had taken one set with . . . diamonds. Not REAL diamonds, of course; but they looked just like it. And now she was afraid Peggy might think it too showy for everyday. And not know how to explain it either to her dreadfully big family of brothers and sisters, most of them older than her. They said such rude things sometimes. And her mother, too. One evening when she, Nell, had been waiting in the rightaway, hoping yes, truly, only HOPING Peggy would be allowed out again after tea, the mother, a great big fat woman with an apron over her stomach, had opened the window and called out: “Now then, Nellie Mackensen, just you be off! I won’t have you always hanging about here at mealtimes.” As if she wanted their old tea! Her own mother said Peggy’s mother was cross because there were so many of them and she’d so much to do. But it did make you rather wonder what she’d say to the diamonds. (Perhaps she’d throw them out of the window.) Oh dear, things were most frightfully complicated. It would have’ been much better, she saw it now, if she’d bought, say, a nice little diary-book, that Peggy could have carried in her pocket.

But she hadn’t. And the slide was there. Faint-heartedly she drew it forth.

Peggy, who had been talking all the time — Peg’s pretty mouth was always either talking or laughing — spotted the little parcel at once and said: “Hullo, what’s that,— For me? A present for me? Truly? Let’s see! Oh, Nell, you dear! . . . a brooch . . . just exactly what I’ve wanted.”

Nell felt herself go red as a beetroot. “Well, no, not a BROOCH, Peg,” she said in a small voice. “It’s a . . . it’s for your hair . . . behind . . . a hair-slide.”

Peggy’s enthusiasm fizzled out. “A slide?” she echoed disappointedly. “But — what for? Wherever could I wear a slide?”

The fatal moment had come. Nell swallowed hard. “Why, I thought . . . you see, I thought it would look most awfully nice, Peg, if you . . . put it on at the back . . . I mean on your neck where the hair leaves off.”

But all Peggy said, and as disbelievingly as before, was: “On my NECK? Gracious! I should never be able to make it stick. Besides, every time I move my head it ‘ud run into me.”

“Then you don’t like it?”

“Oh, yes, it’s all right. But whatever made you think of a slide, Nell?” pressed Peggy, and reflected peevishly: just fancy going and buying a thing like that, when there are such squads of things I really do want.

Nell’s voice was abject with apology as she replied: “Well, you know, Peg darling, I’ve always meant to give you something — something private . . . for yourself . . . from me. And — But oh, you don’t like it, I can see you don’t,” and her lips began to tremble.

“Of course I do, silly! But what I’m asking you is, WHY a hair-slide?” persisted Peggy, with a doggedness of which only she was capable.

There was nothing for it: the truth had to come out. “Well . . . I don’t think you know, Peg, but — well, just at the back of you . . . where there isn’t any more hair . . . just there, it sometimes looks so bare.”

Now it was Peggy’s turn to crimson. Very angrily. “WHAT? So that’s it, is it? I suppose what you mean to say is I’m going bald?”

“Oh no, no, indeed I don’t . . I DON’T . . . mean ANYthing like that.”

“Well, I don’t believe you. And I think you’re simply horrid.”

“I DON’T! It wasn’t me at all. It was Madge Brennan — I heard her . . . say something. And I thought . . . oh, I thought . . .” But here Nell fairly broke down and put her knuckles to her eyes.

“WHO? Madge Brennan? That pig-ey............