She had combed and brushed her thick brown hair, and, taken with its exceeding beauty, had ventured on a stroke of originality no one would have expected of her: she had left it hanging loose on her shoulders.

Any one would think such an impropriety impossible to a Scotchwoman.

But then she had been handling the hair, and contact with anything alters so much one's theories about it.

If Mary had found it so, instead of making it so, she would have said it was "no dacent." But the hair gave her its own theory before she had done with it, and this was the result.

She had also washed her face and hands and neck, made the best she could of her poor, dingy dress, and put one of her own Sunday collars upon her.
Annie had submitted to it all without question; and thus adorned, Mary introduced her again to the dining-room.