a creation evolved which really gratified me very much. It struck me as reserved, eminently suitable and yet not without claim to distinction. I wondered if I had missed my vocation, and plans for home reconstruction of last year's hat began to filter through my mind, instead of letting Madame condemn, consider, attack and triumph at a charge of fifteen or twenty good dollars.
But when Lizzie came the next Monday, behold she was already provided with an obviously new hat—a gigantic structure of mustard-colored felt adorned with a ribbon bow, a gilt butterfly and a mustard-colored feather which waved about in mid-air dejectedly.
I own to having felt some dejection myself. I was done out of an innocent pleasure. Besides rendering my efforts superfluous, it was such a fearful—but to be expected, I kept reminding myself—example of Lizzie's taste in hats. I groaned in spirit when I saw it hanging on the kitchen door, the upper part of which it all but covered, and felt out of sorts for the rest of the day.
When I came to settle up with Lizzie that afternoon at the end of her labors, she presented herself engulfed in her new acquisition,
