Reypen shrilly exclaiming:

"Stupid! Not that way! You have neither taste nor brains! Place the braid
higher. No, not so high as that! Oh, you _are_ an idiot!"

Deeming it best not to interfere, Patty went on with her work.

Also, Mrs. Van Reypen went on with her scolding, which so upset the
long-suffering maid that she fell to weeping and thereby roused her
mistress to still greater ire.

"Crying, are you!" she exclaimed. "If you had such a painful neck and
shoulder as I have you well might cry. But to cry about nothing! Bah!
Leave me, and do not return until you can be pleasant. Miss Fairfield,
will you please finish putting up my hair?"

Patty laid down her work, and did as she was requested. She was sorry for
the maid and incensed at Mrs. Van Reypen's injustice and disagreeableness,
but she felt intuitively that it was the best plan to be, herself, kind
and affable.

"Oh, yes, I'll do it!" she said, pleasantly. "Your hat is almost
finished, and we can try it on with your hair done this way. I'm sure the
effect will be charming."

Mollified at this, Mrs. Van Reypen smiled benignly on her companion, and
also smiled admiringly at her own mirrored reflection.

"Now," said Patty, as, a little later, she brought the completed hat for
inspection, "I will try this on and see how it looks."

Mrs. Van Reypen seated herself again in front of her dressing mirror, and
with gestures worthy of Madame Villard herself, Patty placed the hat on
her head.

"It's most becoming," began Patty, when Mrs. Van Reypen interrupted her.

"Becoming?" she cried. "It is dreadful! It is _fearful_. It makes me look
like an old woman!"

With an angry jerk she snatched the offending hat from her head and threw
it across the room.

Patty was about to give a horrified exclamation when the funny side of it
struck her, and she burst into laughter. Mrs. Van Reypen was really an
elderly lady, and her angry surprise at being made to look like one
seemed very funny to Patty.

But in a moment she understood the case.

She had thought the hat in question of too youthful a type for Mrs. Van
Reypen, and in retrimming it had made it more subdued and of a quieter,
more elderly fashion.

But she now realised that she had been expected to make it of even gayer
effect than it had shown at first. This was an easy matter, and picking
up the hat she straightened it out, and hastily catching up a bunch of
pink roses and a glittering buckle, she said: