re's so
much more news in the Sunday papers: I suppose people are all extra
wicked on Saturdays. They get paid Friday night, I shouldn't wonder; and
it goes to their heads."

"Silly!" Emmy said under her breath. "It's the week's news."

"That's all right, old girl," admonished Jenny. "I was only giving him
something to think about. Poor old soul. Now, about this hat: the girls
all go on at me.... Say I dress like a broker's-man. I'm going to
smarten myself up. You never know what might happen. Why, I might get
off with a Duke!"

Emmy was overtaken by an impulse of gratitude.

"You can have mine, if you like," she said. "The one you gave me ... on
my birthday." Jenny solemnly shook her head. She did not thank her
sister. Thanks were never given in that household, because they were a
part of "peliteness," and were supposed to have no place in the domestic
arena.

"Not if I know it!" she humorously retorted. "I made it for you, and it
suits you. Not my style at all. I'll just get out my box of bits. You'll
see something that'll surprise you, my girl."

The box proved to contain a large number of "bits" of all sizes and
kinds--fragments of silk (plain and ribbed), of plush, of ribbon both
wide and narrow; small sprays of marguerites, a rose or two, some
poppies, and a bunch of violets; a few made bows in velvet and silk;
some elastic, some satin, some feathers, a wing here and there ... the
miscellaneous assortment of odds-and-ends always appropriated (or, in
the modern military slang, "won") by assistants in the millinery. Some
had been used, some were startlingly new. Jenny was more modest in such
acquirements than were most of her associates; but she was affected, as
all such must be, by the prevailing wind. Strangely enough, it was not
her habit to wear very smart hats, for business or at any other time.
She would have told you, in the event of any such remark, that when you
had been fiddling about with hats all day you had other things to do in
the evenings. Yet she had good taste and very nimble fingers when
occasion arose. In bringing her box from the bedroom she brought also
from the stand in the passage her drooping hat, against which she
proceeded to lay various materials, trying them with her sure eye,
seeking to compose a picture, with that instructive sense of cynosure
which marks the crafty expert. Fascinated, with her lips parted in an
expression of that stupidity which is so often the sequel to a fit