castically than ever. "It isn't probable that yours
would make much of a sensation. Mr. Stephens didn't send for you to
show him your chiffon hat, did he? If he did, I don't see what you're
lugging that big portfolio along with you for. Go and put on your
sailor hat, Jane Lavinia."

Jane Lavinia obeyed. She always obeyed Aunt Rebecca. But she took off
the chiffon hat and pinned on the sailor with bitterness of heart. She
had always hated that sailor. Anything ugly hurt Jane Lavinia with an
intensity that Aunt Rebecca could never understand; and the sailor hat
was ugly, with its stiff little black bows and impossible blue roses.
It jarred on Jane Lavinia's artistic instincts. Besides, it was very
unbecoming.

I look horrid in it, Jane Lavinia had thought sorrowfully; and then
she had gone out and down the velvet-green springtime valley and over
the sunny birch hill beyond with a lagging step and a rebellious
heart.

But Jane Lavinia came home walking as if on the clear air of the
crystal afternoon, her small, delicate face aglow and every fibre of
her body and spirit thrilling with excitement and delight. She forgot
to fling the sailor hat into its box with her usual energy of dislike.
Just then Jane Lavinia had a soul above hats. She looked at herself in
the glass and nodded with friendliness.

"You'll do something yet," she said. "Mr. Stephens said you would. Oh,
I like you, Jane Lavinia, you dear thing! Sometimes I haven't liked
you because you're nothing to look at, and I didn't suppose you could
really do anything worthwhile. But I do like you now after what Mr.
Stephens said about your drawings."

Jane Lavinia smiled radiantly into the little cracked glass. Just then
she was pretty, with the glow on her cheeks and the sparkle in her
eyes. Her uncertainly tinted hair and an all-too-certain little tilt
of her nose no longer troubled her. Such things did not matter; nobody
would mind them in a successful artist. And Mr. Stephens had said that
she had talent enough to win success.

Jane Lavinia sat down by her window, which looked west into a grove of
firs. They grew thickly, close up to the house, and she could touch
their wide, fan-like branches with her hand. Jane Lavinia loved those
fir trees, with their whispers and sighs and beckonings, and she also
loved her little shadowy, low-ceilinged room, despite its plainness,
because it was gorgeous for her with visions and peopled with rainbow
fancies.

The sta