pretty hat, Carrie. Get it to-day?
Give me a big black velvet every time. You can wear 'em with anything,
and yet they're dressy too. Just now small hats are distinctly passy.

"The handsome one who's dressed the way you always imagined the
Parisiennes would dress, but don't?--Fancy Goods, Stein & Stack, San
Francisco. Listen, Fan: don't go back to San Francisco with that stuff
on your lips. It's all right in Paris, where all the women do it; but
you know as well as I do that Morry Stein would take one look at you and
then tell you to go upstairs and wash your face. Well, I'm just telling
you as a friend.

"That little trick is the biggest lace buyer in the country.... No, you
wouldn't, would you? Such a mite! Even if she does wear a twenty-eight
blouse she's got a forty-two brain--haven't you, Belle? You didn't make
a mistake with that blue crepe de chine, child. It's chic and yet it's
girlish. And you can wear it on the floor, too, when you get home. It's
quiet if it is stunning."

These five, as they sat there that June evening, knew what your wife and
your sister and your mother would wear on Fifth Avenue or Michigan
Avenue next October. On their shrewd, unerring judgment rested the
success or failure of many hundreds of feminine garments. The lace for
Miss Minnesota's lingerie; the jewelled comb in Miss Colorado's hair;
the hat that would grace Miss New Hampshire; the dress for Madam
Delaware--all were the results of their farsighted selection. They were
foragers of feminine fal-lals, and their booty would be distributed from
oyster cove to orange grove.

They were marcelled and manicured within an inch of their lives. They
rustled and a pleasant perfume clung about them. Their hats were so
smart that they gave you a shock. Their shoes were correct. Their skirts
bunched where skirts should bunch that year or lay smooth where
smoothness was decreed. They looked like the essence of frivolity--until
you saw their eyes; and then you noticed that that which is liquid in
sheltered women's eyes was crystallised in theirs.

Sophy Gold, listening to them, felt strangely out of it and plainer than
ever.

"I'm taking tango lessons, Ella," chirped Miss Laces. "Every time I went
to New York last year I sat and twiddled my thumbs while every one else
was dancing. I've made up my mind I'll be in it this year."

"You girls are wonders!" Miss Morrissey marvelled. "I can't do it any
more. If I was to work as hard as I have