inly ticketed.
Mrs Cheswardine descended from the car, crossed the pavement, and gave
to the window the whole of her attention.

She sniffed at most of the hats. But one of them, of green straw, with
a large curving green wing on either side of the crown, and a few odd
bits of fluffiness here and there, pleased her. It was Parisian. She
had been to Paris--once. An 'after-season' sale at a little shop in
Torquay would not, perhaps, seem the most likely place in the world to
obtain a chic hat; it is, moreover, a notorious fact that really chic
hats cannot be got for less than three pounds, and this hat was marked
ten shillings. Nevertheless, hats are most mysterious things. Their
quality of being chic is more often the fruit of chance than of design,
particularly in England. You never know when nor where you may light on
a good hat. Vera considered that she had lighted on one.

'They're probably duck's feathers dyed,' she said to herself. 'But it's
a darling of a hat and it will suit me to a T.'

As for the price, when once you have taken the ticket off a hat the
secret of its price is gone forever. Many a hat less smart than this
hat has been marked in Bond Street at ten guineas instead of ten
shillings. Hats are like oil-paintings--they are worth what people will
give for them.

So Vera approached her husband, and said, with an enchanting, innocent
smile--

'Lend me half-a-sovereign, will you, doggie?'

She called him doggie in those days because he was a sort of dog-man, a
sort of St Bernard, shaggy and big, with faithful eyes; and he enjoyed
being called doggie.

But on this occasion he was not to be bewitched by the enchanting
innocence of the smile nor by the endearing epithet. He refused to
relax his features.

'You aren't going to buy another hat, are you?' he asked sternly,
challengingly.

The smile disappeared from her face, and she pulled her slim young self
together.

'Yes,' she replied harshly.

The battle was definitely engaged. You may inquire why a man
financially capable of hiring a 20-24 h.p. Napier car, with a French
chauffeur named Felix, for a week or more, should grudge his wife ten
shillings for a hat. Well, you are to comprehend that it was not a
question of ten shillings, it was a question of principle. Vera already
had eighteen hats, and it had been clearly understood between them that
no more money should be spent on attire for quite a long time. Vera was
entirely in the wrong. S