don't respect and love you for your perfectly natural feeling about it
all? But, Georgiana, you bring me a dowry bigger than any I could ask
for--the inheritance from such a father as he is--and from the mother
who gave you all he left her to give. What are towels and tablecloths--I
don't know what it is brides bring!--beside such things as these? Won't
you give me the real thing, and let me furnish the ones that don't
count? Dear, if you could know the pleasure there is for me in the very
thought of buying you--a hat!"

She could but smile, his tone put so much awe into the word. Suddenly
she grew whimsical; it was so like Georgiana to do that when she was
deeply stirred!

"What do you suppose that hat was made of, I wore here?" she asked him.
"I'll tell you. I found the shape for twenty-five cents at the village
milliner's. I cut it down and sewed it up again into another shape. Then
I hunted through the old 'Semi-Annuals'; you don't know what those are,
do you? I found a piece of velvet that had been a flounce. I steamed it
and covered the shape. Then I had to have some trimming. It came from an
old evening cloak of my Cousin Jeannette's--a bit of gilt, a silk rose,
some ribbon from--I can't tell you what it came from, but it had to be
dyed to match the velvet. I couldn't quite get the shade. But the hat,
when it was done, wasn't so bad."

"Where is it now?"

"Upstairs in my room."

"Would you mind getting it?"

She laughed, hesitated, finally ran upstairs and down again, the hat in
hand. Pausing before an old gilt mirror in the hall she put it on, then
came to him, lifting her head with a proud and merry look which bade
him beware how he might venture to criticise the work of her hands.

Adjusting his eyeglasses with care, he viewed it judicially. "It looks
very nice to me," he said. "Suppose you keep it on and put on a coat and
let me take you out in the car for a few minutes. There's a certain
window uptown I should like to look at, with you."

"I have no coat," she said steadily, and now the colour ebbed a little
from her warm cheek, "except the one that belongs with the suit I wore.
It's short; it wouldn't do to wear with a dress like this."

"I see." Suddenly he came close again, gently lifted the hat from the
dark masses of her hair, laid it carefully on a table near by, and drew
her with him to a broad, high-backed couch at one side of the fire.

"I can see," he said, very quietly, "that you and I