K FACINGS
FOR OUR EVENING DRESS?"]

* * * * *

THE BLUE HAT.

Nancy came softly into my study and stood at the side of the desk,
where I was busy with some work on account of which I had stayed away
from the office that morning.

"Do you like it?" she said.

I felt a momentary anxiety as I looked up. I had made a bad mistake
only a little time before, having waxed enthusiastic over what I took
to be a new blouse when it was a question of hair-dressing, the blouse
having been worn by my wife, so she solemnly averred, "every evening
for the last two months."

But this time no mistake was possible. You don't go about the house at
eleven o'clock on a cold Spring morning fancifully arrayed in a pale
blue hat with white feathery things sticking out all round it, unless
there is a particular reason for so doing.

"I think it's a delightful hat," I said, "and suits you splendidly.
But I thought you never wore blue?"

"I don't," said Nancy; "that's what makes me rather doubtful. I didn't
really mean to buy it at all. I went in to Marguerite's--you know,
that heavenly shop at the corner of the square"--I nodded; of course
I knew Marguerite's--"to ask the price of a jade-green jumper they
had in the window--oh, my dear, a perfect angel of a jumper!--and they
showed me this. That red-haired assistant almost _made_ me buy it;
said she had never seen me in a hat that suited me so well; and really
it wasn't so very dear. But I _was_ a little doubtful. However--"

"She was quite right," I said very decidedly. "Did you get the
what-you-may-call-it--the other thing?"

Nancy's face expressed poignant anguish.

"Twelve guineas," she said. "I simply couldn't run to it. Of course I
was heart-broken. Still, it wasn't as if I really needed anything just
now. It would have been ridiculous extravagance. But it really was an
angel."

She turned to go, stopping a moment on the way out to have another
look at herself in the little round mirror over the mantel-piece.

"I'm not quite happy about it," I heard her murmur as she went out.

The next morning I found a letter waiting for me at the office which
brought me news of a totally unexpected windfall of some fifty odd
pounds. It was a sunny morning, too, with a distinct feeling of Spring
in the air.

I felt like being extravagant, and my mind flew at once to Nancy and
her jade-green--what was the name of the thing?--that she had wanted
so badly.