ays a girl can't sit at home and do nothing! She's either got to
work or get married." Mrs. O'Brien paused with a new idea which her own
words suggested to her. "Is it--is it that you're getting married?"

Ellen spoke quickly: "Ma, I expect to work and I'm going to work. But
I'm going to do something I can do well."

"That you can do well!" echoed Mrs. O'Brien. "I don't rightly catch your
meanin', Ellen. Here you've landed a fine position and your boss is a
nice friendly gentleman and now you're turning your back on it all to
take up something else! I don't understand you at all, at all! And to
think," Mrs. O'Brien concluded brokenly, "of the skirts and shirtwaists
that I've stayed up all hours of the night to iron for you, just to keep
you lookin' sweet and clean down at that office!"

"Ma, I'm sorry to disappoint you--honest I am. But, don't you see, it's
just this way: I've made a bad mistake and the sooner I get out of it
the better it will be for me. What I ought to do is something I can do."

"Something you can do, indeed! And will you tell me, me lady, what is it
you can do so much better than stenography?"

Ellen flushed but answered firmly: "I can trim hats."

"Trim hats!" screamed Mrs. O'Brien. "What's this ye're sayin'? Do you
mean to tell me that you're willing to be a milliner when you might be
a stenographer? Why, anybody at all can go and be a milliner!"

"Anybody can't be a fine milliner. And you needn't think there isn't
good money in millinery. The head of a big millinery department gets a
couple of thousand a year!"

Mrs. O'Brien blinked her eyes. "Has some one been offering you that kind
of a position?" Her tears ceased to flow. Once again she beamed on Ellen
with all her old-time pride. "Ah, Ellen, you rogue, you're keeping
something back! Come, tell me what's happened!"

Ellen sighed helplessly. "Ma, I'm trying to tell you, but you make it
awful hard for me. You go off every minute and don't give me a chance to
finish."

Mrs. O'Brien folded her hands complacently. "Ellen dear, I won't utter
another syllable--I promise you I won't. Now tell me in two words what's
happened."

"Well, Ma, it's this: I'm through with stenography and I'm going in for
millinery, which I think I can do better."

"But where, Ellen, where are you going in for it? That's the great
p'int!"

"I'm going to try Hattie Graydon's aunt first. She always says that not
one of the girls in her shop begins to have the tas