is work, but they
seemed to be more than compensated by the joy of creating, with their
own fingers, new spring hats which won them praise and admiration. Kitty
Allen's hat was particularly successful. It was a white straw "flat,"
faced and garlanded with blue. Missy looked at its picturesque effect,
posed above her "best friend's" piquantly pretty face, with an envy
which was augmented by the pardonable note of pride in Kitty's voice as
she'd say: "Oh, do you really like it?--I made it myself, you know."

If only she, Missy, might taste of this new kind of joy! She was not
a Domestic Science girl; but, finally, she went to Miss
Ackermanand--oh,rapture!--obtained permission to enter the millinery
class.

However, there was still the more difficult matter of winning mother's
consent. As Missy feared, Mrs. Merriam at once put on her disapproving
look.

"No, Missy. You've already got your hands full. Have you started the
thesis yet?"

"Oh, mother!--I'll get the thesis done all right! And this is such a
fine chance!--all the girls are learning how to make their own hats. And
I thought, maybe, after I'd learned how on my own, that maybe I could
make you one. Do you remember that adorable violet straw you used to
have when I was a little girl?--poke shape and with the pink rose? I
remember father always said it was the most becoming hat you ever had.
And I was thinking, maybe, I could make one something like that!"

"I'm afraid I've outgrown pink roses, dear." But mother was smiling a
soft, reminiscent little shadow of a smile.

"But you haven't outgrown the poke shape--and violet! Oh, mother!"

"Well, perhaps--we'll see. But you mustn't let it run away with you. You
must get that thesis started."

Not for nothing had Missy been endowed with eyes that could shine and
a voice that could quaver; yes, and with an instinct for just the right
argument to play upon the heart-strings.

She joined the special night class in millinery. She learned to
manipulate troublesome coils of wire and pincers, and to evolve a
strange, ghostly skeleton--thing called a "frame," but when this was
finally covered with crinoline and tedious rows-on-rows of straw braid,
drab drudgery was over and the deliciousness began.

Oh, the pure rapture of "trimming"! Missy's first venture was a wide,
drooping affair, something the shape of Kitty Allen's, only her own
had a much subtler, more soul-satisfying colour scheme. The straw was
a subtle blu