“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 blue shade—the colour Raymond Bonner, who was a classmate and almost a “beau,” wore so much in neckties—and the facing shell-pink, a delicate harmony; but the supreme ecstasy came with placing the little silken flowers, pink and mauve and deeper subtle-blue, in effective composition upon that heavenly background; and, in just the one place, a glimpse of subtle-blue ribbon, a sheen as gracious as achieved by the great Creator when, with a master's eye, on a landscape he places a climactic stroke of shining blue water. Indeed, He Himself surely can view His handiwork with no more sense o gratification than did Missy, regarding that miracle of colour which was her own creation.
Oh, to create! To feel a blind, vague, ineffable urge within you, stealing out to tangibility in colour and form! Earth—nor Heaven, either—can produce no finer rapture.
Missy's hat was duly admired. Miss Ackerman said she was a “real artist”; when she wore it to Sunday-school everybody looked at her so much she found it hard to hold down a sense of unsabbatical pride; father jocosely said she'd better relinquish her dreams of literary fame else she'd deprive the world of a fine milliner; and even mother admitted that Mrs. Anna Stubbs, the leading milliner, couldn't have done better. However, she amended: “Now, don't forget your school work, dear. Have you decided on the subject of your thesis yet?”
Missy had not. But, by this time, the hat business was moving so rapidly that she had even less time to worry over anything still remote, like the thesis—plenty of time to think of that; now, she was dreaming of how the rose would look blooming radiantly from this soft bed of violet straw;... and, now, how becoming to Aunt Nettie would be this misty green, with cool-looking leaves and wired silver gauze very pure and bright like angels' wings—dear Aunt Nettie didn't have much “taste,” and Missy indulged in a certain righteous glow in thus providing her with a really becoming, artistic hat. Then, after Aunt Nettie's, she planned one for Marguerite. Marguerite was the hired girl, mulatto, and had the racial passion for strong colour. So Missy conceived for her a creation that would be at once satisfying to wearer and beholder. How wonderful with one's own hands to be able to dispense pleasure! Missy, working, felt a peculiarly blended joy; it is a gratification, indeed, when a pleasing occupation is seasoned with the fine flavour of noble altruism.
She hadn't yet thought of a theme for the Valedictory, and mother was beginning to make disturbing comments about “this hat mania,” when, by the most fortuitous chance, while she was working on Marguerite's very hat—in fact, because she was working on it—she hit upon a brilliantly possible idea for the Valedictory.