The girl smiled bravely.
"Then you'll find it the next time. I'm glad I'm able to do a little; it brings in a few dollars."
"But what are you doing?"
"Making hats. I did one for Miss Horsfield, and afterward some friends of hers sent me two or three more to trim. She said she'd try to get me work from one of the big stores."
"But you're not a milliner, are you?" asked Vane, feeling grateful to
Jessy for the practical way in which she had kept her promise to assist.
"Celia's something better," Kitty broke in. "She's a genius."
"Isn't that a slight on the profession?" Vane laughed.
He was anxious to lead the conversation away from Miss Horsfield's action; he shrank from figuring as the benefactor who had prompted her.
"I'm not quite sure," he continued, "what genius really is."
"I don't altogether agree with the definition of it as the capacity for taking infinite pains," Carroll, guessing his companion's thoughts, remarked with mock sententiousness. "In Miss Hartley's case, it strikes me as the instinctive ability to evolve a finished work of art from a few fripperies, without the aid of technical training. Give her two or three feathers, a yard of ribbon and a handful of mixed sundries, and she'll magically transmute them into—this."