"Why so, my love? your hat is quite new and charming. It came from Perrett's, too, did it not, Miss Grey?"
"Yes, Mrs. Grenville; it was sent in the same box as the muslin costume."
"Oh, it will answer admirably, Maggie, dear. Why, what is the matter, my child?"
Maggie's lips were quivering, and her eyes were fixed on her violet sash.
"Only perhaps—perhaps the new hat might get lost or something," she muttered incoherently.
Mrs. Grenville looked at her for a moment, but as her remark was not very intelligible, she dismissed it from her mind.
The rest of the day passed happily enough. In half an hour Maggie ceased to fret about her hat. She comforted herself with the thought that her plain brown straw garden-hat, trimmed with a neat band of brown velvet, and a few daisies, would be after all just the thing for a garden party, and that in any case it did not greatly matter what she wore. What was of much more consequence was, that to-morrow Susy would be capering about with her tambourine, and that pennies would be pouring in for the Aylmer children, and for Jo in particular. She was obliged to wear her best hat when she went out that afternoon, and she certainly was remarkably careful as to how she put it on, and she quite astonished Miss Grey, when she came home in the evening, by the extreme care with which she herself placed it back in its box.
"Waters," she said that night, when she suddenly met Mrs. Grenville's maid, "I am quite happy again; I have done just as you do, and I have kept it in violet all day long."
"What, my darling?" asked the surprised servant.
"Oh, my secret; I have got such a darling secret. It would be very wrong of me to tell it, wouldn't it, Waters?"