Music-hall Artist (to partner). "I RECKON WE OUGHT TO INTRODUCE SOME NEW FEATURE INTO THE TURN, WITH PEACE COMIN'."
Partner. "AH, I'VE BEEN THINKING OF IT TOO. WHAT ABAHT PINK FACINGS FOR OUR EVENING DRESS?"
THE BLUE HAT.
Nancy came softly into my study and stood at the side of the desk, where I was busy with some work on account of which I had stayed away from the office that morning.
"Do you like it?" she said.
I felt a momentary anxiety as I looked up. I had made a bad mistake only a little time before, having waxed enthusiastic over what I took to be a new blouse when it was a question of hair-dressing, the blouse having been worn by my wife, so she solemnly averred, "every evening for the last two months."
But this time no mistake was possible. You don't go about the house at eleven o'clock on a cold Spring morning fancifully arrayed in a pale blue hat with white feathery things sticking out all round it, unless there is a particular reason for so doing.
"I think it's a delightful hat," I said, "and suits you splendidly. But I thought you never wore blue?"
"I don't," said Nancy; "that's what makes me rather doubtful. I didn't really mean to buy it at all. I went in to Marguerite's—you know, that heavenly shop at the corner of the square"—I nodded; of course I knew Marguerite's—"to ask the price of a jade-green jumper they had in the window—oh, my dear, a perfect angel of a jumper!—and they showed me this. That red-haired assistant almost made me buy it; said she had never seen me in a hat that suited me so well; and really it wasn't so very dear. But I was a little doubtful. However—"