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--"

"She was quite right," I said very decidedly. "Did you get the
what-you-may-call-it--the other thing?"

Nancy's face expressed poignant anguish.

"Twelve guineas," she said. "I simply couldn't run to it. Of course I
was heart-broken. Still, it wasn't as if I really needed anything just
now. It would have been ridiculous extravagance. But it really was an
angel."

She turned to go, stopping a moment on the way out to have another
look at herself in the little round mirror over the mantel-piece.

"I'm not quite happy about it," I heard her murmur as she went out.