"Well, I reckon I'll lose my figure now that I've stopped dieting,"
remarked the lively lady, casting an appreciative glance in the mirror.
"Florrie tells me I wear my sleeves too large, but I think they make me
look smaller."

"They are wearing them very large in Paris," replied Miss Lancaster, as
if she were reciting a verse out of a catalogue. She had, as she
sometimes found occasion to remark, been "born tired," and this
temperamental weariness showed now in her handsome face, so wrinkled and
dark around her bravely smiling eyes. Where she came from, or how she
spent her time between the hour she left the shop and the hour she
returned to it, the two women knew as little as they knew the intimate
personal history of the Leghorn hat on the peg by the mirror. Beyond the
fact that she played the part of a sympathetic chorus, they were without
curiosity about her life. Their own personalities absorbed them, and for
the time at least appeared to absorb Miss Lancaster.

"I like the Leghorn hat," said Florrie decisively, as she tried it on
for the third time, "but I'll wait till I ask Gabriella's opinion."

"I hope she's getting on well here," said Mrs. Spencer, who found it
impossible to concentrate on Florrie's hat. "Don't you think it was very
brave of her to go to work, Miss Lancaster?"

"I understood that she was obliged to," rejoined Miss Lancaster, with
the weary amiability of her professional manner.

"She might have married, I happen to know that," returned Mrs. Spencer.
"Arthur Peyton has been in love with her ever since she was a child, and