gentleman. Nightly Hattie powdered her neck and arms, performed sacred
rites over her hair and nails, donned a gown so complicated that a
hotel maid had to hook her up the back, and was ready for her
evening's escort at eight. There wasn't a hat in a grill room from one
end of the Crooked Cow-path to the other that was more wildly barbaric
than Hattie's, even in these sane and simple days when the bird of
paradise has become the national bird. The buyer of suits for a
thriving department store in a hustling little Middle-Western town
isn't to be neglected. Whenever a show came to River Falls Hattie
would look bored, pass a weary hand over her glossy coiffure and say:
"Oh, yes. Clever little show. Saw it two winters ago in New York. This
won't be the original company, of course." The year that Hattie came
back wearing a set of skunk everyone thought it was lynx until Hattie
drew attention to what she called the "brown tone" in it. After that
Old Lady Heinz got her old skunk furs out of the moth balls and
tobacco and newspapers that had preserved them, and her daughter cut
them up into bands for the bottom of her skirt, and the cuffs of her
coat. When Kiser & Bloch had their fall and spring openings the town
came ostensibly to see the new styles, but really to gaze at Hattie in
a new confection, undulating up and down the department, talking with
a heavy Eastern accent about this or that being "smart" or "good this
year," or having "a world of style," and sort of trailing her toes
after her to give a clinging, Grecian line, like pictures of Ethel
Barrymore when she was thin. The year that Hattie confided to some one
that she was wearing only scant bloomers beneath her slinky silk the
floor was mobbed, and they had to call in reserves from the basement
ladies-and-misses-ready-to-wear.

Miss Stitch came to New York in March. On the evening of her arrival
she dined with Fat Ed Meyers, of the Strauss Sans-silk Skirt Company.