“Of course!  It’s like a fairy tale,” said Kate.  “Still, you didn’t see the hat!”

“But you described it in a truly graphic manner,” said Mrs. Jardine.

“When I am the snowiest of great-grandmothers, I shall still be telling small people about the outcome of my first attempt at vanity,” laughed Kate.

The third morning dawned in great beauty, a “misty, moisty morning,” Mrs. Jardine called it.  The sun tried to shine but could not quite pierce the intervening clouds, so on every side could be seen exquisite pictures painted in delicate pastel colours.  Kate, fresh and rosy, wearing a blue chambray dress, was a picture well worth seeing.  Mrs. Jardine kept watching her so closely that Kate asked at last:  “Have you made up your mind, yet?”

“No, and I am afraid I never shall,” answered Mrs. Jardine.  “You are rather an astonishing creature.  You’re so big, so vital; you absorb knowledge like a sponge takes water —­ "

“And for the same purpose,” laughed Kate.  “That it may be used for the benefit of others.  Tell me some more about me.  I find me such an interesting subject.”

“No doubt!” admitted Mrs. Jardine.  “Not a doubt about that!  We are all more interested in ourselves than in any one else in this world, until love comes; then we soon learn to a love man more than life, and when a child comes we learn another love, so clear, so high, so purifying, that we become of no moment at all, and live only for those we love.”

“You speak for yourself, and a class of women like you,” answered Kate gravely.  “I’m very well acquainted with many women who have married and borne children, and who are possibly more selfish than before.  The Great Experience never touched them at all.”

There was a tap at the door.  Kate opened it and delivered to Mrs. Jardine a box so big that it almost blocked the doorway.

Mrs. Jardine lifted from the box a big Leghorn hat of weave so white and fine it almost seemed like woven cloth instead of braid.  There was a bow in front, but the bow was nested in and tied through a web of flowered gold lace.  One velvet end was slightly long and concealed a wire which lifted one side of the brim a trifle, beneath which was fastened a smashing big, pale-pink velvet rose.  There was an ostrich plume even longer than the other, broader, blacker, as wonderful a feather as ever dropped from the plumage of a lordly bird.  Mrs. Jardine shook the hat in such a way as to set the feather lifting and waving after the confinement of the box.  With slender, sure fingers she set the bow and lace as they should be, and touched the petals of the rose.  She inspected the hat closely, shook it again, and held it toward Kate.

“A very small price to pay for the breath of life, which I was rapidly losing,” she said.  “Do me the favour to accept it as casually as I offer it.  Did I understand your description anywhere near right?  Is this your hat?”