“I always did know about hats,” she went on. “It seems like it’s a kind of a gift with me. I can always tell what kind of a hat a person ought to wear. Now you--you ought to wear something kind of startling to bring you into view. If you don’t have it, you’re the kind of mousey little woman that slips by without any one’s payin’ any attention. I looked at you on Sunday, and I says, ‘That little woman kind of needs something to bring her out. Now what is it?’ I says, sort of turning you over in my mind, like you taste cake-batter to see what it needs. And all at once it came to me: ‘It’s a hat,’ I says, ‘a cerise turban: _that_ would do the trick.’ If folks didn’t notice a thing else about you, they’d see that turban. You ain’t got just the color I had in mind,” she went on, surveying the hat counter, “but,” taking up a green turban, “this is kind of the shape I mean. Now if you had a piece of cerise silk you could fix this right over for yourself. Lemme see how it looks on you.” But Julie shrunk hastily away. “No, no thank you,” she said with that quick breathlessness that was a nervous trick with her. “No, I never wear cerise, and I don’t care for that shape on myself.” “Oh, all right then,” Elizabeth retorted, laying down the hat in a pique. “You can suit yourself. I was just trying to show you how you could attract a little attention. But you’re just like my husband; he sort of wants to slink through the world without anybody noticing him. I tell him a person would think he was a submarine, he’s so anxious to have that ‘low visibility’ the papers are always talking about these days. I declare, I’d like to put a cerise turban on _him_--a red hat like what the Popes wear in the Catholic Church. Maybe he couldn’t get by without folks seein’ that! ‘Look a’ here, Tim,’ I’m always sayin’ to him, ‘What’s the matter with you? It ain’t going to kill you if folks sees you. Come out into the open,’ I says. ‘You can’t hide behind _my_ skirts all the time.’ But the more I talk at him, the more he goes in the ground an’ pulls the hole in after him. I declare, I think it’ll be a right good thing if the draft does take him.” “The draft?” Julie looked up quickly. “Mm--h’m,” Elizabeth nodded. “He’s liable to be called any time now. He just took this little job here while he was waiting. That’s why I didn’t bring any of my furniture with me. I got a nice house and a lot of elegant furniture in Lynchburg where we was, an’ we’ll go back there after the war. The paper he worked on there’s just suspended for a while. The editor an’ owner’s both gone to the front. Well, you don’t catch me stayin’ on here if Tim’s drafted. I’ll go on back to my own home. I got plenty of friends there. But say--_he’ll_ make a great soldier, won’t he? I always tell him Tim’s short for timid with him. You can laugh if you want. I know just how funny he always strikes folks.”