Miss Josephine Burgess understood the soft sodder principle like a book. She had a way of bantering off the bonnets and gimcracks that was raly curious. If a customer happened to take a notion to having color and shape of a bonnet, she would insist upon it that she should try it on afore the glass; and while the lady was a gittin good natured, and a beginning to feel stuck up with the looks of herself, Miss Josephine would twist about the bows, and spread out the ribbands, and tell how very nice it all was, the face and the bonnet agreed so well. She had jest _that_ face in her mind when the bonnet was under way--so delicate--so graceful--so--so--_very_ handsome. Some people hadn't the least notion of harmony and grace. It raly did her heart good to make things for a lady who knew which was which. She always kept them sort of hats for her most fashionable customers. She wouldn't have them get common for anything--raly she couldn't tell how that one got out on the counter; but shop gals were the most careless critters on arth--sometimes she did feel as if she couldn't git along with 'em--but in them hard times it raly went agin her heart to turn 'em away, so she got along as well as she could. Here Miss Josephine Burgess would break sharp off and let the customer look at herself in the glass, only just throwing in a word once in a while to help along. Then she'd pull the bonnet a leetle for'ed, tuck away the lady's curls under it, and stick her own head a one side to "take an observation;" arter that she'd kinder put up both hands and say "beautiful!" jest as if the word bust right out, all she could do to help it. By-am-by Miss Josephine Burgess would sort of fold her hands over the black apron, and step back a leetle to give her customer time to twistify afore the glass, and wonder whether the milliner meant the bonnet or her face, or both together, when she said "beautiful." The hull of it eenamost always tarminated by Miss Josephine Burgess selling the bonnet, and the lady's swimming off chuck full and brimming over with soft sodder, like a darn'd turkey-gobbler, stuffed out with Injun meal. If a customer did _not_ take a notion to the bonnet, or seemed to hanker arter something else, Miss Josephine had nothing to do but to alter her tune for another sort of a dancer. "Folks with homely faces," sez she, "ought to be squeamish about colors;" in fact they couldn't help it, if they wanted to look decent; but some folks raly seemed to look harnsome in anything; it was the face arter all that sot off the bonnet. Some people had such clear skins that they could bear a bright orange color, and look purty as a pink arter all. Once in a while Miss Josephine sartinly did overdo the bisness a leetle, but she almost always made out to trade somehow, without her customer turned out to be some sly coot of a sister milliner a running round to hunt up patterns, or some darned critter out a shopping on a fourpence-ha'penny capital.