“Oh, mother!--I'll get the thesis done all right! And this is such a fine chance!--all the girls are learning how to make their own hats. And I thought, maybe, after I'd learned how on my own, that maybe I could make you one. Do you remember that adorable violet straw you used to have when I was a little girl?--poke shape and with the pink rose? I remember father always said it was the most becoming hat you ever had. And I was thinking, maybe, I could make one something like that!” “I'm afraid I've outgrown pink roses, dear.” But mother was smiling a soft, reminiscent little shadow of a smile. “But you haven't outgrown the poke shape--and violet! Oh, mother!” “Well, perhaps--we'll see. But you mustn't let it run away with you. You must get that thesis started.” Not for nothing had Missy been endowed with eyes that could shine and a voice that could quaver; yes, and with an instinct for just the right argument to play upon the heart-strings. She joined the special night class in millinery. She learned to manipulate troublesome coils of wire and pincers, and to evolve a strange, ghostly skeleton--thing called a “frame,” but when this was finally covered with crinoline and tedious rows-on-rows of straw braid, drab drudgery was over and the deliciousness began. Oh, the pure rapture of “trimming”! Missy's first venture was a wide, drooping affair, something the shape of Kitty Allen's, only her own had a much subtler, more soul-satisfying colour scheme. The straw was a subtle blue shade--the colour Raymond Bonner, who was a classmate and almost a “beau,” wore so much in neckties--and the facing shell-pink, a delicate harmony; but the supreme ecstasy came with placing the little silken flowers, pink and mauve and deeper subtle-blue, in effective composition upon that heavenly background; and, in just the one place, a glimpse of subtle-blue ribbon, a sheen as gracious as achieved by the great Creator when, with a master's eye, on a landscape he places a climactic stroke of shining blue water. Indeed, He Himself surely can view His handiwork with no more sense o gratification than did Missy, regarding that miracle of colour which was her own creation. Oh, to create! To feel a blind, vague, ineffable urge within you, stealing out to tangibility in colour and form! Earth--nor Heaven, either--can produce no finer rapture. Missy's hat was duly admired. Miss Ackerman said she was a “real artist”; when she wore it to Sunday-school everybody looked at her so much she found it hard to hold down a sense of unsabbatical pride; father jocosely said she'd better relinquish her dreams of literary fame else she'd deprive the world of a fine milliner; and even mother admitted that Mrs. Anna Stubbs, the leading milliner, couldn't have done better. However, she amended: “Now, don't forget your school work, dear. Have you decided on the subject of your thesis yet?”