“My dear child,” the elder woman said, “you don’t know what you are saying. Do you know that my best hand was apprenticed for three years before she received a dollar; the next year she got a little more than a dollar a week, the fifth year she went to Paris and studied for a year and a half. She is not only a milliner but an artist; it takes years to acquire the knowledge, and I pay her accordingly. My hats are not made by girls who have trimmed up their old hats at home.” Ada looked crestfallen. “I never thought of all that; I only know that your hats are always in perfect taste.” Madame Maude had been looking at her while she spoke. “If you won’t be offended, I’ll make you an offer,” she said. Ada bent her head in answer. She was willing to sweep the floors if she had been asked. She had spent her last dollar, and the washing-bill was not paid for last week, and Sadie had started a bad cough which demanded a tonic, and tonics have to be paid for. “If you will come here and act as saleswoman,” Madame Maude said, “I will pay you well.” “Oh, how kind of you!” the girl cried. “Of course I can’t be offended.” It was such a nice, quiet little shop, quite a private house; there was nothing to shock her in the suggestion. “Stop a bit,” Madame Maude said, “till you hear what that means. I won’t pay you fifteen dollars a week for merely handing a customer a hat, and telling her the price—you’ve got to make her buy it.” “How can I?” Ada said, in a mystified voice. “I’ll tell you,” Madame Maude explained; and she took a lovely hat from a drawer, and put it on her own head. Her face was broad and homely, and the hat did not suit her either well or badly. “Look at me in this hat,” she said, “and imagine I am the customer.” Ada looked. “Now look at yourself in it,” and she placed the hat on Ada’s head of shining hair. Ada smiled, a half-pleased, half-bashful smile. “Now when the customer says she does not think the hat will do—she is afraid it does not suit her—and you have seen that it is _the_ hat she is hankering after, say quite casually, ‘I’m sorry, madam, you don’t like it,’ and put it on your own head. Move about the room in it, and let her see how charming it is. In a few moments she will have forgotten how she herself looked in it, and will fondly imagine that she will look like you, and the hat is sold.” Ada’s face had fallen. “Will you do it?” Madame Maude said. “It will be money easily earned; my saleswoman is leaving next week.” “I am to make money by my face,” Ada cried, with a choking voice; “it’s so horrible.” But something was saying to her, “You must have money; you have spent your last dollar, except what will pay for your bare board. The children must go to school, and Sadie wants a tonic. She has a cough because she has been denied the luxuries she has been used to, and has had to walk to school in all sorts of weather.” “Yes, I will come,” she said; “but what if I do not sell them as you expect?”