Miriam mused intensely. She felt Mrs. Kronen ought to be there to answer. She had some secret Mrs. Corrie did not possess. Mrs. Corrie looked suddenly small and mild and funny. Why did she think it dreadful that Mrs. Kronen should have no children? There was nothing wonderful in having children. It was better to sing. She was perfectly sure that she herself did not want children.... “Superior women don’t marry,” she said, “sir she said, sir she said, su, per, _i_, or women”--but that meant blue stockings. 4 “I don’t want a silly hat,” said Mrs. Corrie, as their hansom drew up in bright sunlight outside a milliner’s at the southern end of Regent Street. “Let’s buy a real lovely teapot or a Bartolozzi or somethin’. What fun to go home with somethin’ real nice. Eh? A real real beauty Dresden teapot,” she chanted, floating into the dimness of the shop where large hats standing on long straight stands flared softly like blossoms in the twilight. She swept about in her flowing lace-trimmed twine-coloured overcoat on the green velvet carpet, or stood ruthlessly trying on a hat, pressing its wire frame to fit her head, crushing her fingers into tucked tulle, talking and trying, and discarding until the collection was exhausted. Miriam sat angry and admiring, wondering at the subdued helplessness of the satin-clad assistant, sorry for the discarded hats lying carelessly about, their glory dimmed. All the hats, whatever their shape or colour seemed to her to decorate the bronze head and the twine-coloured coat. The little toques gave slenderness and willowy height, and the large flowered ribboned hats, the moment a veil draped the boniness of the face made, Miriam felt, an entrancing picturesqueness. With each hat Mrs. Corrie addressed the large mirror calling herself a freak, a sketch, a nightmare, a real real fogey. 5 The process seemed endless and Miriam sat at last scourging herself with angry questions. “Why doesn’t she decide,” she found herself repeating almost aloud, her hot tired eyes turning for relief to the soft guipure-edged tussore curtain screening the lower part of the window, “what kind of hat she really wants and then look at the few most like it and perhaps have one altered?...” “It’s so awfully silly not to have a plan. She’ll go on simply for ever.” But the soft curtain running so evenly along its smooth clean brass rod was restful, and plan or no plan the trouble would presently come to an end and there would be no discomforts to face when it was over--no vulgar bun shops, no struggling on to a penny ’bus with your ride perhaps spoiled by a dreadful neighbour, but Regent Street in the bright sun, a hansom, a smart obliging driver with a buttonhole, skimming along to tea somewhere, the first-class journey home, the carriage at the station, the green commons.