morning.

The other two were the Miss Fennells, the two maiden aunts whose existence I had first heard of in that far-away restaurant which seems to me now at the furthermost end of the earth.

When Bellwattle touched my arm and said—"The Miss Fennells"—I felt the pulses quicken which evenly had been beating in me. The whole of that story then came back as though I had just heard it. The sound of the violins crept into my ears. I could hear the clatter of plates, see the faces of those two, that man and that woman, as they sat together drinking their coffee. His barking laugh shouted suddenly at me out of the past; but last of all, Clarissa, in her gown of canary-colored satin.

And then I knew how, until that moment, it had never truly been real. I had dreamed it all until then; it had only been a story. But now these two prim figures, in costumes too extravagant to describe, the mere sight of them had made the story come true, had turned the dream into reality, and I began a-wondering why I had ever set out about the business at all.

I think Bellwattle must have been watching me, for suddenly she said—

"Would you rather we didn't stop and talk to them?"

How do women know these things? She had taken it from my mind before my thoughts had found it. In another instant, had she not spoken, it would have been a conscious idea. I should have preferred not to have been introduced to them that morning. Then she put her question and, human nature being as it is, I said, "Oh no—by all means, let us stop. I want to meet them."

Whereupon in the next moment there was made the second stage in my erratic journey. I was introduced in all solemnity to Miss Mary and Miss Teresa Fennell.

It is a distressing fact, when you come to describe a woman, to find that you know nothing whatever of the character of those garments which go to make her what she is. A hat or a bonnet mean but little—but little, unless you can trim them. The bonnet then which was worn by Miss Mary, the hat by Miss Teresa, must remain without description, for to trim them is absolutely beyond me. I can only tell of the little thought that occurred to my mind as I noticed them—the thought that the bonnet of Miss Mary was a gentle concession of years to the hat of Miss Teresa. There is hope left in a hat, even if it only exists in the mind of the head that wears it. God alone can tell what hopes lie buried beneath a bonnet; no 

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