She’d never gone sour, at that; never, apparently, wasted any hours in repining.  She’d made, after a fashion, a career of hats; had risen on them, to a position of acknowledged social consequence.  There must have been disquieting echoes in her, rhythms that answered to the pulsation of an ampler life.  She never could hope to get out into it, she undoubtedly knew, but she took every opportunity she could get for a glimpse at it.  Rose’s incursion into her life must have been a godsend to her.

She probably pieced together a pretty good picture of Rose, too.  But she did this piecing in silence and kept her surmises to herself.

In a material way, her adoption of Rose was an immense success.  Centropolis, when it learned the news, was thunder-struck.  For a matter of hours, one might say, the town held its breath.  Then it began to talk.  The women began asking questions:  What did the actress look like?  The men offered lame descriptions.  Rose had been seen, apparently, that morning on Main Street, by the entire male population, but their descriptions weren’t satisfactory.  Curiosity must be assuaged!  But Rose never went into the stores on Main Street; never patronized the picture-show, and even had these glimpses been afforded, they’d have been pretty unsatisfactory.  There was only one real way of discovering what the creature was like; discovering for yourself, that is—­and hearsay evidence is notoriously unreliable; that was to buy a hat of Lizzie Gibbons.

The first daring adventurer was Agatha Stebbins.  Agatha found, you will remember, the hat Rose had already designed for her.  And, as Miss Gibbons caustically disclaimed the authorship of it ("I’d never have made you up a thing like that, you can believe!”) and as Miss Stebbins, after a moment’s hesitation, decided she adored it, another inducement, though perhaps a superfluous one, was offered for visits to the atelier.

“Of course she isn’t what you could call genteel,” Miss Stebbins explained, parading her acquisition, “and she’s never had any advantages.  And as to her moral character, I suppose the less said the better.  Lizzie Gibbons can settle that question with her own conscience.  But when it comes to hats she’s got more gimp in her little finger than Lizzie’s got in both hands.  Dear, no!  She’s not what I call pretty.  Not with a mouth like that.  Of course the men ...”

So Miss Gibbons’ spring business was distended to unrecognizable proportions.  Rose fitted on hats in the show-room during business hours and took a mischievous delight in the assumption of the intangible manner of a perfect shop-assistant; in saying “Yes, madam,” and “No, madam,” and “Will you try this, madam?” with a perfection of politeness that baffled the most determined curiosity.  Miss Gibbons got as much fun out of it as she did.

The hours in the workroom were pleasant ones, too, with their perpetual reminder that the creative power that had deserted her last January, had come back.  The little problems were ludicrously easy, of course but they stimulated a pleasant sense of reserve power.