The cloud had vanished from Elsie’s face, and all was serene again.  Her mother seemed somewhat ashamed of her little girl’s bad manners, as was shown by her apologetic air when she observed to the trimmer that Elsie was as queer a child as ever lived.  When she set her mind on a thing, it was so hard for her to give it up.

They waited for the new hat to be trimmed, and on its completion Elsie seized it and put it on her head, much against her mother’s wishes, who preferred not to have it displayed until the next day at Sunday-school; but the insistence of the child was so vehement that again the mother thought it wise to yield, and Elsie tripped off in triumph to the other end of the store with the black wings showing out stiffly on each side of her head.  The mother remarked, with forced playfulness, as she watched her, “Elsie’s a g-r-e-a-t girl, I tell you.  You can’t fool her.”

[Illustration:  The Baltimore Oriole.]

As the trimmer returned the boxes to the shelves, I overheard her mutter, “Oh, yes, Elsie is a g-r-e-a-t girl, a perfect little jewel, so well-behaved.  Her polite manners show her careful home training; quite a reflection on her dear mamma.”  But from the peculiar laugh she gave I didn’t believe she really meant it as praise.

When the nights grew longer and the store was closed for the evening, the milliner and her husband usually spent an hour or two in the back room looking over the newspaper which came every day from the city.  The man always turned at once to the wheat reports, and the price of wool, which he read aloud to his wife, though I could see she did not care very much to hear about them; but she hunted first for the fashion notes and the bargains in millinery before she read the other news.  One night while thus engaged she suddenly exclaimed: 

“Here’s something that is bound to hurt trade.”

By trade she meant the millinery business.

“What is it?” her husband inquired, looking over the top of the page he held.

“Why, here’s a lot of women who have been meeting in a convention in Chicago and getting excited and losing their heads, and passing some ridiculous resolutions.”

“What kind of resolutions?” he inquired.

“Oh, they’ve been denouncing the fashion of wearing birds.  They belong to a society called—­called—­something or other, I forget what.  Let me see,” and she ran her eye down the column.  “Oh, yes, here it is.  They are members of the O’Dobbin society, and they got so wrought up on the subject they took the feathers out of their hats right there in the meeting and vowed never to wear bird trimming again.  Well, if such outlandish notions spread, you’ll soon see how it will injure the millinery trade.”

“Pshaw! you needn’t worry.  The protests of a handful of fanatical women can’t do your business any harm,” he answered carelessly, and turned to his paper again.