AN EASTER EPISODE
They left the church together and came down the Avenue. The Easter sun gave a more roseate hue to her pink roses and varnished his smoothness. She was chic and picturesque and Parisian. He was tall and polished and altogether correct. They were apparently on the best of terms.
"You see," said the high hat, "I knew you almost at once. Of course, I was a bit bewildered—you were wearing wings last Easter, you remember."
The bonnet sighed.
"I did hope to be taken for a débutante," she said. "It's not kind of you to remind me that this is my second season. I trust I carry this trimming well?"
"That shade of hair suits you excellently," said the hat. "Confidentially, I've been in the world long enough myself to be a competent judge. To be blocked seems only to refresh one's memory."
"You must have met so many bonnets in your time," she murmured, "that you are over-critical"
"Not one I have been taken off to to-day," said the hat, gallantly, "can be compared to you. I admired you very much when we first met last Easter. You have no idea how much I missed you when you—er—retired in the Fall."
"And that odious astrakhan affair took my place,” said the bonnet. "I used to think of your being together—one has so much time to think in a bandbox," she sighed. "I hope she will be moth-eaten before Fall!"
The bonnet nodded at a passing couple. "Pardon me," said the hat, as he was lifted. "A nuisance, isn't it?" he complained. "That's the worst of church. First one is set upside down in the dust under a pew and afterward, on the Avenue, one is kept perpetually moving."
"Hat-pins!" complained the bonnet. "Those are the things I detest. One is tearing my straw now. I can feel it! If this keeps on the cook will be wearing me before August."
"You would prefer an elastic?" suggested the hat.
"Horrors, no!" cried the bonnet. "I would die of mortification. I would rather be torn to piecces!"
"Ah, that's the bonnet of it," observed the hat, loftily.
A voice came from beneath the hat. "Perhaps I shouldn't have spoken here," it said, "but you look so adorable this morning—and you will let me come to-night, and you will tell me?"
The voice fell into a whisper. A timid murmur from beneath the bonnet answered it.
"Ah," said the hat, knowingly, "I fancy I'll hang in your hall this evening."
"It's my doing," said the bonnet, proudly. "When I saw myself in the glass this morning I knew I couldn't be resisted."
Presently the hat sighed. "Here is where we part," he said.
The door opened. For a moment the bonnet and the hat came so close together that the pink roses blushed to red and trembled on their wires.
"Until next Sunday," mourned the bonnet, as the hat went down the steps.
"Until then," said the hat, gallantly, "I will be upon the rack."
As he was borne briskly up the Avenue, he chuckled. "Really, now, I wonder if she saw the joke," he thought. "These bonnets have so small a sense of humor."
