s.

"Who? What's that? A hat?"

"Yes. But listen--"

"Let's see it."

Floss whipped it out of its bag, defiantly. "There! But wait a minute!
Let me tell you--"

"How much?"

Floss hesitated just a second. Her wage was nine dollars a week. Then,
"Seven-fifty, trimmed." The hat was one of those tiny, head-hugging
absurdities that only the Flosses can wear.

"Trimmed is right!" jeered Al, from the doorway.

Rose, thin-lipped with disapproval, turned to her stove again.

"Well, but I had to have it. I'm going to the theatre to-night. And
guess who with! Henry Selz!"

Henry Selz was the unromantic name of the commonplace man over whose
fifteen-year-old letters Rose had glowed and dreamed an hour before. It
was a name that had become mythical in that household--to all but one.
Rose heard it spoken now with a sense of unreality. She smiled a little
uncertainly, and went on stirring the flour thickening for the gravy.
But she was dimly aware that something inside her had suspended action
for a moment, during which moment she felt strangely light and
disembodied, and that directly afterward the thing began to work madly,
so that there was a choked feeling in her chest and a hot pounding in
her head.

"What's the joke?" she said, stirring the gravy in the pan.

"Joke nothing! Honest to God! I was standing back of the counter at
about ten. The rush hadn't really begun yet. Glove trade usually starts
late. I was standing there kidding Herb, the stock boy, when down the
aisle comes a man in a big hat, like you see in the western pictures,
hair a little grey at the temples, and everything, just like a movie
actor. I said to Herb, 'Is it real?' I hadn't got the words out of my
mouth when the fellow sees me, stands stock still in the middle of the
aisle with his mouth open and his eyes sticking out. 'Register
surprise,' I said to Herb, and looked around for the camera. And that
minute he took two jumps over to where I was standing, grabbed my hands
and says, 'Rose! Rose!' kind of choky. 'Not by about twenty years,' I
said. 'I'm Floss, Rose's sister. Let go my hands!'"

Rose--a transfigured Rose, glowing, trembling, radiant--repeated,
vibrantly, "You said, 'I'm Floss, Rose's sister. Let go my hands!'
And--?"

"He looked kind of stunned, for just a minute. His face was a scream,
honestly. Then he said, 'But of course. Fifteen years. But I had always
thought of her as just the same.' And he kind of laughed, ashamed, lik