A HAT TRAGEDY.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 55, 11 April 1914, Page 6

A HAT TRAGEDY.

' (Specially written, for THE SUN.)

Spring was in the air. The anuual crop of poets that the season produces proclaimed as much with considerable wealth of detail and unnecessarily involved language, and the trees in the Park appeared in sumptuously new raiment. A feeling that I must emulate the latter took complete possession of me. I thought I'd commence by purchasing or otherwise acquiring the new Spring Hat. The state of the financial market, as applied to myself, showed that the expenditure was wholly unjustified, but the only effect that this revelation had on me was to make mo long more ardently than ever for the top-piece of glor}\ I contemplated my last season's hat with a feeling almost of nausea. Try as I would, I could not realise that the feeling when I purchased it was identical with what I was at present experiencing.

The purchase of a new hat is a ceremonial that one does not perform alone. So a friend, deeply versed in the lore of fashion, was 'phoned up, and presently we made our way, in the most reckless fashion, to one of the biggest and most fashionable hat establishments. "It is just as well to be killed for a sheep as a lamb," I remarked to Betty, as the lift swung dizzily upwards, "and if I am to be immured in a debtors' prison, I may as well go there for a real Parisian model as for a clumsily-copied imitation." Betty agreed fervently. She says that no consciousness of virtue or right-doing can give her the serenity of spirit and [ happy outlook on life that is bestowed by. smart clothes, and that if she wore anything dowdy you would think she was hiding a guilty secret of the darkest brown dye, she would fee] ajul look so hang-doggy. "And who," she enquires pathetically, when she wants to justify some fresh piece of extravagance, "who Avants

These little draped wraps promise to be very much worn this winter, not only for evening, but also for day occasions. Our illustration, which might be carried out in face-cloth or velvet, with relief of brocaded material, is made with a diagonal closing,,.and elbow sleeve ending in a deep cuff. Material required, 21 yards 42-inch material.

to look as if they had that moment made away with their own dear grandmother?" which may r±b£ be very grammatical, but is -certainly quite a convincing argument, especially the way Betty puts it. The lift deposited us on the third floor, and we emerged into that holy of holies, the show-room, where hats bloomed marvellously on every stand, and sprouted from 'boxes beneath the Counters. I felt I could sit down and write the most gorgeous blank verse about them, and I instinctively felt in my peggy-bag for the wad of copy-paper without which I am not genuine. Minutely I worshipped beside a stand that held aloft a dream-creation of whipped cream and sunset, that being as near as I could get to the actual ingredients. Betty tweaked my arm warningly. "Don't gloat so openly," she asked, "or they'll charge you double. You must adopt a critical and rather carping attitude to get the best results." "It would be sacrillege," I babbled heedlessly, my

eyes still glued on the "whipped cream, when "Something I can show you?" cooed a sweet, cool, superior voice in my ear, and a tall being, got _up to look something like a mermaid, something like a

f goddess, something like a lady of fashion, and something hike a something which it is impossible to define, much Jess put into words, towered over me. I wish th.ey wouldn't grow tneir sales-ladies so tall; their plentitude of inches has such a terrifying effect on me. I gazed on her woodenly —poesy vanished before the very commercial atmosphere that she somehow introduced. I felt an unreasoning resentment towards her. Betty came to the rescue. "My friend would like to see some hats —some of the new spring shapes," she explained in a rather bored fashion, looking down her nose at the sales-lady, and instantly relegating her to her proper place. 'Her superb, but, as she explained afterwards, it all emanated from tha fact that her new spring suit was made by a genius, no less, and her silk stockings were clocked in the fashion just set in Paris. She thanked Heaven in the most pious fashion for having a clothes-sense that enabled her to live up to both.

The sales-lady undulated before us through avenues of hats, finally fetching up before a purple monstrosity which may have been a hat, but looked much more like a Eoyal mourning. She detached it from its stand tenderly. "The very latest," she chanted mendaciously, advancing on me with it. "It would suit you so well"— but Betty came to the rescue. : "I think w T e asked to see the new shapes,' \ she said with sweet but biting emphasis «n the adjective. "Purple, of course, was much worn during last winter, but "

The pause was very eloquent, and it effectually nipped in the bud the sales-lady's laudable attempts to work one of last season's hats off on us. At the same time it raised in her bosom a great respect and a great resentment for Betty., She trailed along in another direction, and although she was quite too much of a perfect lady to sniff openly, we both felt that she did. it mentally, so to speak. Betty sniffed back in the same wav. < -

All the time I was just dying to get back to my first love, but Betty wouldn't hear of it. "Plenty of time," she murmured, "mustn't appear too anxious." Betty is a real genius at shopping; at least I thought so at the time.

A sort of duel ensued between the two of them, with me, the purchaser, as a kind of intermediary. The sales-lady would endeavour to sell me a hat, and Betty would refuse to let me take it. Some. of thei» were really beautiful, and fonly for the remembrance of the sunset and cream creation I might have taken sides with the former. As it was, I remained neutral, and let them fight it out between themselves, with the consequence that Betty always won. At last she allowed the sales-lady to pilot us along to our starting-point. "I really think," she whispered to me as we followed her sinuous windings, "I really think the one you took such a fancy to at first is the nicest of all that we've seen. That veiled effect, when you just get a glimpse of the underlying colour, is so chic and so " •

Her fashionable jargon stopped suddenly, and her eyes widened tragically. She gave a funny little gasp and „ sat down suddenly. "Oh, Alice dear, I'm so sorry,'' she gulped" inconsequently. "Where?— Why? What are you talking about?" I beseeehed her, but she could only shake her head and point, with wordless remorse, at the stand where the hat of dreams had been.

Had been —there lay the tragedy. For another sales-lady was just putting it, with much reverence, into a delivery box, while a stout female, wearing a palpable transformation, stood by, regarding it with the proud eye of proprietorship, while she waited for her change. It was lost to me forever and ever and ever, amen. Th« next time I set out to buy a new hat I'm going alone. i S.I.R.