The Peachbasket Hat
No more popular fad has ever struck the feminine fancy than the peachbasket hat. This is a creation of headgear that for size outstrips anything yet designed by the disordered mind of the modiste. As a "skypiece" it is a "skyscraper," and in decoration it looks like a combination horticultural and food exhibition. Nevertheless, this mammoth "lid" was seized onto by the feminine world with the avidity of a boy for his first baseball suit. It is only natural that our friend, Mrs. Jones, should experience this obsession, and what woe it preambled! The Jones family are seated at breakfast. Mr. Jones is reading the morning paper. An account of a kidnapping by gypsies engages his attention, and he is filled with horror at the anticipation of the possible abduction of his young hopeful, a baby one year old. He tries to impress Mrs. J., but she is fascinated by the millinery "ads." The situation for Jones becomes more tense when on going outside he sees a couple of the odious gypsies with a child. Mrs. Jones takes herself off to buy a peachbasket, leaving baby in charge of the nurse, who, being of a romantic nature, enlists the services of the gypsies to tell her fortune. Mrs. Jones returns and almost catches the nursemaid, who is quite beside herself at her near discovery. Mrs. Jones places the huge box containing the hat on the table, while the nurse, placing the baby on the floor, assists in extricating the hat from its crate. Putting on the hat, Mrs. J. goes into the next room, followed by the maid, to view the effect in the mirror. .Mr. Jones now arrives, and his first thought is for baby; he cares naught for the peachbasket hat. Baby is nowhere to be seen. The nurse, in her excitement, does not remember where she placed it. Through the house they rush fruitlessly; out on the road and on after the disappearing gypsies, who are overtaken only to find that the baby the woman carries is not a Jones. The clouds of despair o'ershadow the couple in their dining-room, when suddenly the hat box on the floor is seen to move. There, under the hollow cube of pasteboard, is found baby Jones, the box having been blown by a gust of wind off the table over the child.
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