Quaint Characters I Have Known

Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 42, 2 May 1930, Page 24

Quaint Characters I Have Known

"GREEN HAT ANNIE" [JTTLE Miss Annie Black, or "Green Hat Annie" as she was more generally known, was a familiar figure in our little township. For years, as far back as any of we younger folk could remember, she had never been known to wear anything but a green hat. The style and the shape would change with the passing of the years, but never the colour. Be it a sailor, a panama, a crinoline, or a felt, the colour was always the same: It was a particularly vivid shade of green, the real emerald isle, and poor little Miss Annie, with her sallow skin and weak blue eyes, looked more drab and insipid than. ever beneath her coronet of green. I often wondered about her and her queer preference, and then one day she told me. Fifteen years before, when she was a young girl of twenty, she had had an admirer, one, Patrick Day, who had paid her marked attention. His -work in the district terminated, however, and he had to seek employment elsewhere. On the day of his departure, Miss Annie had, in a reckless moment, spent all her small savings on a new hat, a green one. Patrick hailed it with delight. "Sure, an’ it’s the foine hat, indeed," he had told her, "the real Irish green an’ all. An’ when I come back for ye, will ye be still a’wearing the green hat for me?" She had promised him, happily, that She would, and ever since, although fifteen long years had passed by, she had kept her promise. "I know it doesn’t suit me now, altogether," she told me, a little bleakly, "but if he comes back, I couldn’t bear to have him disappointed." I told her she looked just lovely, and gave her a special hug, and she went away a little comforted. And then one day I met her, and to my amazement she was wearing a black hat. She must have sensed my surprise, for almost her first words were, "I suppose you notice my hat. Yes, I can wear a black one now, with an easy conscience, I have heard of Pat at last. He’s married to a Maori woman up north-been married ever since he left here. Oh well-’ She sighed a little, then br'ghtened, "Anyway it’s a relief to give up the green hats.

I won’t ever have to wear one of them again.’"’ She went away, and I think her eyes were brighter and her step lighter because her weary waiting Was now. ended.-"Oh Mack."