own, of course, and an occasional
hat for a girl friend. After her sisters had married Sophy found herself
in possession of a rather bewildering amount of spare time. The hat
trade grew so that sometimes there were six rather botchy little
bonnets all done up in yellow paper pyramids with a pin at the top,
awaiting their future wearers. After her mother's death Sophy still
stayed on in the old house. She took a course in millinery in Milwaukee,
came home, stuck up a home-made sign in the parlour window (the untidy
cucumber vines came down), and began her hat-making in earnest. In five
years she had opened a shop on a side street near Elm; had painted the
old house, installed new plumbing, built a warty stucco porch, and
transformed the weedy, grass-tangled yard into an orderly stretch of
green lawn and bright flower-beds. In ten years she was in Elm Street,
and the Chippewa _Eagle_ ran a half column twice a year describing her
spring and fall openings. On these occasions Aunt Sophy, in black satin,
and marcel wave, and her most relentless corsets was, in all the
superficial things, not a pleat, or fold, or line, or wave behind her
city colleagues. She had all the catch phrases:

"This is awfully good this year."

"Here's a sweet thing. A Mornet model.... Well, but my dear, it's the
style--the line--you're paying for, not the material."

"I've got the very thing for you. I had you in mind when I bought it.
Now don't say you can't wear henna. Wait till you see it on."

When she stood behind you as you sat, uncrowned and expectant before the
mirror, she would poise the hat four inches above your head, holding it
in the tips of her fingers, a precious, fragile thing. Your fascinated
eyes were held by it, and your breath as well. Then down it descended,
slowly, slowly. A quick pressure. Her fingers firm against your temples.
A little sigh of relieved suspense.

"That's wonderful on you!... You don't! Oh, my dear! But that's because
you're not used to it. You know how you said, for years, you had to have
a brim, and couldn't possibly wear a turban, with your nose, until I
proved to you that if the head-size was only big ... Well, perhaps this
needs just a lit-tle lift here. Ju-u-ust a nip. There! That does it."

And that did it. Not that Sophy Decker ever tried to sell you a hat
against your judgment, taste, or will. She was too wise a psychologist
and too shrewd a business woman for that. She preferred that you go out