ore Kate's beauty-hungry eyes.
Kate turned so she could not see it.

"Please excuse one question. Are you teaching in Walden this winter?"
asked the milliner.

"Yes," said Kate. "I have signed the contract for that school."

"Then charge the hat and pay for it in September. I'd rather wait for
my money than see you fail to spend the summer under that plume. It
really is lovely against your gold hair."

"'Get thee behind me, Satan,'" quoted Kate. "No. I never had anything
charged, and never expect to. Please have the black velvet put on and
let me try it with the bows set and sewed."

"All right," said the milliner, "but I'm sorry."

She was so sorry that she carried the plume to the work room, and when
she walked up behind Kate, who sat waiting before the mirror, and
carefully set the hat on her head, at exactly the right angle, the long
plume crept down one side and drooped across the girl's shoulder.

"I will reduce it a dollar more," she said, "and send the bill to you
at Walden the last week of September."

Kate moved her head from side to side, lifted and dropped her chin.
Then she turned to the milliner.

"You should be killed!" she said.

The woman reached for a hat box.

"No, I shouldn't!" she said. "Waiting that long, I'll not make much on
the hat, but I'll make a good friend who will come again, and bring her
friends. What is your name, please?"

Kate took one look at herself--smooth pink cheeks, gray eyes, gold
hair, the sweeping wide brim, the trailing plume.

"Miss Katherine Eleanor Bates," she said. "Bates Corners, Hartley,
Indiana. Please call my carriage?"

The milliner laughed heartily. "That's the spirit of '76," she
commended. "I'd be willing to wager something worth while that this
very hat brings you the carriage before fall, if you show yourself in
it in the right place. It's a perfectly stunning hat. Shall I send it,
or will you wear it?"

Kate looked in the mirror again. "You may put a fresh blue band on the
sailor I was wearing, and send that to Dr. Gray's when it is finished,"
she said. "And put in a fancy bow, for my throat, of the same velvet
as the hat, please. I'll surely pay you the last week of September.
And if you can think up an equally becoming hat for winter----"

"You just bet I can, young lady," said the milliner to herself as Kate
walked down the street.

From afar, Kate saw Nancy Ellen on the veranda, so she walked slowly to
let the effect s