are much better than they should be, and the
ladies who will stand for a turned ribbon, and a revived feather, and
are just about what they may be expected to be, all came in and spent
their money like the princesses that they were. And Mrs. Herdicker
figured in going over her stock just which hat she could sell to Mrs.
Nesbit as a model hat from the Paris exhibit at the World's Fair, and
which one she could put on Mrs. Fenn as a New York sample, and as she
built her castles the loss of the $75 to Miss Mauling had its
compensating returns, and she smiled and thought that just a year ago
she had offered that same World's Fair Model to the wife of the newly
elected State Senator and she must put on a new bunch of flowers and
bend down the brim.

The Dexters were sitting by the stove in the living-room with Amos
Adams; they had come down to the lonely little home to prepare a good
dinner for the men. "A year ago to-day," said the minister to the group
as he put down the newspaper, "Kenyon got his new fiddle."

"The year has brought me something--I tell you," Jasper said. "I've
bought a horse with my money I earned as page in the State Senate and
I've got a milk route, and have all the milk in the neighborhood to
distribute. That's what the year has done for me."

"Well," reflected the minister, "we've got the mission church in South
Harvey on a paying basis, and the pipe organ in the home church paid
for--that's some comfort. And they do say," his eyes twinkled as he
looked at his wife, "that the committee is about to settle all the choir
troubles. That's pretty good for a year."

"Another year," sighed Amos Adams, and the wind blew through the gaunt
branches of the cottonwood trees in the yard, and far down in the valley
came the moaning as of many waters, and the wind played its harmonies in
the woodlot. The old man repeated the words: "Another year," and asked
himself how many more years he would have to wait and listen to the
sighing of the moaning waters that washed around the world. And Kenyon
Adams, lying flushed and tousled and tired upon a couch near by, heard
the waters in his dreams and they made such music that his thin, little
face moved in an eyrie smile.

"Mag," said a pale, nervous girl with dead, sad eyes as she looked
around at the new furniture in the new house, and avoided the rim of
soft light that came from the electric under the red shade, "did you
think I was cheeky to ask you all those questio