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 sink in, but it seemed to make no impression until she looked up at Nancy Ellen’s very feet and said:  “Well, how do you like it?”

“Good gracious!” cried Nancy Ellen.  “I thought I was having a stylish caller.  I didn’t know you!  Why, I never saw you walk that way before.”

“You wouldn’t expect me to plod along as if I were plowing, with a thing like this on my head, would you?”

“I wouldn’t expect you to have a thing like that on your head; but since you have, I don’t mind telling you that you are stunning in it,” said Nancy Ellen.

“Better and better!” laughed Kate, sitting down on the step.  “The milliner said it was a stunning hat.”

“The goose!” said Nancy Ellen.  “You become that hat, Kate, quite as much as the hat becomes you.”