"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?"