r to live with, or to be near, her sister. With
this thought in mind, she tried to make the acquaintance of teachers in
the school who lived in Hartley and she soon became rather intimate
with one of them.

It was while visiting with this teacher that Kate spoke of attending
Normal again in an effort to prepare herself still better for the work
of the coming year. Her new friend advised against it. She said the
course would be only the same thing over again, with so little change
or advancement, that the trip was not worth the time and money it would
cost. She proposed that Kate go to Lake Chautauqua and take the
teachers' course, where all spare time could be put in attending
lectures, and concerts, and studying the recently devised methods of
education. Kate went from her to Nancy Ellen and Robert, determined at
heart to go.

She was pleased when they strongly advised her to, and offered to help
her get ready. Aside from having paid Agatha, and for her board, Kate
had spent almost nothing on herself. She figured the probable expenses
of the trip for a month, what it would cost her to live until school
began again, if she were forced to go to Walden, and then spent all her
remaining funds on the prettiest clothing she had ever owned. Each of
the sisters knew how to buy carefully; then the added advantage of
being able to cut and make their own clothes, made money go twice as
far as where a dressmaker had to be employed. When everything they had
planned was purchased, neatly made, and packed in a trunk, into which
Nancy Ellen slipped some of her prettiest belongings, Kate made a trip
to a milliner's shop to purchase her first real hat.

She had decided on a big, wide-brimmed Leghorn, far from cheap. While
she was trying the effect of flowers and ribbon on it, the wily
milliner slipped up and with the hat on Kate's golden crown, looped in
front a bow of wide black velvet ribbon and drooped over the brim a
long, exquisitely curling ostrich plume. Kate had one good view of
herself, before she turned her back on the temptation.

"You look lovely in that," said the milliner. "Don't you like it?"

"I certainly do," said Kate. "I look the best in that hat, with the
black velvet and the plume, I ever did, but there's no use to look
twice, I can't afford it."

"Oh, but it is very reasonable! We haven't a finer hat in the store,
nor a better plume," said the milliner.

She slowly waved it in all its glory bef