Sophy’s hat-making, in the beginning, had been done at home.  She had always made her sisters’ hats, and her own, of course, and an occasional hat for a girl friend.  After her sisters had married Sophy found herself in possession of a rather bewildering amount of spare time.  The hat trade grew so that sometimes there were six rather botchy little bonnets all done up in yellow paper pyramids with a pin at the top, awaiting their future wearers.  After her mother’s death Sophy still stayed on in the old house.  She took a course in millinery in Milwaukee, came home, stuck up a home-made sign in the parlour window (the untidy cucumber vines came down), and began her hat-making in earnest.  In five years she had opened a shop on a side street near Elm; had painted the old house, installed new plumbing, built a warty stucco porch, and transformed the weedy, grass-tangled yard into an orderly stretch of green lawn and bright flower-beds.  In ten years she was in Elm Street, and the Chippewa Eagle ran a half column twice a year describing her spring and fall openings.  On these occasions Aunt Sophy, in black satin, and marcel wave, and her most relentless corsets was, in all the superficial things, not a pleat, or fold, or line, or wave behind her city colleagues.  She had all the catch phrases: 

“This is awfully good this year.”

“Here’s a sweet thing.  A Mornet model....  Well, but my dear, it’s the style—­the line—­you’re paying for, not the material.”

“I’ve got the very thing for you.  I had you in mind when I bought it.  Now don’t say you can’t wear henna.  Wait till you see it on.”

When she stood behind you as you sat, uncrowned and expectant before the mirror, she would poise the hat four inches above your head, holding it in the tips of her fingers, a precious, fragile thing.  Your fascinated eyes were held by it, and your breath as well.  Then down it descended, slowly, slowly.  A quick pressure.  Her fingers firm against your temples.  A little sigh of relieved suspense.

“That’s wonderful on you!...  You don’t!  Oh, my dear!  But that’s because you’re not used to it.  You know how you said, for years, you had to have a brim, and couldn’t possibly wear a turban, with your nose, until I proved to you that if the head-size was only big ...  Well, perhaps this needs just a lit-tle lift here.  Ju-u-ust a nip.  There!  That does it.”

And that did it.  Not that Sophy Decker ever tried to sell you a hat against your judgment, taste, or will.  She was too wise a psychologist and too shrewd a business woman for that.  She preferred that you go out of her shop hatless rather than with an unbecoming hat.  But whether you bought or not you took with you out of Sophy Decker’s shop something more precious than any hatbox ever contained.  Just to hear her admonishing a customer, her good-natured face all aglow: 

“My dear, always put on your hat before you get into your dress.  I do.  You can get your arms above your head, and set it right.  I put on my hat and veil as soon’s I get my hair combed.”