has given and given and in return has received nothing. Sophy Decker had
never used the word inhibition in her life. I doubt if she knew what it
meant. When you are busy copying French models for the fall trade you
have little time or taste for Freud. She only knew (without in the least
knowing she knew) that in giving of her goods, of her affections, of her
time, of her energy, she found a certain relief. Her own people would
have been shocked if you had told them that there was about this old
maid aunt something rather splendidly Rabelaisian. Without being at all
what is known as a masculine woman she had, somehow, acquired the man's
viewpoint, his shrewd value sense. She ate a good deal, and enjoyed her
food. She did not care for those queer little stories that married women
sometimes tell, with narrowed eyes, but she was strangely tolerant of
what is known as sin. So simple and direct she was that you wondered how
she prospered in a line so subtle as the millinery business.

You might have got a fairly true characterization of Sophy Decker from
one of fifty people: from a dapper salesman in a New York or Chicago
wholesale millinery house; from Otis Cowan, cashier of the First
National Bank of Chippewa; from Julia Gold, her head milliner and
trimmer; from almost any one, in fact, except a member of her own
family. They knew her least of all, as is often true of one's own
people. Her three married sisters--Grace in Seattle, Ella in Chicago,
and Flora in Chippewa--regarded her with a rather affectionate
disapproval from the snug safety of their own conjugal ingle-nooks.

"I don't know. There's something--well--common about Sophy," Flora
confided to Ella. Flora, on shopping bent and Sophy, seeking hats, had
made the five-hour run from Chippewa to Chicago together. "She talks to
everybody. You should have heard her with the porter on our train.
Chums! And when the conductor took our tickets it was a social occasion.