And Mrs. Herdicker hadn't heard of Miss Mauling for some time, and sitting in her little office back of the millinery store, sorting over her old bills, she came to a bill badly dog-eared with Miss Mauling's name on it. The bill called for something like $75 and the last payment on it had been made nearly half a year ago. So she looked at that bill and added ten dollars to Mrs. Van Dorn's bill for the last hat she bought, and did what she could to resign herself to the injustices of a cruel world. But it had been a good year for Mrs. Herdicker. New wells in new districts had come gushing gas and oil into Harvey in great geysers and the work on the new smelter was progressing, and the men in the mines had been kept steadily at work; for Harvey coal was the best in the Missouri Valley. So the ladies who are no better than they should be and the ladies who are much better than they should be, and the ladies who will stand for a turned ribbon, and a revived feather, and are just about what they may be expected to be, all came in and spent their money like the princesses that they were. And Mrs. Herdicker figured in going over her stock just which hat she could sell to Mrs. Nesbit as a model hat from the Paris exhibit at the World's Fair, and which one she could put on Mrs. Fenn as a New York sample, and as she built her castles the loss of the $75 to Miss Mauling had its compensating returns, and she smiled and thought that just a year ago she had offered that same World's Fair Model to the wife of the newly elected State Senator and she must put on a new bunch of flowers and bend down the brim. The Dexters were sitting by the stove in the living-room with Amos Adams; they had come down to the lonely little home to prepare a good dinner for the men. "A year ago to-day," said the minister to the group as he put down the newspaper, "Kenyon got his new fiddle." "The year has brought me something--I tell you," Jasper said. "I've bought a horse with my money I earned as page in the State Senate and I've got a milk route, and have all the milk in the neighborhood to distribute. That's what the year has done for me." "Well," reflected the minister, "we've got the mission church in South Harvey on a paying basis, and the pipe organ in the home church paid for--that's some comfort. And they do say," his eyes twinkled as he looked at his wife, "that the committee is about to settle all the choir troubles. That's pretty good for a year."