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Sophie chomped at cake she was not really tasting. “But what made you want to do this?”
Martha rocked on her stool, gri
“You’re not quite old enough!” said Sophie.
“Not quite,” Martha agreed. “But you can see I’ve got to start quite soon in order to fit ten children in. And this way gives me time to wait and see if the person I want likes me for being me. The spell’s going to wear off gradually, and I shall get more and more like myself, you see.”
Sophie was so astonished that she finished her cake without noticing what kind it had been. “Why ten children?”
“Because that’s how many I want,” Said Martha.
“I never knew!”
“Well, it wasn’t much good going on about it when you were so busy backing Mother up about me making my fortune,” Martha said. “You thought Mother meant it. I did too, until Father died and I saw she was just trying to get rid of us— putting Lettie where she was bound to meet a lot of men and get married off, and sending me as far away as she could! I was so angry I thought, Why not? And I spoke to Lettie and she was just as angry and we fixed it up. We’re fine now. But we both feel bad about you. You’re far too clever and nice to be stuck in that shop for the rest of your life. We talked about it, but we couldn’t see what to do.”
“I’m all right,” Sophie protested. “Just a bit dull.”
“All right?” Martha exclaimed. “Yes, you prove you’re all right by not coming near here for months, and then turning up in a frightful gray dress and shawl, looking as if even I scare you! What’s Mother been doing to you?”
“Nothing,” Sophie said uncomfortably. “We’ve been rather busy. You shouldn’t talk about Fa
“Yes, and I’m enough like her to understand her,” Martha retorted. “That’s why she sent me so far away, or tried to. Mother knows you don’t have to be unkind to someone in order to exploit them. She knows how dutiful you are. She knows you have this thing about being a failure because you’re only the eldest. She’s managed you perfectly and got you slaving away for her. I bet she doesn’t pay you.”
“I’m still an apprentice,” Sophie protested.
“So am I, but I get a wage. The Cesaris know I’m worth it,” said Martha. “That hat shop is making a mint these days, and all because of you! You made that green hat that makes the Mayor’s wife look like a stu
“Caterpillar green. I trimmed it,” said Sophie.
“And the bo
“She’s out doing the buying,” Sophie said.
“Buying!” Martha cried. Her thumbs whirled. “That takes her half a morning. I’ve seen her, Sophie, and heard the talk. She’s off in a hired carriage and new clothes on your earnings, visiting all the mansions down the valley! They’re saying she’s going to buy that big place down at Vale End and set up in style. And where are you?”
“Well, Fa
“What a fate!” Martha exclaimed. “Listen—”
But at that moment two empty cake racks were pulled away at the other end of the room, and an apprentice stuck his head through from the back somewhere “Thought I heard your voice, Lettie,” he said, gri
“I must get the girls to carry all these through to the shop.” She said. “Help me with the end of this one.” She dragged out the nearest rack and Sophie helped her hump it past the door into the roaring, busy shop. “You must do something about yourself, Sophie,” Martha panted as they went. “Lettie kept saying she didn’t know what would happen to you when we weren’t around to give you some self-respect. She was right to be worried.”
In the shop Mrs. Cesari seized the rack from them in both massive arms, yelling instructions, and a line of people rushed away past Martha to fetch more. Sophie yelled goodbye and slipped away in the bustle. It did not seem right to take up more of Martha’s time. Besides, she wanted to be alone to think. She ran home. There were fireworks now, going up from the field by the river where the Fair was, competing with the blue bangs from Howl’s castle. Sophie felt more like an invalid than ever.
She thought and thought, and most of the following week, and all that happened was that she became confused and discontented. Things just did not seem to be the way she thought they were. She was amazed at Lettie and Martha. She had misunderstood them for years. But she could not believe Fa
There was a lot of time for thinking, because Bessie duly left to be married and Sophie was mostly alone in the shop. Fa
“Of course, my love, with all you do!” Fa
Sophie at first felt mean to have listened to Martha, but when Fa
“Maybe I am being exploited,” she told a hat she was trimming with red silk and a bunch of wax cherries, “but someone has to do this or there will be no hats at all to sell.” She finished that hat and started on a stark black-and-white one, very modish, and a quite new thought came to her. “Does it matter if there are no hats to sell?” she asked it. She looked round at the assembled hats, on stands or waiting in a heap to be trimmed. “What good are you all?” she asked them. “You certainly aren’t doing me a scrap of good.”
And she was within an ace of leaving the house and settling out to seek her fortune, until she remembered she was the eldest and there was no point. She took up the hat again, sighing.
She was still discontented, alone in the shop next morning, when a very plain young woman customer stormed in, whirling a pleated mushroom bo
“I’m not surprised,” Sophie said, before she had caught up with herself. “If you’re fool enough to wear that bo
The customer glared. Then she threw the bo
Sophie had no time to recover. There was the sound of wheels and horse hoofs and a carriage darkened the window. The shop bell clanged and the grandest customer she had ever seen sailed in, with a sable wrap drooping from her elbows and diamonds winking all over her dense black dress. Sophie’s eyes went to the lady’s wide hat first— real ostrich plume dyed to reflect the pinks and greens and blues winking in the diamonds and yet still look black. This was a wealthy hat. The lady’s face was carefully beautiful. The chestnut brown hair made her seem young, but…Sophie’s eyes took in the young man who followed the lady in, a slightly formless-faced person with reddish hair, quite well dressed, but pale and obviously upset. He stared at Sophie with a kind of beseeching horror. He was clearly younger than the lady. Sophie was puzzled.