“ She’ll be all right,” said Lettie. Lettierefused all help with the packing. When the carrier’s cart wasout of sight, Lettie crammed all her possessions into a pillow caseand paid the neighbor’s bootboy sixpence to wheel it in awheelbarrow to Cesari’s in Market Square. Lettie marched behindthe wheelbarrow looking much more cheerful than Sophie expected.Indeed. She had the air of shaking the dust of the hat shop off herfeet.

The bootboy brought back a scribbled note from Lettie, saying shehad put her things in the girls’ dormitory and Cesari’sseemed great fun. A week later the carrier brought a letter fromMartha to say that Martha had arrived safely and that Mrs. Fairfaxwas “a great dear and used honey with everything. She keepsbees.” That was all Sophie heard of her sisters for quite awhile because she started her own apprenticeship the day Martha andLettie left.

Sophie of course knew the hat trade quite well already. Since shewas a tiny child she had run in and out of the big workshed acrossthe yard where the hats were damped and molded on blocks, and flowersand fruit and other trimmings were made from wax and silk. She knewthe people who worked there. Most of them had been there when herfather was a boy. She knew Bessie, the only remaining shop assistant.She knew the customers who bought the hats and the man who drove thecart which fetched raw straw hats in from the country to be shaped onthe blocks in the shed. She knew the other suppliers and how you madefelt for winter hats. There was not really much that Fanny couldteach her, except perhaps the best way to get a customer to buy ahat.

“You lead up to the right hat, love,” Fanny said.“Show them the ones that won’t quite do first, so theyknow the difference as soon as they put the right one on.”

In fact, Sophie did not sell hats very much. After a day or soobserving in the workshed, and another day going round the clothierand the silk merchant’s with Fanny, Fanny set her to trimminghats. Sophie sat in a small alcove at the back of the shop, sewingroses to bonnets and veiling to velours, lining all of them with silkand arranging wax fruit and ribbons stylishly on the outsides. Shewas good at it. She quite liked doing it. But she felt so isolatedand a little dull. The workshop people were too old to be much funand, besides, they treated her as someone apart who was going toinherit the business someday. Bessie treated her the same way.Bessie’s only talk anyway was about the farmer she was going tomarry the week after May Day. Sophie rather envied Fanny, who couldbustle off to bargain with the silk merchant whenever she wanted.

The most interesting thing was the talk from the customers. Nobodycan buy a hat without gossiping. Sophie sat in her alcove andstitched and heard that the Mayor never would eat green vegetables,and that Wizard Howl’s castle had moved round to the cliffsagain, really that man, whisper, whisper, whisper…. The voicesalways dropped low when they talked of Wizard Howl, but Sophiegathered that he had caught a girl down the valley last month.“Bluebeard!” said the whispers, and then became voicesagain to say that Jane Farrier was a perfect disgrace the way she didher hair. That was one who would never attract even WizardHowl, let alone a respectable man. Then there would be a fleeting,fearful whisper about the Witch of the Waste. Sophie began to feelthat Wizard Howl and the Witch of the Waste should get together.

“They seem to be made for one another. Someone ought toarrange a match,” she remarked to the hat she was trimming atthat moment.

But by the end of the month the gossip in the shop was suddenlyall about Lettie. Cesari’s, it seemed, was packed withgentlemen from morning to night, each one buying quantities of cakesand demanding to be served by Lettie. She had ten proposals ofmarriage, ranging in quality from the Mayor’s son to the ladwho swept the streets, and she had refused them all, saying she wastoo young to make up her mind yet.

“I call that sensible of her,” Sophie said to thebonnet she was pleating silk into.

Fanny was pleased with this news. “I knew she’d be allright!” she said happily. It occurred to Sophie that Fanny wasglad Lettie was no longer around.

“Lettie’s bad for custom,” she told the bonnet,pleating away at the mushroom-colored silk. “She would makeeven you look glamorous, you dowdy old thing. Other ladies look atLettie and despair.”

Sophie talked to hats more and more as weeks went by. There was noone else much to talk to. Fanny was out bargaining, or trying to whipup custom, much of the day, and Bessie was busy serving and tellingeveryone her wedding plans. Sophie got into the habit of putting eachhat on the stand as she finished it, where it sat almost looking likea head without a body, and pausing while she told the hat what thebody under it ought to be like. She flattered the hats a bit, becauseyou should flatter customers.

“You have mysterious allure,” she told one that wasall veiling with hidden twinkles. To a wide, creamy hat with rosesunder the brim, she said, “You are going to have to marrymoney!” and to a caterpillar-green straw with a curly greenfeather she said, “You are young as a spring leaf.” Shetold pink bonnets they had dimpled charm and smart hats trimmed withvelvet that they were witty. She told the mushroom-pleated bonnet,“You have a heart of gold and someone in a high position willsee it and fall in love with you.” This was because she wassorry for that particular bonnet. It looked so fussy and plain.

Jane Farrier came into the shop next day and bought it. Her hairdid look a little strange, Sophie thought, peeping out of her alcove,as if Jane had wound it round a row of pokers. It seemed a pity shehad chosen that bonnet. But everyone seemed to be buying hats andbonnets around then. Maybe it was Fanny’s sales talk or maybeit was spring coming on, but the hat trade was definitely picking up.Fanny began to say, a little guiltily, “I think Ishouldn’t have been in such a hurry to get Martha and Lettieplaced out. At this rate we might have managed.”

There was so much custom as April drew on towards May Day thatSophie had to put on a demure gray dress and help in the shop too.But such was the demand that she was hard at trimming hats in betweencustomers, and every evening she took them next door to the house,where she worked by lamplight far into the night in order to havehats to sell the next day. Caterpillar-green hats like the one theMayor’s wife had were much called for, and so were pinkbonnets. Then, the week before May Day, someone came in and asked forone with mushroom pleats like the one Jane Farrier had been wearingwhen she ran off with the Count of Catterack.

That night, as she sewed, Sophie admitted to herself that her lifewas rather dull. Instead of talking to the hats, she tried each oneon as she finished it and looked in the mirror. This was a mistake.The staid gray dress did not suit Sophie, particularly when her eyeswere red-rimmed with sewing, and, since her hair was a reddish strawcolor, neither did caterpillar-green nor pink. The one with themushroom pleats simply made her look dreary. “Like an oldmaid!” said Sophie. Not that she wanted to race off withcounts, like Jane Farrier, or even fancied half the town offering hermarriage, like Lettie. But she wanted to do something—she was notsure what— that had a bit more interest to it than simply trimminghats. She thought she would find time next day to go and talk toLettie.

But she did not go. Either she could not find the time, or shecould not find the energy, or it seemed a great distance to MarketSquare, or she remembered that on her own she was in danger fromWizard Howl— anyway, every day it seemed more difficult to go and seeher sister. It was very odd. Sophie had always thought she was nearlyas strong-minded as Lettie. Now she was finding that there were somethings she could only do when there were no excuses left. “Thisis absurd!” Sophie said. “Market Square is only twostreets away. If I run—” And she swore to herself she would goround to Cesari’s when the hat shop was closed for May Day.