“Miss Hatter?” the lady asked in a musical butcommanding voice.

“Yes,” said Sophie. The man looked more upset thanever. Perhaps the lady was his mother.

“I hear you sell the most heavenly hats,” said thelady. “Show me.”

Sophie did not trust herself to answer in her present mood. Shewent and got out hats. None of them were in this lady’s class,but she could feel the man’s eyes following her and that madeher uncomfortable. The sooner that lady discovered the hats were allwrong for her, the sooner this odd pair would go. She followedFanny’s advice and got out the wrongest first.

The lady began rejecting hats instantly. “Dimples,”she said to the pink bonnet, and “Youth” to thecaterpillar-green one. To the one of twinkles and veils she said,“Mysterious allure. How very obvious. What else haveyou?”

Sophie got out the modish black-and-white, which was the only hateven remotely likely to interest this lady.

The lady looked at it with contempt. “This one doesn’tdo anything for anybody. You’re wasting my time, MissHatter.”

“Only because you came in and asked for hats” Sophiesaid. “This is only a small shop in a small town, Madam. Whydid you—” Behind the lady, the man gasped and seemed to betrying to signal warningly. “—bother to come in?” Sophiefinished, wondering what was going on.

“I always bother when someone tries to set themselves upagainst the Witch of the Waste,” said the lady.“I’ve heard of you, Miss Hatter, and I don’t carefor your competition or your attitude. I came to put a stop to you.There.” She spread out her hand in a flinging motion towardsSophie’s face.

“You mean you’re the Witch of the Waste?” Sophiequavered. Her voice seemed to have gone strange with fear andastonishment.

“I am,” said the lady. “And let that teach youto meddle with things that belong to me.”

“I don’t think I did. There must be somemistake,” Sophie croaked. The man was now staring at her inutter horror, though she could not see why.

“No mistake, Miss Hatter,” said the Witch.“Come, Gaston.” She turned and swept to the shop door.While the man was humbly opening it for her, she turned back toSophie. “By the way, you won’t be able to tell anyoneyou’re under a spell,” she said. The shop door tolledlike a funeral bell as she left.

Sophie put her hands to her face, wondering what the man hadstared at. She felt soft, leathery wrinkles. She looked at her hands.They were wrinkled too, and skinny, with large veins in the back andknuckles like knobs. She pulled her gray skirt against her legs andlooked down at skinny, decrepit ankles and feet which had made hershoes all knobbly. They were the legs of someone about ninety andthey seemed to be real.

Sophie got herself to the mirror, and found she had to hobble. Theface in the mirror was quite calm, because it was what she expectedto see. It was the face of a gaunt old woman, withered and brownish,surrounded by wispy white hair. Her own eyes, yellow and watery,stared out at her, looking rather tragic.

“Don’t worry, old thing,” Sophie said to theface. “You look quite healthy. Besides, this is much more likeyou really are.”

She thought about her situation, quite calmly. Everything seemedto have gone calm and remote. She was not even particularly angrywith the Witch of the Waste.

“Well, of course I shall have to do for her when I get thechance,” she told herself, “but meanwhile, if Lettie andMartha can stand being one another, I can stand being like this. ButI can’t stay here. Fanny would have a fit. Let’s see.This gray dress is quite suitable, but I shall need my shawl and somefood.”

She hobbled over to the shop door and carefully put up the CLOSEDnotice. Her joints creaked as she moved. She had to walk bowed andslow. But she was relieved to discover that she was quite a hale oldwoman. She did not feel weak or ill, just stiff. She hobbled tocollect her shawl, and wrapped it over her head and shoulders, as oldwomen did. Then she shuffled through into the house, where shecollected her purse with a few coins in it and a parcel of bread andcheese. She let herself out of the house, carefully hiding the key inthe usual place, and hobbled away down the street, surprised at howcalm she still felt.

She did wonder if she should say goodbye to Martha. But she didnot like the idea of Martha not knowing her. It was best just to go.Sophie decided she would write to both her sisters when she gotwherever she was going, and shuffled on, though the field where theFair had been, over the bridge, and on into the country lanes beyond.It was a warm spring day. Sophie discovered that being a crone didnot stop her from enjoying the sight and smell of May in thehedgerows, though her sight was a little blurred. Her back began toache. She hobbled sturdily enough, but she needed a stick. Shesearched the hedges as she went for a loose stake of some kind.

Evidently, her eyes were not as good as they had been. She thoughtshe saw a stick, a mile or so on, but when she hauled on it, itproved to be the bottom end of an old scarecrow someone had throwninto the hedge. Sophie heaved the thing upright. It had a witheredturnip for a face. Sophie found she had some fellow feeling for it.Instead of pulling it to pieces and taking the stick, she stuck itbetween two branches of the hedge, so that it stood looming rakishlyabove the may, with the tattered sleeves on its stick arms flutteringover the hedge.

“There,” she said, and her crackled old voicesurprised her into giving a cracked old cackle of laughter.“Neither of us are up to much, are we, my friend? Maybeyou’ll get back to your field if I leave you where people cansee you.” She set off up the lane again, but a thought struckher and she turned back. “Now if I wasn’t doomed tofailure because of my position in the family,” she told thescarecrow, “you could come to life and offer me help in makingmy fortune. But I wish you luck anyway.”

She cackled again as she walked on. Perhaps she was a little mad,but old women often were.

She found a stick an hour or so later when she sat down on thebank to rest and eat her bread and cheese. There were noises in thehedge behind her: little strangled squeakings, followed by heavingsthat shook may petals off the hedge. Sophie crawled on her bony kneesto peer past leaves and flowers and thorns into the inside of thehedge, and discovered a thin gray dog in there. It was hopelesslytrapped by a stout stick which had somehow got twisted into a ropethat was tied around its neck. The stick had wedged itself betweentwo branches on the hedge so that the dog could barely move. Itrolled its eyes wildly at Sophie’s peering face.

As a girl, Sophie was scared of all dogs. Even as an old woman,she was quite alarmed by the two rows of white fangs in thecreature’s open jaws. But she said to herself, “The way Iam now, it’s scarcely worth worrying about,” and felt inher sewing pocket for her scissors. She reached into the hedge withthe scissors and sawed away at the rope around the dog’sneck.

The dog was very wild. It flinched away from her and growled. ButSophie sawed bravely on. “You’ll starve or throttle todeath, my friend,” she told the dog in her cracked old voice,“unless you let me cut you loose. In fact, I think someone hastried to throttle you already. Maybe that accounts for yourwildness.” The rope had been tied quite tightly around thedog’s neck and the stick had been twisted viciously into it. Ittook a lot of sawing before the rope parted and the dog was able todrag itself out from under the stick.

“Would you like some bread and cheese?” Sophie askedit then. But the dog growled at her, forced its way out through theopposite side of the hedge, and slunk away. “There’sgratitude for you!” Sophie said, rubbing her prickled arms.“But you left me a gift in spite of yourself.” She pulledthe stick that had trapped the dog out of the hedge and found it wasa proper walking stick, well trimmed and tipped with iron. Sophiefinished her bread and cheese and set off walking again. The lanebecame steeper and steeper and she found the stick a great help. Itwas also something to talk to. Sophie thumped along with a will,chatting to her stick. After all, old people often talk tothemselves.