opening time.”
I mumbled something that meant, “Let me sleep,” but then I realized what she’d said, where we were going, what today had in store. It was the thirtieth of June, and I, Garnet Grace Richardson, was about to become a career girl. I leapt out of bed.
Mrs. Harrington set a bowl of porridge on the table in the sitting room with a plunk. She must’ve asked the kitchen to send it up so we wouldn’t have to wait for breakfast in the dining room. She was already dressed in her albino peacock outfit—her favorite togs—and a look of impatience had already settled onto her face. Clearly she was finished with her momentary lapse into generosity and indulgence. I hadn’t expected it to last.
I made quick work of my breakfast and then hurried to dress, pulling on clean underclothes and stockings and a cornflower blue linen summer suit that looked nice with my eyes. I twisted my hair back under a smart blue hat that almost matched my dress and slid my feet into white shoes with low heels.
I checked my appearance in the washroom mirror. Mousy hair, freckled skin, lanky body. Just a girl trying to look like a woman. I sighed. At least I shared no family resemblance with the Harringtons. I had no round build or multiple chins. I had no pointy face or sharp-angled limbs. Even dressed in their finery, the pair of them made me feel positively beautiful. I’d actually never been so content with my plain looks and my simple clothing, girlishness aside.
But what would my new employer think?
“Come, Garnet. It’s nearly eight,” Mrs. Harrington grumbled from the sitting room.
I nodded to my reflection. “You’ll have to do,” I said in my mother’s voice, and then I turned to leave.
“Is there a library in Excelsior?” I asked Mrs. Harrington as we bustled out the door and down to the lobby. I wasn’t sure I’d spelled the hummingbird’s Latin name correctly and I needed a bird book to check. In fact, I needed several bird books, I promptly decided. As many as a library might have. I kept one reference book at my window seat at home, but it had been years since I’d indulged in a stack of bird books from the library. Without Mother around to redirect me, I could linger over forestry records and biology journals to my heart’s delight—but I needed a library.
“In the Sampson House, I believe. I’ll point it out and you can stop on your way home this afternoon if you like.” She was used to getting exactly what she wanted, and she was so confident in our plan that she assumed I’d be working today. My heart raced at the thought and my hands trembled a bit. My fingers slipped into my pocket and found my scissors, stopping to caress the familiar metal.
“Personally I never bother with books,” Mrs. Harrington was saying. “I prefer the magazines and the newspapers, and that’s enough reading for me. Hannah doesn’t even care for those.” She whipped her fan out as the bellboy opened the front door, her gesture ending the conversation, and then descended the stairs with an air of royalty.
Main Street smelled like baking bread. The town was warmer than the lakefront, but not hot yet, and everything looked fresh in the morning light. We passed the drugstore, the grocer’s, the beauty shop, and the shoe store on our way to Miss Maple’s hat shop. Finally, we arrived at a brick storefront with a pink, flowery, painted sign and a cascade of frilly hats in the window. It was such a tiny place that I’d overlooked it completely on my first excursion into town.
The chimes on the door jingled cheerfully to announce our presence, and a tired but genteel-looking woman called hello over her shoulder as she arranged hats with netting veils on a tall rack near the counter.
The shop was in chaotic disarray, as Mrs. Harrington had said, but the hats were beautiful, like flocks of tropical birds roosting on wire trees. I set off down a row of wide-brimmed, flowery hats while Mrs. Harrington approached the petite woman and struck up a conversation. I peered at them through the hat jungle.
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