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“It’s Miss Forester, if you don’t mind.”
Leah covertly studied the woman while Ellie explained their mission.
“A skirt for Miz MacAllister?” Miss Forester barked. Her voice sounded tight as a Chinese drumhead.
“Yes,” Leah said. “For me.”
“Take off yer coat, then,” Miss Forester snapped.
Leah slipped off the gray wool garment, revealing her boy’s jeans and plaid shirt.
The older woman’s small eyes narrowed. “Huh. Sure could use some advice.” She pulled a tape measure from her pocket and flicked it around Leah’s waist. “What didja have in mind?”
Leah looked to Ellie for help.
“A plain work skirt, Verena,” the teacher said. “And a shirtwaist.”
“Any lace?”
“Just a bit at the neck, I think. Mrs. MacAllister lives on a—”
“I know right enough where she lives,” Verena declared. “Isn’t like I never heard of Thad MacAllister. Isn’t like I’d forget a man like him. Thad and I are old friends. Good friends.”
Something in the woman’s tone made Leah blanch, but Ellie ignored the dressmaker’s pointed words. “Make the skirt of gray melton cloth, if you have it,” she directed. “And the shirtwaist of…let’s see…percale. Would you have a gray-and-white stripe?”
“Nope.”
“Oh, could it be red-and-white?” Leah blurted. “Red is a very lucky color in China.”
“Ain’t in China now,” Verena muttered. “I have a red striped muslin that’ll do for the likes of you, seein’ as you’re a—”
Ellie jerked her hand away from a bolt of black sateen. “Verena!”
“Ain’t used to Celestials,” Verena mumbled. “They talk funny. Look funny. Dress funny.”
Leah stepped up to the counter. “I am sorry if it offends you, Miss Forester. If you were in China, I believe you would look and sound just as ‘funny’ to the people there.”
Verena glared at her and snapped her jaw shut. Ellie coughed politely. “Could you have the garments ready by Friday?”
“Friday! Well, I dunno. I—”
“Mrs. MacAllister will pick them up on Friday, when she visits the mercantile,” Ellie announced.
“Oh. In that case…I’ve always been happy to see Thad. He’s always been…well, not exactly a stranger.”
The schoolteacher frowned, took Leah’s elbow and firmly steered her out the door. “Let’s have some tea at the hotel, shall we? It may help take the sting out of Verena’s sharp tongue.”
Mute with fury and hurt feelings and questions about Verena Forester she could not articulate, Leah could only nod. They seated themselves at a small table in the hotel dining room and ordered tea.
“What did I do wrong, Ellie?”
“You did nothing wrong. That old maid was rude and insulting.” An odd expression came over Ellie’s face. “I have just realized something. Verena may be a trial, but I shall never again describe any woman as an ‘old maid.’ For more years than I wish to count, I was considered an old maid, too. It was an extremely unhappy time in my life, but it taught me something.”
Leah folded her hands in her lap. “What did it teach you?”
The plump waitress brought a fat china teapot and two cups.
“Thank you, Rita.” Ellie reached for the teapot. “I learned how people see other people. How unthinking folks can be.”
Leah tried to smile. “What will being insulted by the dressmaker teach me?”
Ellie sipped her tea and set the flowered cup back on its saucer. “Verena is a fine seamstress. And perhaps she has what we call a chip on her shoulder. You see, Verena was close to Thad and Hattie. Perhaps what you learned today was how to pet a porcupine?”
Both women laughed. Even Rita, who was unobtrusively listening by the coffee stand, chuckled and twitched her apron. Verena Forester had sewed it, and the mean-tempered dressmaker had insulted her, as well. “It’s good enough for a hired hotel waitress,” she’d said. Rita had been too humiliated to respond.
Now the waitress rubbed her palms together. This new woman in town might prove interesting.
That night, following the instructions in Miss Beecher’s recipe book, Leah dumped the entire pot of boiled beans into a baking dish and added some molasses and the mustard she had purchased at the mercantile.
Her reception by Mr. Ness, the proprietor, had been so unfriendly she’d forgotten all the other items on her list except for the mustard. Mr. Ness had insisted she buy the most expensive brand, “imported from France.” Now she wondered if Thad would even notice.
