1: in which Sophie talks
to hats
In the land
of Ingary, where such
things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is
quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three. Everyone knows you are the
one who will fail first, and worst, if the three of you set out to seek your
fortunes.
Sophie Hatter was the eldest of three sisters. She was not even the
child of a poor woodcutter, which might have given her some chance of success.
Her parents were well to do and kept a ladies’ hat shop in the prosperous town
of Market Chipping.
True, her own mother died when Sophie was just two years old and her sister
Lettie was one year old, and their father married his youngest shop assistant,
a pretty blonde girl called Fanny. Fanny shortly gave birth to the third
sister, Martha. This ought to have made Sophie and Lettie into Ugly Sisters,
but in fact all three girls grew up very pretty indeed, though Lettie was the
one everyone said was most beautiful. Fanny treated all three girls with the
same kindness and did not favor Martha in the least.
Mr. Hatter was proud of his three daughters and sent them all to the
best school in town. Sophie was the most studious. She read a great deal, and
very soon realized how little chance she had of an interesting future. It was a
disappointment to her, but she was still happy enough, looking after her
sisters and grooming Martha to seek her fortune when the time came. Since Fanny
was always busy in the shop, Sophie was the one who looked after the younger
two. There was a certain amount of screaming and hair-pulling between those
younger two. Lettie was by no means resigned to being the one who, next to
Sophie, was bound to be the least successful.
“It’s not fair!” Lettie would
shout. “Why should Martha have the best of it just because she was born the
youngest? I shall marry a prince, so there!”
To which Martha always retorted that she
would end up disgustingly rich without having to marry anybody.
Then Sophie would have to drag them apart and mend their clothes. She
was very deft with her needle. As time went on, she made clothes for her
sisters too. There was one deep rose outfit she made for Lettie, the May Day
before this story really starts, which Fanny said looked as if it had come from
the most expensive shop in Kingsbury.
About this time everyone began talking of the Witch of the Waste again.
It was said that the Witch had threatened the life of the King’s daughter and


treating their learners like kings and queens, and you should be very happy
there, as well as learning a useful trade. Mrs.Cesari’s a good customer and a
good friend, and she’s agreed to squeeze you in as a favor.”
Lettie laughed in a way that showed she was not at all pleased. “Well,
thank you,” she said. “Isn’t it lucky that I like cooking?”
Fanny looked relieved. Lettie could be awkwardly strong-minded at times.
“Now Martha,” she said. “I know you’re full young to go out and work, so I’ve
thought around for something that would give you a long, quiet apprenticeship
and go on being useful to you whatever you decide to do after that. You know my
old school friend Annabel Fairfax?”
Martha, who was slender and fair, fixed her big
gray eyes on Fanny almost as strong-mindedly as Lettie. “You mean the one who
talks such a lot,” she said. “Isn’t she a witch?”
“Yes, with a lovely house and clients all over the Folding Valley,”
Fanny said eagerly. “She’s a good woman, Martha. She’ll introduce you to grand
people she knows in Kingsbury. You’ll be all set up in life when she’s done
with you.”
“She’s a nice lady,” Martha conceded. “All right.”
Sophie, listening, felt that Fanny had worked
everything out just as it should be. Lettie, as the second daughter, was never
likely to come to much, so Fanny had put her where she might meet a handsome
young apprentice and live happily ever after. Martha, who was bound to strike
out and make her fortune, would have witchcraft and rich friends to help her.
As for Sophie herself, Sophie had no doubt what was coming. It did not surprise
her when Fanny said, “Now, Sophie dear, it seems only right and just that you
should inherit the hat shop when I retire, being the eldest as you are. So I’ve
decided to take you on as an apprentice myself, to give you a chance to learn
the trade. How do you feel about that?”
Sophie could hardly say that she simple felt resigned to the hat trade. She
thanked Fanny gratefully.
“So that’s settled then!” Fanny said.
The next day Sophie helped Martha pack her clothes in a box, and the
morning after that they all saw her off on the carrier’s cart, looking small
and upright and nervous. For the way to Upper Folding, where Mrs. Fairfax
lived, lay over the hills past Wizard Howl’s moving castle. Martha was
understandably scared.
“ She’ll be all right,” said Lettie. Lettie refused all help with the
packing. When the carrier’s cart was out of sight, Lettie crammed all her
possessions into a pillow case and paid the neighbor’s bootboy sixpence to


wheel it in a wheelbarrow to Cesari’s in Market Square. Lettie marched behind the
wheelbarrow looking much more cheerful than Sophie expected. Indeed. She had
the air of shaking the dust of the hat shop off her feet.
The bootboy brought back a scribbled note from Lettie, saying she had
put her things in the girls’ dormitory and Cesari’s seemed great fun. A week
later the carrier brought a letter from Martha to say that Martha had arrived
safely and that Mrs. Fairfax was “a great dear and used honey with everything.
She keeps bees.” That was all Sophie heard of her sisters for quite a while
because she started her own apprenticeship the day Martha and Lettie left.
Sophie of course knew the hat trade quite well already. Since she was a
tiny child she had run in and out of the big workshed across the yard where the
hats were damped and molded on blocks, and flowers and fruit and other
trimmings were made from wax and silk. She knew the people who worked there.
Most of them had been there when her father was a boy. She knew Bessie, the
only remaining shop assistant. She knew the customers who bought the hats and
the man who drove the cart which fetched raw straw hats in from the country to
be shaped on the blocks in the shed. She knew the other suppliers and how you
made felt for winter hats. There was not really much that Fanny could teach
her, except perhaps the best way to get a customer to buy a hat.
“You lead up to the right hat, love,” Fanny said. “Show them the ones
that won’t quite do first, so they know the difference as soon as they put the
right one on.”
In fact, Sophie did not sell hats very much. After a day or so observing
in the workshed, and another day going round the clothier and the silk
merchant’s with Fanny, Fanny set her to trimming hats. Sophie sat in a small
alcove at the back of the shop, sewing roses to bonnets and veiling to velours,
lining all of them with silk and arranging wax fruit and ribbons stylishly on
the outsides. She was good at it. She quite liked doing it. But she felt so
isolated and a little dull. The workshop people were too old to be much fun
and, besides, they treated her as someone apart who was going to inherit the
business someday. Bessie treated her the same way. Bessie’s only talk anyway
was about the farmer she was going to marry the week after May Day. Sophie
rather envied Fanny, who could bustle off to bargain with the silk merchant
whenever she wanted.
The most interesting thing was the talk from the customers. Nobody can
buy a hat without gossiping. Sophie sat in her alcove and stitched and heard
that the Mayor never would eat green vegetables, and that Wizard Howl’s castle
had moved round to the cliffs again, really that man, whisper, whisper,
whisper…. The voices always dropped low when they talked of Wizard Howl, but
Sophie gathered that he had caught a girl down the valley last month. “Bluebeard!”


said the whispers, and then became voices again to say that Jane Farrier was a
perfect disgrace the way she did her hair. That
was one who would never attract even Wizard Howl, let alone a respectable
man. Then there would be a fleeting, fearful whisper about the Witch of the
Waste. Sophie began to feel that Wizard Howl and the Witch of the Waste should
get together.
“They seem to be made for one another. Someone ought to arrange a match,”
she remarked to the hat she was trimming at that moment.
But by the end of the month the gossip in the shop was suddenly all
about Lettie. Cesari’s, it seemed, was packed with gentlemen from morning to
night, each one buying quantities of cakes and demanding to be served by
Lettie. She had ten proposals of marriage, ranging in quality from the Mayor’s
son to the lad who swept the streets, and she had refused them all, saying she
was too young to make up her mind yet.
“I call that sensible of her,” Sophie said to the bonnet she was
pleating silk into.
Fanny was pleased with this news. “I knew she’d be all right!” she said
happily. It occurred to Sophie that Fanny was glad Lettie was no longer around.
“Lettie’s bad for custom,” she told the bonnet, pleating away at the
mushroom-colored silk. “She would make even you look glamorous, you dowdy old
thing. Other ladies look at Lettie and despair.”
Sophie talked to hats more and more as weeks went by. There was no one
else much to talk to. Fanny was out bargaining, or trying to whip up custom,
much of the day, and Bessie was busy serving and telling everyone her wedding
plans. Sophie got into the habit of putting each hat on the stand as she
finished it, where it sat almost looking like a head without a body, and
pausing while she told the hat what the body under it ought to be like. She
flattered the hats a bit, because you should flatter customers.
“You have mysterious allure,” she told one that
was all veiling with hidden twinkles. To a wide, creamy hat with roses under
the brim, she said, “You are going to have to marry money!” and to a
caterpillar-green straw with a curly green feather she said, “You are young as
a spring leaf.” She told pink bonnets they had dimpled charm and smart hats
trimmed with velvet that they were witty. She told the mushroom-pleated bonnet,
“You have a heart of gold and someone in a high position will see it and fall
in love with you.” This was because she was sorry for that particular bonnet.
It looked so fussy and plain.
Jane Farrier came into the shop next day and bought it. Her hair did
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 she had chosen that
bonnet. But everyone seemed to be buying hats and bonnets around then. Maybe it


was Fanny’s sales talk or maybe it was spring coming on, but the hat trade was
definitely picking up. Fanny began to say, a little guiltily, “I think I
shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to get Martha and Lettie placed out. At
this rate we might have managed.”
There was so much custom as April drew on towards May Day that Sophie
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 between customers, and every
evening she took them next door to the house, where she worked by lamplight far
into the night in order to have hats to sell the next day. Caterpillar-green
hats like the one the Mayor’s wife had were much called for, and so were pink
bonnets. Then, the week before May Day, someone came in and asked for one with
mushroom pleats like the one Jane Farrier had been wearing when she ran off
with the Count of Catterack.
That night, as she sewed, Sophie admitted to herself that her life was
rather dull. Instead of talking to the hats, she tried each one on as she
finished it and looked in the mirror. This was a mistake. The staid gray dress
did not suit Sophie, particularly when her eyes were red-rimmed with sewing,
and, since her hair was a reddish straw color, neither did caterpillar-green
nor pink. The one with the mushroom pleats simply made her look dreary. “Like
an old maid!” said Sophie. Not that she wanted to race off with counts, like
Jane Farrier, or even fancied half the town offering her marriage, like Lettie.
But she wanted to do something-she was not sure what- that had a bit more
interest to it than simply trimming hats. She thought she would find time next
day to go and talk to Lettie.
But she did not go. Either she could not find the time, or she could not
find the energy, or it seemed a great distance to Market Square, or she
remembered that on her own she was in danger from Wizard Howl- anyway, every
day it seemed more difficult to go and see her sister. It was very odd. Sophie
had always thought she was nearly as strong-minded as Lettie. Now she was
finding that there were some things she could only do when there were no
excuses left. “This is absurd!” Sophie said. “Market Square is only two streets away.
If I run-” And she swore to herself she would go round to Cesari’s when the hat
shop was closed for May Day.
Meanwhile a new piece of gossip came into the shop. The King had
quarreled with his own brother, Prince Justin, it was said, and the Prince had
gone into exile. Nobody quite knew the reason for the quarrel, but the Prince
had actually come through Market Chipping in disguise a couple of months back,
and nobody had known. The Count of Catterack had been sent by the King to look
for the Prince, when he happened to meet Jane Farrier instead. Sophie listened
and felt sad. Interesting things did seem to happen, but always to somebody
else. Still, it would be nice to see Lettie.


specimen too, with a bony, sophisticated face-really quite old, well into his
twenties- and elaborate blonde hair. His sleeves trailed longer than any in the
Square, all scalloped edges and silver insets. “Oh, no thank you, if you
please, sir,” Sophie stammered. “I- I’m on my way to see my sister.”
“Then by all means do so,” laughed this advanced young man. “Who am I to
keep a pretty lady from her sister? Would you like me to go with you, since you
seem so scared?”
He meant it kindly, which made Sophie more ashamed than ever. “No. No
thank you, sir!” she gasped and fled away past him. He wore perfume too. The
smell of hyacinths followed her as she ran. What a courtly person! Sophie
thought, as she pushed her way between the little tables outside Cesari’s.
The tables were packed. Inside was packed and as noisy as the Square.
Sophie located Lettie among the line of assistants at the counter because of
the group of evident farmer’ sons leaning their elbows on it to shout remarks
to her. Lettie, prettier than ever and perhaps a little thinner, was putting
cakes into bags as fast as she could go, giving each bag a deft little twist
and looking back under her own elbow with a smile and an answer for each bag
she twisted. There was a great deal of laughter. Sophie had to fight her way
through to the counter.
Lettie saw her. She looked shaken for a moment. Then her eyes and her
smile widened and she shouted, “Sophie!”
“Can I talk to you?” Sophie yelled. “Somewhere,” she shouted, a little
helplessly, as a large well-dressed elbow jostled her back from the counter.
“Just a moment!” Lettie screamed back. She turned to the girl next to
her and whispered. The girl nodded, grinned, and came to take Lettie’s place.
“You’ll have to have me instead,” she said to the crowd. “Who’s next?”
“But I want to talk to you, Lettie!” one of the farmers’ sons yelled.
“Talk to Carrie,” Lettie said. “I want to talk to my sister.” Nobody
really seemed to mind. They jostled Sophie along to the end of the counter
where Lettie held up a flap and beckoned, and told her not to keep Lettie all
day. When Sophie had edged through the flap, Lettie seized her wrist and
dragged her into the back of the shop, to a room surrounded by rack upon wooden
rack, each one filled with rows of cakes. Lettie pulled forward two stools. “Sit
down,” she said. She looked in the nearest rack, in an absent-minded way, and
handed Sophie a cream cake out of it. “You may need this,” she said.
Sophie sank onto the stool, breathing the rich smell of cake and feeling
a little tearful. “Oh, Lettie!” she said. “I am so glad to see you!”
“Yes, and I’m glad you’re sitting down,” said Lettie. “You see, I’m not
Lettie, I’m Martha.”

第一章完，度爷审核真久

0.0 原来是小说啊

______________Chapter 2---------------------------------------
2:in which Sophie is compelled to seek her fortune.
“What?” Sophie stared at the girl on the stool opposite her. She looked
just like Lettie. She was wearing Lettie’s second-best blue dress, a wonderful
blue that suited her perfectly. She had Lettie’s dark hair and blue eyes.
“I am Martha,” said her sister. “Who did you catch cutting up Lettie’s
silk drawers? I never told Lettie
that. Did you?”
“No,” said Sophie, quite stunned.
She could see it was Martha now. There was Martha’s tilt to Lettie’s head, and
Martha’s way of clasping her hands round her knees with her thumbs twiddling. “Why?”
“I’ve been dreading you coming to see me,” Martha said, “because I knew
I’d have to tell you. It’s a relief now I have. Promise you won’t tell anyone.
I know you won’t tell if you promise. You’re so honorable.”
“I promise,” Sophie said. “But why? How?”
“Lettie and I arranged it,” Martha said, twiddling her thumbs, “because
Lettie wanted to learn witchcraft and I didn’t. Lettie’s got brains, and she
wants a future where she can use them-only try telling that to Mother! Mother’s
too jealous of Lettie even to admit she has brains!”
Sophie could not believe Fanny was like that, but she let it pass. “But
what about you?”
“Eat your cake,” said Martha. “It’s good. Oh, yes, I can be clever too.
It only took me two weeks at Mrs. Fairfax’s to find the spell we’re using. I
got up at night and read her books secretly, and it was easy really. Then I
asked if I could visit my family and Mrs. Fairfax said yes. She’s a dear. She
thought I was homesick. So I took the spell and came here, and Lettie went back
to Mrs. Fairfax pretending to be me. The difficult part was the first week,
when I didn’t know all the things I was supposed to know. It was awful. But I
discovered that people like me-they do, you know, if you like them-and then it
was all right. And Mrs. Fairfax hasn’t kicked Lettie out, so I suppose she
managed too.”
Sophie chomped at cake she was not really tasting. “But what made you
want to do this?”
Martha rocked on her stool, grinning all over Lettie’s face, twirling
her thumbs in a happy pink whirl. “I want to get married and have ten children.”
“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 Fanny that way, Martha. She is your mother.”
“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 stunning schoolgirl, didn’t you?”
“Caterpillar green. I trimmed it,” said Sophie.
“And the bonnet Jane Farrier was wearing when she met that nobleman,”
Martha swept on. “You’re a genius with hats and clothes, and Mother knows it!
You sealed your fate when you made Lettie that outfit last May Day. Now you earn
the money while she goes off gadding-”
“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, Fanny’s entitled to some pleasure after all her hard work
bringing us up,” Sophie said. “I suppose I’ll inherit the shop.”
“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, grinning in the most
friendly and flirtatious way. “The new baking’s just up. Tell them.” His head,
curly and somewhat floury, disappeared again. Sophie thought he looked a nice
lad. She longed to ask if he was the one Martha really liked, but she did not
get a chance. Martha sprang up in a hurry, still talking.
“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 Fanny was the
kind of woman Martha said.
There was a lot of time for thinking, because Bessie duly left to be
married and Sophie was mostly alone in the shop. Fanny did seem to be out a
lot, gadding or not, and trade was slack after May Day. After three days Sophie
plucked up enough courage to ask Fanny, “Shouldn’t I be earning a wage?”
“Of course, my love, with all you do!” Fanny answered warmly, fixing on
a rose-trimmed hat in front of the shop mirror. “We’ll see about it as soon as I’ve
done the accounts this evening.” Then she went out and did not come back until
Sophie had shut the shop and taken that day’s hats through to the house to
trim.
Sophie at first felt mean to have listened to Martha, but when Fanny did
not mention a wage, either that evening or any time later that week, Sophie
began to think that Martha had been right.
“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 bonnet by
its ribbons. “Look at this!” the young lady shrieked. “You told me this was the
same as the bonnet Jane Farrier was wearing when she met the Count. And you
lied. Nothing has happened to me at all!”
“I’m not surprised,” Sophie said, before she had caught up with herself.
“If you’re fool enough to wear that bonnet with a face like that, you wouldn’t
have the wit to spot the King himself if he came a begging- if he hadn’t turned
to stone first just at the sight of you.”
The customer glared. Then she threw the bonnet at Sophie and stormed out
of the shop. Sophie carefully crammed the bonnet into the wastebasket, panting
rather. The rule was : Lose your temper, lose a customer. She had just proven
that rule. It troubled her to realize how very enjoyable it had been.
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.
“Miss Hatter?” the lady asked in a musical but commanding voice.
“Yes,” said Sophie. The man looked more upset than ever. Perhaps the
lady was his mother.
“I hear you sell the most heavenly hats,” said
the lady. “Show me.”
Sophie did not trust herself to answer in her present mood. She went 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 made her uncomfortable. The sooner that lady
discovered the hats were all wrong for her, the sooner this odd pair would go.
She followed Fanny’s advice and got out the wrongest first.


I can stand being like this. But I 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
some food.”
She hobbled over to the shop door and carefully put up the CLOSED
notice. Her joints creaked as she moved. She had to walk bowed and slow. But
she was relieved to discover that she was quite a hale old woman. She did not
feel weak or ill, just stiff. She hobbled to collect her shawl, and wrapped it
over her head and shoulders, as old women did. Then she shuffled through into
the house, where she collected her purse with a few coins in it and a parcel or
bread and cheese. She let herself out of the house, carefully hiding the key in
the usual place, and hobbled away down the street, surprised at how calm she
still felt.
She did wonder if she should say goodbye to Martha. But she did not 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 got wherever she was going, and
shuffled on, though the field where the Fair had been, over the bridge, and on
into the country lanes beyond. It was a warm spring day. Sophie discovered that
being a crone did not stop her from enjoying the sight and smell of may in the
hedgerows, though her sight was a little blurred. Her back began to ache. She
hobbled sturdily enough, but she needed a stick. She searched the hedges as she
went for a loose stake of some kind.
Evidently, her eyes were not as good as they had been. She thought she
saw a stick, a mile or so on, but when she hauled on it, it proved to be the
bottom end of an old scarecrow someone had thrown into the hedge. Sophie heaved
the thing upright. It had a withered turnip for a face. Sophie found she had
some fellow feeling for it. Instead of pulling it to pieces and taking the
stick, she stuck it between two branches of the hedge, so that it stood looming
rakishly above the may, with the tattered sleeves on its stick arms fluttering
over the hedge.
“There,” she said, and her crackled old voice surprised her into giving
a cracked old cackle of laughter. “Neither of us are up to much, are we, my
friend? Maybe you’ll get back to your field if I leave you where people can see
you.” She set off up the lane again, but a thought struck her and she turned
back. “Now if I wasn’t doomed to failure because of my position in the family,”
she told the scarecrow, “you could come to life and offer me help in making my
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 the bank to
rest and eat her bread and cheese. There were noises in the hedge behind her:
little strangled squeakings, followed by heavings that shook may petals off the
hedge. Sophie crawled on her bony knees to peer past leaves and flowers and


thorns into the inside of the hedge, and discovered a thin gray dog in there.
It was hopelessly trapped by a stout stick which had somehow got twisted into a
rope that was tied around its neck. The stick had wedged itself between two
branches on the hedge so that the dog could barely move. It rolled 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 the creature’s open jaws. But
she said to herself, “The way I am now, it’s scarcely worth worrying about,”
and felt in her sewing pocket for her scissors. She reached into the hedge with
the scissors and sawed away at the rope around the dog’s neck.
The dog was very wild. It flinched away from her and growled. But Sophie
sawed bravely on. “You’ll starve or throttle to death, my friend,” she told the
dog in her cracked old voice, “unless you let me cut you loose. In fact, I
think someone has tried to throttle you already. Maybe that accounts for your
wildness.” The rope had been tied quite tightly around the dog’s neck and the
stick had been twisted viciously into it. It took a lot of sawing before the
rope parted and the dog was able to drag itself out from under the stick.
“Would you like some bread and cheese?” Sophie
asked it then. But the dog growled at her, forced its way out through the
opposite side of the hedge, and slunk away. “There’s gratitude for you!” Sophie
said, rubbing her prickled arms. “But you left me a gift in spite of yourself.”
She pulled the stick that had trapped the dog out of the hedge and found it was
a proper walking stick, well trimmed and tipped with iron. Sophie finished her
bread and cheese and set off walking again. The lane became steeper and steeper
and she found the stick a great help. It was also something to talk to. Sophie
thumped along with a will, chatting to her stick. After all, old people often
talk to themselves.
“There’s two encounters,” she said, “and not a scrap of magical
gratitude from either. Still, you’re a good stick. I’ m not grumbling. But I’m
surely due to have a third encounter, magical or not. In fact, I insist on one.
I wonder what it will be.”
The third encounter came towards the end of the afternoon when Sophie
had worked her way quite high into the hills. A countryman came whistling down
the lane toward her. A shepherd, Sophie thought, going home after seeing to his
sheep. He was a well-set-up young fellow of forty or so. “Gracious!” Sophie
said to herself. “This morning I’d have seen him as an old man. How one’s point
of view does alter!”
When the shepherd saw Sophie mumbling to herself, he moved rather
carefully over to the other side of the lane and called out with great