Good-Morning Tea

[Rance]

That morning, well before even the Glass Sun had awakened, she admired herself by candlelight against the side of the polished wash-basin. She was a distorted, winnowing oil-stain reflected in the lacquered porcelain. Her sleeping-gown -- her only remaining garment, surrendered to her in pity by the Rememdium -- was lifted, tucked between chin-bottom and collarbone. The fingers of her remaining hand touched the plains of her stomach. Shoulders tightened. Hips jutted. Spine arched backward. She contorted, inhaled, exhaled, twisted, trying to glimpse herself at any new angle she could manage, and--

There.

She touched it first, a firmness suspended on the underside of her abdomen, scarcely there at all lest she applied the faintest pressure. Barely even visible. A hillock. A mystery.

"Hello," she said, like a stiff, dumb puppet whose owner hadn't given her an appropriate word.

* * * *

Dawn threw itself across Myrkentown as a sluggish, gray veil. Fat clouds were poised like crowns around the heads of distant trees. The mud seemed cold underfoot as she wended her her way toward his abode. Still so near to winter as it was, the air was chilled iron and her breath blew out in misty gusts. When she found the gate of his home, she stood so long that she felt the wet soil crawling like an intruder into the heel of her right-hand clog. He had invited her to tea; here, they would drink tea, and she would likely have several sprinkles of cane, and they would forget all about how once she had sewn up his guts and then not long after threatened him with a knife.

They would drink tea, good-morning tea. For a minute she considered turning, fleeing back toward the commons, dragging her sleeping-gown hem and cloak-edges through the mud. Instead, she clipped up the path, looked upon the grand, wide door, lifted her four-fingered hand, and gave a rap, rap.

"Councilor Treadwell," she blurted against the wood. "It's me, Gloria Wynsee. Remember?" To the wooden planks she turned her cheek and lanced her voice against the grain, muffling it. "You -- you said we ought to have tea. If you are awake, if you've stirred, you said we ought to have tea."

[Treadwell]

The visitor to the Treadwell house, with all its bushy garden space and its wide doors and its luxury, does not have to wait too long for an answer. However, that answer is not from Councilor Treadwell himself, but it is from a different fellow, instead.

Thinning white hair up top, a cleanshaven face, a simple black robe with white gloves and a matching white sash around his only modest paunch.

"Good morning, miss," comes the old man's voice; an obviously distinct non-Myrken accent (truthfully, one from Treadwell's native Westenford) wraps the three words in warm refinement. "Councilor Treadwell is still stirring at the moment, rousing himself from his bed."

A slip of a smile.

"He has a little difficulty with such, as you might fancy, perhaps. The Councilor has said that one Miss Wynsee would be coming from town for tea and breakfast, and, if I heard you properly, then you would be she?"

The elderly gentleman takes a couple of steps backward, gently waving Gloria inside.

"I am the Treadwell family's butler, Gregory. The Councilor is, as noted, preparing himself, though he may be ready and waiting in the dining hall by the time we arrive. Or he may not, for that matter. Mrs. Treadwell, the children, and the Councilor's siblings are about their own business in the house, for the moment, so it will simply be the two of you together."

A chuckle as he shuts the door once Gloria is inside.

"Granted, with the staff and the family, I'm sure you'll find this a very busy home. This way, if you will?"

With a hand waved before them up the main hall, Gregory leads the way. Portraits hang on the walls to the sides, the ones to the right being, quite obviously, separate paintings of a red-robed Councilor and his identically crimson-gowned Alice, the two of them taking up just as identical space in their respective sitting room scenes. Opposite is a single painting of a man a few years older than Treadwell but not quite as rotund; he wears black and is seated next to a seemingly undernourished, nearly skeletal woman of similar old age and dark dress.

"The Treadwells, to both sides of you, of course."

The tour, as it is, stops, with Gregory pointing first at the two of "The Councilor, whom you know, and his wife, Alice, mother of most of his children," and then, "The Councilor's older brother, Langley, and sister, Elizia. They live here together. Life is, overall, much simpler that way."

And then, a turn of pointer to the nearest of doors just beyond the third portrait.

"The dining hall is to your left, Miss Wynsee. I trust you will find the table already set for breakfast and for tea, and I trust that Councilor Treadwell will be along very shortly, should you have need to begin your repast before he arrives. He's having to go about a little more slowly than usual: his back still aches from a recent injury, and, well, I must admit he's been a little foolish in not properly caring for it as his doctor commanded."

[Rance]

When Gregory opened the door, the image before him was hardly a Miss at all. She was tall like an overstretched lump of sap and robed in a wrinkled, threadbare shift. Her bonnet was all crumples and bends, framing a face with a complexion as dark as a tarnished penny. Beneath her moth-eaten cloak, she was a mass of disproportion. Her shoulders and hips bore the width of good health and a steadfast diet, but the ankles stuffed in her clogs were nearly as thin as bowstring. An arm missing its hand was lashed in a sling across her chest.

He smiled. So did she. Her teeth were less white, more the color of aged wine-corks.

"I told him that -- that I would visit," she offered. Her accent was heavy, elongating vowels and finding troughs on the downswing of harder consonants. "At his initial invitation, of course. I understand there may be limitations; I'll wait patiently for the Councilor, regardless."

Gregory waved her in. Her wooden heels sang a clamor against the floor. She followed the butler, her attention listing toward the paintings and art that festooned the manor's walls. Langley, he said; Alice, Elizia, he said. Her mind wandered during the voyage through the Treadwell family line -- would she one day have a manor, littered with all the evidence of a well-lived life? Might she one day grant someone the coppers necessary, sit very still, and have herself relieved in dashes of dark paint and swathes of ink for all to see? Would corridors and halls wear portraits of her children, the fruits of her fecundity, and would she be some proud, wrinkled matriarch?

When they reached their destination, her gaze dragged itself from Alice Treadwell's representation toward the handles of the double doors. "I hope I'll never have as many children," she said, stumbling for conversation. "I like stitches. I'm fond of seams. I'm not fit to be a mother."

She plucked her skirt-corner up in the four fingers that remained of her functional hand, dipping into a sloppy courtesy; this was, after all, a place that befit requisite deference. On her thumb gleamed the dull opal of Glenn Burnie's ring, bulging at her knuckle like a rock-hard pustule.

"I'll wait inside for him. Thank you, ser. And I'll remind him of the importance of listening to the wellsmiths. His back ought to be well-tended," Gloria told Gregory--

--then clamped her palm onto the handle to step, as directed, into the dining hall.

[Treadwell]

Gregory nods and bows gently back, allowing Gloria passage.

The dining hall is, as might be expected from its being owned by Councilor Treadwell, a lavish place. The table is much less a mere slab of wood with a cloth and much more an altar of extravagance. Even in this time of food shortages, there is more here than most families might see at a normal meal: plates of bread, cuts of various meats and cheeses, even cooked bacon spread out luxuriously. The ten chairs around the table are wide and cushioned all around, hinting at the plushness of the couch Treadwell had taken to the inn. Two places are already set with plates, utensils, and mugs, a pitcher of juice, another of milk. The promised tea, warm and waiting with sugar nearby for the spooning, sits midway between the two settings. One of the two places is, of course, the far end of the table; the other is that seat's immediate left.

Study and scrutiny might be broken, though, by the off-rhythm plumping of heavy steps: one landing solid and weighty, in time with a wooden clack against the wooden floor, the other coming down with a wheezed whimper of breath from the Councilor as he enters. Purple-robed and yellow-sashed about the middle, Treadwell stops in his entrance, pausing in the door there to breathe, one hand on his cane and the other on his lower back--or, at least, as far as it might reach to such a destination.

"Hullo, mmph mmph!" he squeaks in his usual breathless wheeee. "Good morning, Gloria! Pardon my moving a bit slowly as of late. I'm, hm hm, just a touch hurt."

[Rance]

Never all at once had she seen so much food, except once, when she was nine--

She was usually meant to be naked; that was the expectation of girls before they took their Odos examination, but she -- along with a number of other Jerno children, spanning the range of five cycles to twelve -- was a choirgirl. She wore the mantle of a jerethedral's singer. The uneven cap perched on her head sometimes leaned too far forward over her brow. She stood at attention in the burning Sun and chattered out the low notes of the hymns as, litter by litter, Brothers and Sisters delivered to the stahl his final meal: bounties of davish fruit and roasted voorbear, flagons of boiled jah'zoon urine spiced with sticks of imported sinney-min as they called it. Cured stonebear flank, smoked snout-side, a multitude of dried sand-insects that crunched and popped in the teeth, live or dead per preference.

Food in Myrken Wood was less dire, though its abundance as of late had been lacking. So she stood with her skirt-hem in her hand and hovered over the pitchers of juice and milk. Her short-nailed fingers viced a ribbon of overcooked bacon. Her stomach twisted and rolled with sudden desire. One bite, she took, and then another, until her stomach filled with a stone of guilt.

She placed the bacon back in its clever lattice.

People were starving in Myrken Wood, some thin as parchment balanced perfectly on its edge.

Her attention turned to the syncopated approach of footsteps. When Treadwell entered, she watched him from across the room like an urchin who'd been half-caught in some manner of vice. She wiped her fingertips off on her skirt.

"Councilor," the girl greeted, mustering a smile. Sometimes she couldn't help but smile at him. How many cows were skinned to suit his belts, how many flowers squeezed and crushed to dye so much purple? Whole fields, she imagined, whole bloody fields plucked by the fingers of a hundred men working for hours at a time.

She approached him with her only hand outstretched, palm down, fingers sprawled. An offer of escort.

"You -- you ought to be more careful. Ser Gregory told me about your back. I took a great deal of -- of effort stitching you up; I'd hate for that work to go to waste because you refuse to listen to the wellsmiths about taking the proper care of your body."

Her jibe was pleasant enough, a mask worn to obscure the nervous gleam in her eyes.

"I came here," Gloria said. "I came here like you said."

[Treadwell]

Treadwell giggles at the mention of his butler.

"I hurt it helping Alice out of bed, oh, about two weeks ago, now. I fancy that I'll be fine in a few days, mmph mmph."

The hand is taken, the offer accepted as he plods for the table. His first stop, though, is not his chair.

No.

It is hers.

With a bump of chair against great belly as he achily, awkwardly scoots the chair back, he waggles a pudgy pointer and then pat-pats the palm of that flabby hand against the seat cushion.

"Have yourself a seat, mmph mmph? It's just the two of us, dearie. Alice is abed, the baby in her belly keeping her tired and sleepy right now, hm hm, and the children are busy in their rooms either playing or studying. Langley and Elizia tend not to come bothering when there are other house guests present, mmph, and the staff will come when called."

Another wag of plump finger, this time to a hand bell sitting between the two place settings.

"What would you care for first, hm? I shall serve you, hee hee, this time!"

[Rance]

She paced herself to meet his trundling steps, and when he approached the seat and drew it out, patted it, she clutched the lap of her skirt and perched herself upon the chair. He spoke of his wife; she tilted her head, the dark face a patch of confusion under the bill of her sweat-blackened bonnet.

...the baby in her belly keeping her tired and sleepy right now, he said.

Her mutilated arm rested thoughtfully against the crest of her own stomach. She busied herself by examining the fields of fruit and dairy coloring the table. In her mind they all had distorted little faces: yawning mouths on the grapes; twisted, crying visages splitting the wheels of cheese in twine. Unconsciously, she wondered, Is it the size of a my thumbnail, or perhaps that prune? and Has it its own heartbeat? Does it flinch and move?

"How many months is your lady," the girl absently asked. "Is -- is it natural to be so tired, or are those ill feelings some herald of its malfunction? I'd much prefer not to eat; I've scarcely the taste for anything, Councilor."

His finger was a thick baton. He waved it, playfully admonishing. She turned her cheek.

"People starve. I can't rightly do it, Councilor. Even if -- if my stomach did not turn so much, in good conscience, I couldn't. No offense to your offer intended, of course; it's kind of you." Some partner for breakfast she was. She poked listlessly at the same twist of bacon she'd tasted before. Then, she added: "You must think I'm mad, showing you respect one day, prattling insults at you the next. Sewing your stomach, then waving a knife at you. I'm not right inside my head, Councilor. I know it, and I try to mitigate my own stupidity.

"This time, though, I can't. I can't remove this; I cannot take this back."

Her arm did not shift away from her abdomen.

[Treadwell]

"You're not a bit mad, Gloria. I've seen madness, mmph mmph, lunacy, idiocy, rage brought by greed and disgust. I had my throat slit, oh, at least once from such, mmph mmph. You're none of that."

A warm, gentle, squooshy squeeze of fat arm placed briefly around her shoulders. Then, Treadwell sinks into his chair with a groan, a wheeze, a wince as aching back meets cushion.

"Alice is right at seven months, my dear, mmph mmph. And normal? Natural? Well, yes, to an extent, of course. Pregnancy can be tiresome business, and, well, do remember that she and I are of the same age to the day, hm hm, and close enough to the same weight by all good guesses."

The great, purple-robed tub starts into the breakfast with a smile and a shrug.

"I don't mean to scare you, Gloria. Carrying a child is tiresome and wearying, yes yes, but it's actually, mmph, rather beautiful. Glorious, even, if you will permit the little play of words, mmph mmph."

A pause from food to pour two cups of tea with his lightly shaky grip.

"Now, at least try to take of something? If not for your sake, then for the babe's. I know quite well how you feel, mmph. In fact, should you fall even a touch ill from trying to have a little bit of breakfast, you're more than welcome to stay here, hm hm, and I can fetch my doctor, Bill, from his place a-snoring up the hall."

Kindly warmth flushes the Councilor's jowls as a smile jiggles them, both cheeks so well tucked away under his fluffy white beard that covers his face and bosom.

"At the very least, dearie, pray finish the bacon you started on?"

[Rance]

When he poured the tea she could not stop staring, at the whim of some foolish compulsion, from staring at the bulging whetstones of his knuckles. The tea lap-li-lap-li-lapped into the cup, streaming like a ribbon from a little porcelain snout.

"Seven months," she said, sending her voice over the surface of her tea. "That seems like an awfully long time; it seems like a lifetime to -- to hold someone inside of you. I don't know how she can stand it."

Beautiful, he had said; Glorious, he had said. Though it had never been any of those things in the Pens; there, the women had grown naked and fat like rotten fruit and the whole place reeked of shit and sweat and sometimes, sometimes there were girls laying on their backs in the reeds with their stomachs swelling like blisters and they were crying and even if you sang enough songs and hymns to them it was like they'd had their eyes turned to glass because they couldn't care--

"I am over three months, or just over. That's what they told me," the girl said, still not yet drinking. Staring off somewhere in her mug, a sea away.

When he implored her to continue her bacon, she lifted it up. It was burnt, twisted, like a tiny hunk of skin. She crushed it between her teeth. Gloria's voice had been granted a flatness when she spoke again. Her teacup trembled in her hand. A black blot of tea splattered to her skirt-knee.

"Who -- who cut you," she asked. "Why would they? Are they dead? They ought to be; they ought to be little pieces, Councilor."

And so should I.

[Treadwell]

"Who cut me?"

Treadwell pauses mid-stab of a slice of ham.

"It was a fellow who, admittedly, was giving me, mmph mmph, quite what I deserved at the time. I had hired him to steal something very precious from a rival of mine, mmph, and he did. I then promptly had him arrested for it."

The Councilor eases his head back, reaching up hands to stroke and pick at the fluffiness that is his great, white beard.

"He was, well, a touch unsettled by the arrest, to say the least. The next, hmph, that I knew, I was waking under a doctor's care with my neck sewn shut."

The Councilor reaches over a hand to steady the shaking cup of tea. The effort strains him, prompting a shutting of beady eyes and a sharp sucking of breath--hefting his bulk forward in his chair and putting out that flabby arm sends another sharp twinge up his back.

"But, well," he squeaks when he is able, "he has been dealt with. I think. Honestly, the fellow escaped prison from here, of all places, years ago, mmph mmph. No telling where he is, now. But on to other things."

A slow wheeeee of breath, for he stays leaned sideways to help her hold her cup level. "Fear not, Gloria, and resent not. That baby in you, mmph? A blessing, dear, a blessing! In the next six months, hm hm--"

Treadwell finally sinks back into his chair, huffing, panting.

"You'll belly out, mmph. . . you'll be awkward and clumsy and off-balance and ill, hm hm, but you've been granted a wonderful gift! That infant, little more than much of nothing right now, hmph, will be a pudgy thing a-sucking a thumb, rolling and squooshing about, mmph mmph, in your middle, just waiting to get to meet you, dearie! You! Gloria Wynsee!"

A warm smile stretches.

"Gloria Wynsee, you see, to everyone in Myrken Wood, but to that baby?"

A gleeful, merry giggle despite the continuing throb in his back.

"Mommy."

[Rance]

A small tale of deceit -- and she hardly thought him capable of it -- over tea and biscuits and wilted strips of bacon. Yet, she found it unreasonable that it ended in the cutting of a throat. She imagined the sharp edge of steel biting against that neck, down into the folds, the pores offering points of perforation to the bulging skin, and blood--

He steadied her cup of tea, leaning out from his chair like a top-heavy lump of wheezing burlap. Her cup stopped quaking. They tumbled in their conversation on to other things.

...you'll be awkward and clumsy and off-balance and ill.

"It's not the child I resent. I give it no ill will. No, that I direct toward another object entirely. A blessing? A gift? People dilute it and obscure it, believe it ought to be some -- some precept for happiness or cheer. Am I smiling, Councilor? Who will it meet when I usher it into this world but me? What disappointment it will harbor, to -- to know how I was driven to fabricate it? It," she sputtered, lips damp, tea-stained. "Her. Me. How is this beautiful? I wanted none of this. It wasn't my aim. This isn't my place. I'm not fit for it."

Her lips were a straight line. She was Gloria Wynsee, you see, to everyone in Myrken Wood, but to that baby. What of her would this stalk of growing wheat within her belly inherit? Would it be dark as mud like her? How much of her would bleed down into its skin and musculature and poison it, change it, and--

Mommy, he said. Her bones became stone. Her eyes locked on the mug. The cup perched itself on the table-edge.

Gloria's lone hand shot to her ear, squeezed, closed it. Up came the stump to grind against her other ear. From between her elbows, trying to silence that single, fateful word in her brain, her dull stare was all for him.

"Please don't say that," she whispered. "Please, please, please don't say it."

She choked on a breath, but too late -- it burst like a cork being wrenched out of her throat: a shout, iron-edged and shrill.

"Don't call me that!"

[Treadwell]

Plink-clunk of fork to table, tapping against plate as it falls and lands.

Aloisius sits there, stunned, shoved backward into flabbergasted silence as he sinks heavily into his cushioned chair, one arm on the table's edge, the other flopped against his gut. Jowls droop, and mouth hangs loose and open a little. Glasses slide almost unnoticed down his bulb of a shnozz as his weight resituates and settles.

His answer is short, simple, barely squeaked as he sits there, a light quake having come over him in fear of the girl just out of arm's reach.

"I won't."

And then, as those naturally wet eyes start to overflow their doughy pits?

"Forgive me. I'll. . . well, I'll not speak of it again."

Forward and down he slumps, tugging a handkerchief from a pocket. Cheeks and eyes are rubbed, and nose is whooooonked.

"But. . . all the same. . . trust me. Let me help, where I can?"

[Rance]

She knew it was too much--

But she had to; just hearing that word had turned her blood to foam and her brain had suddenly felt like a burning stone inside her skull. The mouth, the voice, had helped her relieve its pressure, but had left in her a vacuous, gaping rift that lined itself with regret and dismay. The girl swallowed. She looked at him, trying to avoid words that might, for all she knew, have been too instantaneously apologetic to be genuine.

He was old, she realized only then; he was ancient, and despite his girth, was as frail as a Sun-dried sapling. He drew away from her, fell comparatively silent. The gregarious nature of their morning tea had burnt away like vapors in the morning light.

"This -- this isn't what I wanted," Gloria said. "Of -- of my future, of my life."

Composure leaked back into her, straining to fill muscles and chest.

"I have nothing, Councilor, and certainly not enough to ever lay in bed long hours and construct an imaginary future in which I should deserve anything of any worth. But even -- even when I ventured to speculate and fantasize about adulthood, about independence--" her whole body trembled as she drew in a needful breath, "--never did it include a child, a baby. I evaded it as long as I could in Jernoah. I watched other girls bulge knowing that only by fortune I'd avoided that fate.

"A moment's poor judgment, a half-second in which I allowed my impulse to control my already-rare logic, and -- and here I sit," she said. "I'm scarcely equipped in mind or body for this; I'm only barely able to care for myself, yet alone those I already love.

"Why," Gloria demanded, imploring his wisdom, his collected knowledge. "Why?"

[Treadwell]

To his feet Treadwell works, a shove seeing him wobbling somewhat upright (still stooped dreadfully with his poor back), and over to Gloria he toddles, leaving his cane at his chair, his bad leg's limp exaggerated with the recent shock and his continued trembling from the girl's outburst.

"I could tell you precisely why, dearest Gloria, mmph mmph. I could tell you of what this child will mean to you, to others here, to people in time to come, hmm hmm. Suffice it to say that old Tready knows all about babies."

Flabby, sweaty, quivery hands come to rest on the sides of her chair.

"But I think I will just say that this babe has a perfectly good reason--in the long term!--for being, love. You, mmph, merely need the chance to see that. So, again, I say that you're certainly welcome to spend as much time as you like here, mmph mmph. You need rest. You need food and drink. None of that is wrong; none, mmph mmph, is greedy. You need good company, Gloria. I think I pass well enough for that, and Alice?"

Treadwell chortles, hints of mirth easing back among the quaking rolls of stomach as he giggles. Another rub of handkerchief to dry his face.

"Alice knows quite well about having children, herself. Let her be your guide, your trainer, mmph, your mother figure, I suppose! Stay here, and watch her. Learn from her. When she lies abed about to have to push our baby free, you could even be here to help, if you like, mmph mmph. Even old Elizia, shriveled prune that she is, would care to have some more feminine company about the house."

Into the seat to Gloria's left Treadwell eases, his gut smushing over the table's edge as he leans back to be comfy.

"Then, there's the rest of the family. We've one on the way, of course, hmm hmm. Gideon is ten and newly found, newly taken in to the family. Gabriel and Gertrude are, oh, only about a year and a half, give or take, mmph mmph. Fat little Frederick is but three; his older siblings, Egbert and Gwendolyn, near six."

A smile, another chuckle.

"Dearie, I'm nearly nine-and-sixty, myself! The first of next month, in truth, hmm hmm, is my birthday. I haven't the foggiest of notions why I keep, heh, fathering children, mmph mmph, when I can barely keep up with 'em."

Wag of plump pointer again, this time very lightly landing on Gloria's shoulder.

"I need your help, lovey, mmph mmph, to help me keep everything right here. . ."

A nod at the rest of the house.

"and I do think you need mine to keep everything right here."

A faint tap of fat finger to Gloria's heart.

He has finally started to take slow, easy, careful breaths again. Fluffy white brows raise softly, threatening to bring still-wet eyes again to shaky, ponderous teardrops.

[Rance]

He trembled and she didn't understand why; perhaps it was his weight, the strain put upon those aging knees and that aching spine. Or maybe it was that her voice had blown out of her like a storm and he'd seen once, once, when she'd been irrational and foolish, she'd had a mouth covered with a bloody rag and had descended upon him with a blade, and--

He was forthcoming with his offers, soft and assuring phrases comprised of thriving families and needs. Assurances she was not greedy or avaricious to care for herself. His shadow loomed over her from behind, smothering out view of the array of fruits and meats. Treadwell's monstrous hands were wound like knots around the armrests around her until, like a droplet of robed liquid, he oozed into the chair beside her. When his mouth moved under that expansive beard, all she could think of were...

...those names. Those names.

Arleda Blackmoor. Riesse Arlock. Maddy Nivens.

"You offer too much," she said. "To accept would be to disconnect me from where I am meant to be. This -- This," she displayed, with an upturned hand, "is your domain, ser, for your Alice and your Elizia, your Gideon and your Gwendolyn and your Gabriel and Gertrude, your Egbert and your Fat little Frederick.

"Mine," and she jerked her chin up, toward the ornate doors at the neck of the dining hall, "is out there with my brother, who -- who needs someone near who is so common and flawed that he might have a measure for his goodness. Noura, who needs someone to -- to save her when her brain gets too dark. And Ser Catch, whose needs to which I'm blind for how lost he shall always be, but who needs, regardless."

As I needed?

The quivering had ceased in her remaining fingers. She dabbed at her cracking lips with a linen. A din had fallen over her, a blanket of calm that softened yet simultaneously hardened the set of her broad shoulders.

"If you believe it right, I will find time to visit with you and your Alice; I am a clever listener."

The teacup had such perfect swirling blue patterns on it. She got lost in them. She wondered where they started and ended and realize they neither began nor terminated. They simply were, twisting and pale and lost amid themselves.

"I am going to have a baby," she said. "I am going to have a baby and I am going to name it Soodsy. She will be a very fine baby. She is going to cry and them I am going to cry and then we will both be very happy. It will be beautiful and glorious and we will be happy. It will be very fine."

She stood. Her attention extricated itself from the blued trails on the tooth-white porcelain of the cup.

"The tea," the one-handed seamstress complimented, "was the best I have ever tasted."