Arched quote lettering design

You will want to know whether the Hollis brothers paid up, so here it is: they did, in full, in a brown envelope pushed through the caravan hatch at six this morning, and Dad counted it twice with his tongue between his teeth the way he used to with the takings. I did not tell you what I was doing all those winter nights in the barn at Ashby. You would have had a fit. I kept my mouth shut, same as Dad taught us, and let the fellows at the Michaelmas fair think I was only daft over paint.

The sign on the big top is mine now. Eleven feet of gold leaf and red lake, with an arch of letters across the top that Mr Crane swore could never be lettered by hand without a stencil. I did it by hand. Every letter runs wide at the crown and tight at the foot, and when the rain came through the canvas on Tuesday, not one of them lifted. Mr Crane came round in his waxed coat, squinted up at it for a long minute, and said nothing at all, which from him is a sonnet.

So if anybody asks what Ada is up to, tell them nothing. Tell them I am mucking out the ponies. Then, when they have stopped laughing, bring them to the Thursday show in Whitby and let them look up.

Your loving sister, Ada