Botanical flower bouquet on a shoulder

The engraver at Halloway's has finally agreed to let me do the poppies myself, though he watched me sharpen the nib as if I were about to stab him with it. I have been stippling since Tuesday. Every petal is a field of tiny dots, each one a small decision about where the light falls. Mr Halloway says a line tells the eye what to look at, but a dot tells it how to feel. I told him that was nonsense, and then I went home and dotted until my wrist ached.

The bouquet is for Mrs Abernethy, who wants her late husband's garden drawn before the lease runs out. He grew marigolds along the wall and opium poppies in the bed by the pump, and she insists the two must share the page because they never once agreed about anything in life. So I have put the big poppy in the centre, a bud leaning over it like a gossip, and the marigold tight and round at the bottom where the frost gets it first. Silver-green stems trail out between them, and I speckled the leaves so they would look wet.

Yesterday she came to the studio and held the sheet up to the window for a long while without speaking. Then she asked whether I could make the marigold a little less cheerful. I said I could try, and she laughed, a proper laugh, and said no, leave it as it is. He would have hated it, she said, and he would have kept it.

Write soon, and tell Father the cart is not to be left in the rain again.

Yours, Ada