Cat head with feathers and pearls

The rain has not let up since Tuesday, and the Saturday market behind St Mary's has gone to soup. Mr Ambrose pulled his canvas down before noon, but Madame Vesey would not be moved. She sat her cat, Sable, on a velvet cushion in the window of her milliner's booth, with feathers piled up behind the cat's ears like a ship's sail, and told the crowd that a hat is only a hat until someone is brave enough to wear a face.

I was minding the pearls. Two strands of them, her last good ones, hung from a nail beside the stove because she would not trust them to the damp. Last night the stove went out and I found myself on my knees picking pearls off the wet floorboards with a bent pin, counting them twice, because the garnet at the centre had come loose from its setting and rolled under the counter.

It was Sable who found it, sitting on the lid of the tea caddy with her eyes half shut. She looked at me the way Father used to look at a bad sum, then tipped her head, and the garnet dropped out of the folds of the lace ruff where Madame had tucked it. Madame wept, then laughed, and said I was to have a shilling for my trouble, which I have spent on the stamp for this letter.

Write soon. Tell me the seaside was dry.

Your loving sister, Ada