Script lettering with hearts on the hip

You will not believe the commission I had on Tuesday. A young fellow came into the shop on Mill Lane with a scrap of paper folded four times, and he would not say what it said. He just held it out, face the colour of a pillar box, and asked whether I could letter it in the copperplate I use for the chapel boards. I unfolded it and read two words, one of them a verb a vicar would blush at, with a small heart drawn either side like a pair of parentheses.

I told him the hearts were the hardest part. Anyone can paint a word. A heart wants a steady hand and a bit of nerve, because if the outline wobbles it looks like a pie. I spent the whole Wednesday on the flourish under the S, mixing black with a drop of lamp oil so it would stay bold without bleeding, and I made the tail of the final e taper off like a fishing line going out over the water.

When he came back on Friday, he didn't want to see it on paper. He wanted to know if it would last. I said ink lasts as long as whatever it sits on, and he laughed and said, well, this would be sitting on him a good deal longer than any board. I made him promise to keep out of the rain until it settled.

He paid in coppers and said his mother would never know. I said mothers generally do. Your loving sister, Ada