A Hat On The Coat

The Activity Radius, the Traits and the favorability had all shifted, and so had the mp. It went on nudging that number quietly upward without a word of explanation, and that left her thoroughly uneasy. Why did the status window give off the whiff of a shaven-headed loan shark? Rack her brains as she might, Dong-hui could not work out what the figure was, and it raised the same question every time she looked at it.

“What on earth is mp, anyway?”

She had been muttering to herself with her head tilted to one side, and when she felt Anna’s eyes fixed on her she gave an awkward little laugh. To Anna it was bound to look strange, someone sitting quietly one moment and coming out with sounds nobody could make sense of the next.

“It’s nothing. Pay it no mind.”

At that offhand answer Anna went back to doing Chloe’s hair.

The children’s clothes, cut out of the thick cloth, were being finished at a good speed. After lunch, partly to put some heart into the tailors, Dong-hui went along to the workroom to see how far the work had come. She had asked for coats a child could get on and off easily, and the tailors had turned out coats of a really rather good design.

One of them caught her eye, and it was Julia’s. Simpler than anything the others had made, it fell below the knee, and the sleeves and the body were cut so generously that it would do for a big child as well as a thin one.

“This coat is Julia’s design?”

Dong-hui asked it with the largest of the coats on, her arms spread wide. It had been cut for a fourteen-year-old, but the roomy shape meant it sat on her well enough too.

Julia had been rigid with nerves, and when her ladyship’s face turned satisfied she did not know what to do with herself for joy. She caught her lips between her teeth to hold the smile back, the very picture of a bashful girl. Dong-hui waited for her to say more about it, but the girl only worked her mouth and could not get a word out.

“Yes, my lady. The shape is simple, so it goes quickly as well. There were coats of several shapes, but Julia’s is the easiest to make and the most comfortable to wear, so at present we are making almost all of them to that design.”

Monel, standing beside her, had stepped in and answered for a girl too shy to answer for herself. Her hair was as dry and brittle as ever and the shadows under her eyes were still heavy, but her color was far better than when she first arrived here. Her face had brightened so much, too, that anyone who passed her without a second glance would never have taken her for the same person she had been that day.

“I like it very much. Try putting a hat on the coat as well. And make scarves too.”

“A hat on the coat?”

A hat is a hat and a coat is a coat, and now I am to fasten a hat onto a coat.

Monel’s eyes went wide, as though she could not make sense of it.

Dong-hui began to explain in detail, decided words alone would not be enough, and looked around her as she asked.

“Is there any paper?”

The words were barely out of her mouth before Brenne, who had been sitting nearby, sprang up and held out paper and a pencil to the lord. Pencil was a generous word for it. A length of charcoal had been whittled long and wound round and round with paper to keep the hands clean, and that was the whole of it.

“Here you are, my lady.”
“Thank you.”

Dong-hui thanked them as she took the paper, and Brenne bowed their head with the look of one overwhelmed by the honor.

She was no great hand at drawing, but a hooded coat she felt she could manage well enough. With every scrap of concentration she had, Dong-hui drew the shape of a coat with a hat attached to it and held it out to Monel.

“Could you make it like this? The wind is going to blow hard, so rather than carrying a separate hat about, it’s easier just to put one on when it’s attached to the coat like this. And with a scarf wound round here, it will be far warmer.”

Monel looked at the drawing with disbelief on her face. A coat of such a design was a first for her. At a glance it had something of a robe about it, and yet, made up in thick cloth, it would be a far warmer and more practical garment.

“Yes, I think we can make it.”

Julia answered at once, craning her neck to study the drawing. The girl who a moment ago had not known where to put herself for shyness was gone, and her eyes shone and glittered at the thought of making a new garment. In her head the way it would have to be cut was already laid out plain and clear.

“And scarves.”
“Yes! And scarves!”

Word for word, Julia gave the lord’s line straight back to her and broke into a wide smile. Somehow Dong-hui found herself thinking that she and this girl might make very good friends indeed.

She smiled at Julia a moment longer, satisfied, then turned to Monel at her side.

“Your name was Monel, was it?”

“Yes, my lady.”

Monel answered quickly, startled that her ladyship should remember her name. The lord was still wearing Julia’s coat.

“Could you and Julia make some clothes for me as well?”

“I beg your pardon? C-clothes for my lady to wear?”

Monel must have been truly astonished, for the composure that had held all this while came apart on her face. Julia, standing beside her, was plainly no less astonished, and her eyes went wide as she looked from Monel to the lord and back.

Monel was called a tailor, but she had made a dress with her own hands, without the head tailor’s help, exactly once. Everything else had been assistant’s work, or at most the altering of dresses already finished. Her confidence dropped clean away, and she waited to hear whatever the lord would say next.

“Yes. I want to wear comfortable clothes like this. Not those trailing great dresses. If I had my way I would wear trousers, but if I did that Delma would take to her bed. So make me a pair of wide skirt-trousers.”

Dong-hui took hold of the hem of the coat she was wearing and gave it a shake as she said it.

“Skirt…, trousers?”

Not a skirt and not trousers, but skirt-trousers.

The unfamiliar name left Monel looking dumbfounded.

“Yes. The sort of thing that looks like a skirt from the outside but is really trousers.”

Monel’s face was no wiser than before. Julia, who had been listening quietly to the two of them talk, hesitated, then drew something on a scrap of paper lying to one side and held it out in front of the lord.

“My lady, might this perhaps be the sort of thing you mean?”

Julia asked it carefully, watching the lord’s face, and the hand gripping the small scrap of paper trembled with nerves.

To think that hands like those turn out clothes as fine as this.

Dong-hui took the paper Julia held out and studied it closely. Julia might sew well, but she had no gift whatever for drawing. Even so, it was plain that she had understood exactly what Dong-hui wanted.

She peered at it a moment longer, quietly, then clapped her hands together with a smack.

“Yes! This is exactly it. Skirt-trousers — they look like a skirt but they are really trousers. Well? Can you make them for me?”

At the question Julia nodded, her face flushed red. She could do something for the lady who had given her and her brother a warm place and full stomachs, and that made her happier than she could say.

“Really? Thank you, truly. I shall look forward to it, then.”
“Yes, my lady. We shall do our very best with them.”

“Treasurer. Has the farmer arrived?”

A few days earlier she had asked Scrooge to recommend her the best hand at farm work from thereabouts, Helsa aside. Bringing the farmland into cultivation would want an expert’s help after all, she felt, and besides, Helsa had far too much on her already.

“As it happens, he arrived before dawn and is waiting now.”
“He arrived already? Then why did you not say so?”
“You seemed so busy, my lady, that I meant to tell you when you were at leisure.”

For a commoner to wait a whole day just to meet a noble was simply how things were. Dong-hui might be borrowing a noble’s body, but she was a dirt spoon¹ to the bone, and whenever she saw someone slighted for their rank or their money a needless flare of temper rose in her. To Scrooge it would have been a matter of course. The irritation welled up all the same.

“Have him come in at once. Delma, bring out some hot tea and a little something to take the edge off his hunger with it.”

Something out of the ordinary in the lord’s voice caught Anna’s ear, and she looked into Chloe’s face and asked.

“Was there not enough for you to eat, my lady? Shall I have them increase the portions from now on?”

Dong-hui quietly turned her eyes away from that startled look. At lunch she had made steamed Dural, an omelet and two pieces of buttered bread vanish before you could blink. Even to her own mind it had been a fair quantity, so she could quite see why Anna was surprised.

“Not for me.”
“Then who…, ah! Is a guest coming, my lady?”

It had not occurred to Anna for a moment that the food might be for the farmer who had come, and she asked with a touch of nervousness.

“No. The farmer fellow.”
“I beg your pardon?”

“He has been waiting since before dawn, so think how hungry he must be. Had I known, I should have got up earlier. I am sorry for it.”
“Ah…, yes! My lady!”

Anna looked at the lord with a slightly startled light in her eyes, then broke into a broad smile and went out. A Chloe who showed consideration even in dealing with someone far below her in rank seemed to have moved her deeply.