Hannah Poole wrote to Bath on the 8th of July, and it took her eleven drafts, and the one she sent was nine lines long.
*Madam,*
*I fitted your gown eleven times between the 9th of March and the 2nd of June. I have kept the fitting book as I keep every book, and it is in my hand and it is dated, and there is a great deal in it. I am not going to tell you what is in it, and I am not going to tell anybody else. It is yours. If you want it, I shall bring it to Bath and put it in your hands and you may burn it in front of me. And if you want it burned without ever seeing it, I shall do that, too, and never say one word. On the 24th of May you looked at me in the glass and you began to say something to me and I told you the hem wanted straightening. The hem did not want straightening. I have thought about that every day since, and I am sorry.*
*H. Poole, at Mrs. Gill's, Duke Street.*
The answer came on the 15th, and it was four words: *Bring it. Come alone.*
***
Hannah went on the mail coach on the 18th of July at four o'clock in the morning with the book in a work bag, and she paid for the seat herself out of eleven weeks' savings and would not be argued with about it by anybody. The house was in Henrietta Street, and the aunt was a Mrs. Osmond, who was about sixty, and who opened the door herself and looked at Hannah for a long moment.
"You are the dressmaker."
"I am, ma'am."
"She has not been out of this house in six weeks," said Mrs. Osmond. "She has had eleven letters from her mother and four from her brother, and she has not opened one of them since the 9th, and she has read yours about forty times. Go up."
Caroline Vane was two-and-twenty, and she was sitting at a window in a plain gray dress with long sleeves. She stood up when Hannah came in, and neither of them managed to say anything for about four seconds.
"You brought it."
"Yes, miss."
"Sit down." She sat down herself rather suddenly. "Miss Poole, I have been seven weeks in this room and I have not spoken to one person who was there. Do you understand? My aunt is very good, and she was not there. There is nobody at all who was in that house and saw it, and I have begun to think in the last fortnight that I have made a great deal of it up."
Hannah Poole took the book out of the work bag and put it on the table between them. "You did not make it up, miss," she said. "You went from 31 and a half to 29 and a half between the 9th of March and the 2nd of June, and I have got every one of them written down, and I let your waist out half an inch on the 2nd of June without telling you and you were not to know, but I want you to know now."
Caroline Vane looked at the book and did not touch it. "Read it to me," she said.
Hannah read it to her. It took about twenty minutes, and neither of them said one word in between the entries. When she had finished, Caroline Vane sat with her hands in her lap for a long time.
"April the 11th," she said at last. "Held the glass."
"Yes, miss."
"I do not remember doing that."
"No, miss. Nobody ever does. That is the whole of why I write it down." Hannah's voice was not entirely steady. "I put down what I see because the measures do not agree otherwise. I have never once in seven years put down what a lady felt because I have got no business knowing it and I should be wrong half the time."
Caroline Vane put her hand on the book. "Miss Poole," she said, "there is nothing about my arms in this."
"No, miss."
"Why not?"
Hannah Poole looked at her and understood that this was the question she had come two hundred miles to be asked, and that she was going to have to answer it exactly right.
"Because on the 9th of March you asked me twice for a sleeve three inches shorter than the pattern," she said. "And once a sleeve is settled, a dressmaker does not take the arm again. You have not had your arms measured in this house since the 9th of March, and I did not notice it until the 6th of July."