Her musings were interrupted again by the electric bing of the door opening. An older woman, tall and very slim, came in. She was wearing a beautiful linen suit in a warm gray a shade darker than her hair.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Lundgren,” said Margot, putting down her knitting.

Mrs. Lundgren loved needlework, but was too busy to do her own. She frequented craft fairs and often came to Margot for bonnets and booties for her granddaughters and needlepoint pictures and pillows for her several homes. Margot rose and went behind the big desk that served as a checkout counter.

“Margot, I’ve been thinking some more about that T‘ang horse,” said Mrs. Lundgren.

“It’s not for sale, Mrs. Lundgren,” said Margot, politely but firmly.

“So you keep telling me.” Mrs. Lundgren got just the right light and rueful tone in her voice; Margot relaxed into a smile. “But as I said, I’ve been thinking. Would it be all right to ask you to make a copy of it for me? It won’t be displayed here, but in our winter home.”

Margot turned and looked at the wall behind her, where a framed needlepoint picture of a midnight-blue horse hung. The animal had his short tail closely braided, his feet well under him and his neck in a high arch, the head somewhat offset, as if he were looking backward, around his shoulder. He had a white saddle, white stockings, and a golden mane combed flat against his neck. The original was a pottery T‘ang Dynasty horse in the Minneapolis art museum.

“Do you know, I should have thought of that,” Margot said, surprised at herself. She frowned. “But I threw my old sketches away, so I’d have to start over, take a piece of graph paper, go to the museum and plot the horse on it, and then needlepoint over that.”

“I understand. And then could the background be a different color?”

“Of course. Do you know what color?”

Mrs. Lundgren reached into her purse and produced a fabric swatch. “Can you match this?” The color was a faded, dusty red. A trip to the silks rack produced a sample nearly the same color.

“But not quite,” said Margot with regret.

“Yes, and not quite won’t do. How about this pale olive?” Mrs. Lundgren lifted a skein off its hook.

“Are you sure? I mean, it will look very good as a background color, but you don’t want to offend your decor.”

“There is a dark olive in the drapes,” said Mrs. Lundgren.

“Very well.” Margot took the silk from Mrs. Lundgren and the two walked back to her desk.

“How much for the entire project?” asked Mrs. Lundgren.

Margot went to the big desk that was her checkout counter and got out her calculator. “Do you want yours the same size?”

“What is that, fourteen by fourteen?”

“Yes, plus the mat and frame, of course.”

“That’s what I want, even the same narrow wood frame, please.”

Margot began to punch numbers. “I’ll have to charge you one hundred and fifty dollars to paint it,” she began. That was a very fair price; painting a needlepoint canvas was harder than it looked; not only did the picture have to be artistically done, the curves and lines and color changes had to be worked in a pattern of tiny squares. “Then two dollars a square inch for the stitching, that comes to four hundred dollars; and another hundred and fifty for stretching and framing.” Margot punched the total button. “That would be seven hundred dollars.”