On’y thangs with lace Ma had were thangs from afore she married Pa . . .

Then the two older women suddenly went into a whispered conversation over the counter while Abby wrapped up their purchase in brown paper and wrote what they had bought on the outside. As this transpired, they took covert looks at her. She found herself blushing without knowing why.

“Come along, missy,” Abby said, crooking her finger at Anna, and taking a white pasteboard box from underneath the counter. When Anna looked at her aunt in confusion, Jinny nodded.

“While y’all are busy, I’ll jest git th’ rest of the shoppin’ done,” Aunt Jinny said blandly, and moved over to the other counter. Obedient to a fault, Anna followed Abby.

Abby ushered her past the loungers and checker-players and whisked her through a door-curtain, into a kitchen, then up a set of stairs and into what, in Anna’s eyes, was a beautiful bedroom that was the utter acme of luxury and good taste. There was a brass bedstead with no sign of a trundle, braided rugs on the floor, and varnished bureaus and a wardrobe. The bed had a white and pink quilt, white and pink ruffled curtains were at the window, and a white and pink china basin and matching pitcher stood on the varnished washstand. Everything was completely neat and spotless.

But she quickly lost interest in the contents of the bedroom, because Abby had opened the pasteboard box, revealing—

—a corset!

Now, the one thing that Anna had longed for as a sign of being a grown woman—besides proper hairpins—was a corset. Of course, being as they couldn’t afford hairpins, her Ma and Pa certainly had not been able to afford a corset. They couldn’t even afford the fabric sturdy enough to make into a handmade one with goose or turkey quill boning. “Slip off yore thin’s, chile,” ordered Abby as she sorted out the laces. Anna had to slow down her fingers, lest she pop buttons off her waist in her haste to disrobe. Within moments, her skirt and petticoat were in a puddle around her feet, and her shirtwaist was in her hand, leaving her standing there in her drawers and chemise. And she was very glad she had dressed in the best of those that she possessed today. Her underthings might not be new or stylish, or even decorated, but they were clean and neat.

Abby fitted the garment around her torso and hooked up the front, then went around to her back and began tightening the laces. “I ain’t a-gonna tight-lace y’all now, chile,” she said in an admonishing tone, as if she expected Anna to demand that she pull the laces so tight Anna could not take a breath. “Jest ’nuff fer good support. I don’t hold with tight-lacin’, specially not fer a young gal, or a gal like y’all an’ Jinny, what’s gotter work like a man. Y’all gotter get inter this thang by yerself ev’ mornin’, an’ y’all gotter be able t’move an’ work. This’ll make yore close lie neat, an’ he’p yore back.”