“I hate buttonholes too!” Bess said. “This is probably going to sound odd, but I always hated most everything about sewing. At home, I mean. It feels different here—I guess maybe because I’m sewing for pay.”

“So you like it now?” Hanna asked.

Bess laughed. “No, I wouldn’t say that. But I don’t mind the work the way I do at home.” Pause. “And it makes me feel—I don’t know, more grown-up, to be earning.”

“You’ll be earning better wages once you start teaching this fall.”

Bess sighed. “I don’t want to teach,” she said. “Standing up day after day in front of a room full of strangers?” She shook her head. “Sometimes I feel so frightened I’m sure I won’t be able to do it. But I’ll just have to. There’s no other way for me to earn good money, to help my family.”

Hanna realized then how lucky she was in one sense. She loved thinking about clothes, designing dresses in her head and on paper, seeing a pattern come to life in fabric and then on a person’s body. Doing work that she loved—a choice not available to many people. Maybe even most people.

“They won’t be strangers for long,” she said encouragingly. “You don’t think of Miss Walters as a stranger anymore, do you?”

“Why, that’s true,” Bess said, and Hanna was glad to see her face brighten. “It’s so hard to picture myself being the teacher, the way she is.”

“I think you’ll be a very fine teacher,” Hanna said, a little shyly.

“I hope so, but—but how does anyone know they’ll be good at something they haven’t yet tried?”

Hanna thought for a moment. “For one thing, you’re a good scholar.”

“Thank you,” Bess said, “but that isn’t the only thing a teacher needs.” She told Hanna about a teacher she’d had at a previous school—a good scholar who did not know how to handle children. It was in some ways a dreadful story of a noisy schoolroom with spitballs flying and ink spilling and almost no studying, but both girls were laughing by the time Bess finished.

“Really, it wasn’t at all funny back then,” Bess said, once she had caught her breath. “What if I end up in her shoes?”

“You saw what happened with her,” Hanna said, “so you know what not to do. Besides, you care about doing a good job, and that’s half the battle, don’t you think?”

Bess smiled. “I hope you’re right,” she said. “I’m going to prove it. I care about this skirt seam!”

Hanna laughed. “Then I’d better get back to caring about the bodice!”