When she had at last finished the hundreds of tiny knotted buttonhole stitches, she sewed on each of the twelve glass buttons, good and firm. Then she stood and stretched, rolling her shoulders. She reached up with one hand to rub her cramped neck muscles, but then remembered the bruises and lowered her hand slowly.

Don’t think about it. Keep moving.

After she put the flatiron on the stove to heat, she worked on covering the lard cans. The blue cans were lettered with the words PURE LARD in white; their tin edges were rusty and the paint chipped.

She picked out a pretty but inexpensive pink-striped calico and cut from it six carefully measured rectangles. Once she had sewn a quick rough seam to join the ends of a rectangle, she could open out the fabric to form a cylinder about six inches tall. She slipped a cylinder over each can, then tied on a length of cream-colored ribbon.

The plants had done their part to perfection, blooming right on schedule. Hanna rearranged the window display. She moved the rack of fabric off-center to the left and placed the six rosebushes in their disguised cans here and there on the sill. Papa had screwed a metal hook into the ceiling of the window well, on the right-hand side. That was where she would hang the finished dress.

The lawn ironed up beautifully, the fabric smooth and soft. Hanna hung the dress on a hanger, and the hanger on the hook. Then she stepped back to look at the entire display. It was facing into the shop, as the window itself was still covered over with brown paper. She would turn everything to face outward in the morning.

The blue “sky” above, the lovely fabrics on the rack, the prairie roses in full bloom, and especially the green sprigged lawn dress . . . Hanna was so proud of how the window looked that she wanted to clap her hands like a child. Mama would have loved it.

But in the next moment, tears were wetting her eyelashes. What if no one came to the opening? What if she and Papa were the only people in town who ever saw the display?

At least a dozen times, Hanna paced the length of the building, between the window at the front and the lean-to at the back, hoping to see Bess return. She waited for her friend until the sun had disappeared below the edge of the prairie.

Bess did not come.

If she had good news, she’d have been here by now.

“Good night, Papa,” she said, the words stilted by the lump in her throat. Her insides felt hollow. If someone were to nudge her shoulder, she thought, she would collapse to the floor, crumpled like a threadbare rag.