It was not, but rather a woman she had not seen before. She was of medium height, but seemed taller because of her bulk; for though she was not fat, she was well endowed, and her arms were like legs of lamb. Her face was round, with bright cheeks that looked as if they’d seen too much heat. Her brown hair had been shoved under a cap, from which it had escaped in several places without the woman appearing to have noticed. Her eyes were both lively and tired; indeed, she yawned in front of Maisie without even covering her gaping mouth.
“Hallo, duck,” she said. “You’re a lovely one, an’t you?”
“I-I’m sorry, but Miss Pelham an’t here,” Maisie stuttered, flustered by the compliment but disappointed that the woman wasn’t John Astley. “She’ll be back in a week.”
“I don’t want to see any Miss Pelham. I’m after my daughter-Maggie, that is-and wanted to ask you lot about her. Can I come in?”
2
“Ma, this be Mrs. Butterfield,” Maisie announced, arriving back in the garden. “Maggie’s mother.”
“Call me Bet,” the woman said. “It’s Maggie what I come about.”
“Maggie?” Anne Kellaway repeated, half rising from her seat and clutching the buttons she had made. Then she realized whom Bet meant and sank back down. “She’s not here.”
Bet Butterfield did not seem to have heard. She was staring into Anne Kellaway’s lap. “Are them buttons?”
“Yes.” Anne Kellaway had to fight the urge to cover the buttons with her hands.
“We do buttony,” Maisie explained. “We used to make ’em all the time back in Dorsetshire, and Ma took some of the materials with us when we came here. She thinks maybe we can sell ’em in London.”
Bet Butterfield held out her hand. “Let me see.”
Anne Kellaway reluctantly dropped into Bet’s rough, red hand the delicate buttons she had made so far that morning. “Those be called Blandford Cartwheels,” she couldn’t resist explaining.
“Lord, an’t they lovely,” Bet Butterfield murmured, pushing them around with a finger. “I see these on ladies’ nightgowns and am always careful with ’em when I wash ’em. Is that a blanket stitch you’ve used on the rim?”
“Yes.” Anne Kellaway held up the button she was working on. “Then I wrap the thread across the ring to make spokes for the wheel, and then backstitch round and round each spoke, so the thread fills in the space. At the end I gather it in the center with a stitch, and there be your button.”
“Lovely,” Bet Butterfield repeated, squinting at the buttons. “Wish I could make summat like this. I an’t bad at repairs and that, but I don’t know as I could manage summat this small and delicate. I’m better at washin’ what’s already made than makin’ it. Is these the only kind of buttons you make?”
“Oh, we do all sorts,” Maisie broke in. “Flat ones like these-the Dorset Wheels-we do in cartwheel, crosswheel, and honeycomb patterns. Then we do the High Tops, and the Knobs-those are for waistcoats-and the Singletons and Birds’ Eyes. What others do we do, Ma?”
“Basket Weaves, Old Dorsets, Mites and Spangles, Jams, Yannells, Outsiders,” Anne Kellaway recited.
“Where you going to sell ’em?” Bet Butterfield asked.
“We don’t know yet.”
“I can help you with that. Or my Dick can. He knows everybody, could sell eggs to a chicken, that man could. He’ll sell your buttons for you. How many you got ready?”
“Oh, four gross at least,” Maisie replied.
“And how much you get per gross?”
“It depends on what sort and how good they be.” Maisie paused. “Won’t you sit down, Mrs. Butterfield?” She gestured to her own chair.
“I will, duck, thanks.” Bet Butterfield lowered herself onto the hoop-back Windsor chair that, even after ten years of daily use, did not creak when her substantial mass met its elm seat. “Now, there’s a nice chair,” she said, leaning back against the spindles and running her finger along the smooth curved arm. “Plain, not fussy, and well made-though I never seen chairs painted blue before.”
“Oh, we paint all our chairs back in Dorsetshire,” Maisie declared. “That’s how folk like ’em.”
“Mags told me Mr. Kellaway’s a bodger. He make this one, Mrs.-?”
“Anne Kellaway. He did. Now, Mrs. Butterfield-”
“Bet, love. Everybody calls me Bet.”
“Like Bouncing Bet!” Maisie exclaimed, sitting down on one of Miss Pelham’s cold stone benches. “I’ve just thought of it. Oh, how funny!”
“What’s funny, duck?”
“Bouncing Bet-it be what we call soapwort. Back in Dorsetshire, at least. And you use soapwort for your washing, don’t you?”
“I do. Bouncing Bet, eh?” Bet Butterfield chuckled. “I’d not heard o’ that one. Where I’m from we called it Crow Soap. But I like that-Bouncing Bet. My Dick’ll start calling me that if I tell him.”
“What were it you’ve come for?” Anne Kellaway interjected. “You said it were something to do with your daughter.”
Bet Butterfield turned to her soberly. “Yes, yes. Well, you see, I’m lookin’ for her. She an’t been round for a while and I’m startin’ to wonder.”
“How long has she been gone?”
“Two weeks.”
“Two weeks! And you’re only now looking for her?” Anne Kellaway couldn’t imagine losing Maisie for one night in this city, much less two weeks.
Bet Butterfield shifted in her chair. This time it creaked. “Well, now, it an’t as bad as that. Maybe it’s been a week. Yes, that’s right, just a week.” At Anne Kellaway’s continuing look of horror, she blustered on. “And maybe not even that long. I’m often not at home, see; what with my washing, I work sometimes through the night at people’s houses and sleep during the day. There’s days go by I don’t see my Dick or Charlie or no one ’cause I’m out.”
“Has anyone else seen her?”
“No.” Bet Butterfield shifted in the chair again; again it creaked. “I’ll tell you truly, we had a bit of a row and she run off. She’s got a temper on her, has Mags-like her father. She’s a slow fuse but once she goes off-watch out!”
Anne and Maisie Kellaway were silent.
“Oh, I know she’s round,” Bet Butterfield added. “I leave food out for her and that disappears right enough. But I want her back. It an’t right for her to stay away so long. Neighbors are startin’ to ask questions, and look at me funny-like you lot are doing.”
Anne and Maisie Kellaway bowed their heads and began stitching at their Blandford Cartwheels.
Bet Butterfield leaned forward to watch their fingers at work. “Mags has been spendin’ a lot of time with your boy-Jem, is it?”
“Yes, Jem. He’s helping his father.” Anne Kellaway nodded toward the house.
“Well, then, I come to ask if he-or any of you-has seen Maggie in the last while. Just round the streets, or by the river, or here, if she’s come to visit.”
Anne Kellaway looked at her daughter. “Have you seen her, Maisie?”
Maisie was holding her button and letting the thread dangle, with the needle on the end of it. The motion of the stitching tended to twist the thread so much that now and then she had to stop and let it unwind itself. They all watched as the needle spun, then slowed, and finally stopped, swinging lightly at the end of the thread.
3
On the other side of the wall, Maggie was lounging on the steps of the Blakes’ summerhouse, looking through Songs of Innocence, when she heard her mother next door and sat up as if a whip had been cracked. It was a shock to hear Bet Butterfield’s town crier of a voice after being lulled by the Kellaway women’s Dorset accents and dull talk about the Piddle Valley.
She felt peculiar eavesdropping when the talk was about Maggie herself. Bet Butterfield sounded like someone in the market comparing the price of apples, and it took Maggie a few minutes to realize that the Kellaways and her mother were discussing her. She wrapped her arms around her knees and pulled them to her chest, resting her chin on them and lightly rocking back and forth in the entrance of the summerhouse.