IsobelIsobel had bought a meat pie from a butcher’s on Wyndham Street—an extravagance—and it now warmed on the stove. She had kept it in her carpet bag, wrapped in newspaper, sitting on top of the mending. She had been careful on her walk back from Queen Street, holding the bag the way she might a child—cautiously, as though it might break apart in her hands. She didn’t want to swing it and spill gravy and juices over the bundle of shirts and aprons collected from the stone houses; she had winced at the thought of such a disaster. One housekeeper, meeting her in the kitchens of a widowed ironmonger’s house near to the junction of Queen and Wyndham, had offered a few crumbs of praise when handing that week’s sewing over—the master had been pleased with the tiny, almost invisible mending of
