There was a large black door in the black wall facing Sophie and she made for that, hobbling briskly. The castle was uglier that ever close to. It was far too tall for its height and not a very regular shape. As far as Sophie could see in the growing darkness, it as built of huge black blocks, like coal, and, like coal, these blocks were all different shapes and sizes. Chill breathed off these blocks as she got closer, but that failed to frighten Sophie at all. She just thought of chairs and firesides and stretched her hand out eagerly to the door.
Her hand could not come near it. Some invisible wall stopped her hand about a foot from the door. Sophie prodded at it with an irritable finger. When that made no difference, she prodded with her stick. The wall seemed to be all over the door from as high as her stick could reach, and right down to the heather sticking out from under the doorstep.
“Open up!” Sophie cackled at it.
That made no difference to the wall.
“Very well,” Sophie said. “I’ll find your back door.” She hobbled off the lefthand corner of the castle, that being both the nearest and slightly downhill. But she could not get around the corner. The invisible wall stopped her again as soon as she was level with the irregular black cornerstones. At this, Sophie said a word she had learned from Martha, that neither old ladies nor young girls are supposed to know, and stumped uphill and anti-clockwise to the castle’s righthand corner. There was no barrier there. She turned that corner and came hobbling eagerly towards the second big black door in the middle of that side of the castle.
There was a barrier over that door too.
Sophie glowered at it. “I call that very unwelcoming!” she said.
Black smoke blew down form the battlements in clouds. Sophie coughed. Now she was angry. She was old, frail, chilly, and aching all over. Night was coming on and the castle just sat and blew smoke at her. “I’ll speak to Howl about this!” she said, and set off fiercely to the next corner. There was not barrier there-evidently you had to go around the castle clockwise-but there, bit sideways in the next wall, was a third door. This one was much smaller and shabbier.
“The back door at last!” Sophie said.
The castle started to move again as Sophie got near the back door. The ground shook. The wall shuddered and creaked, and the door started to travel sideways from her.
“Oh, no you don’t!” Sophie shouted. She ran after the door and hit it violently with her stick. “Open up!” she yelled.
The door sprang open inward, still moving sideways. Sophie, by hobbling furiously, managed to get one foot up on its doorstep. Then she hopped and scrambled and hopped again, while the great black blocks round the door jolted and crunched as the castle gathered speed over the uneven hillside. Sophie did not wonder the castle had a lopsided look. The marvel was that it did not fall apart on the spot.
“What a stupid way to treat a building!” she panted as she threw herself inside it. She had to drop her stick and hang on to the open door in order not to be jolted straight out again.
When she began to get her breath, she realized there was a person standing in front of her, holding the door too. He was a head taller than Sophie, but she could see he was the merest child, only a little older than Martha. And he seemed to be trying to shut the door on her and push her out of the warm, lamplit, low-beamed room beyond him, into the night again.
“Don’t you have the impudence to shut the door on me, my boy!” she said.
“I wasn’t going to, but you’re keeping the door open,” he protested. “What do you want?”
Sophie looked round at what she could see beyond the boy. There were a number of probably wizardly things hanging from the beams- strings of onions, bunches of herbs, and bundles of strange roots. There were also definitely wizardly things, like leather books, crooked bottles, and an old, brown, grinning human skull. On the other side of the boy was a fireplace with a small fire burning in the grate. It was a much smaller fire than all the smoke outside suggested, but then this was obviously only a back room in the castle. Much more important to Sophie, this fire had reached the glowing rosy stage, with little blue flames dancing on the logs, and placed beside it in the warmest position was a low chair with a cushion on it.
Sophie pushed the boy aside and dived for that chair. “Ah! My fortune!” she said, settling herself comfortably into it. It was bliss. The fire warmed her aches and the chair supported her back and she knew that if anyone wanted to turn her out now, they were going to have to use extreme and violent magic to do it.
The boy shut the door. Then he picked up Sophie’s stick and politely leaned it against the chair for her. Sophie realized that there was now no sign at all that the castle was moving across the hillside: not even the ghost of a rumble or the tiniest shaking. How odd! “Tell Wizard Howl,” she said to the boy, “that this castle’s going to come apart round his ears if it travels much further.”
“The castle’s bespelled to hold together,” the boy said. “But I’m afraid Howl’s not here just at the moment.”
This was good news to Sophie. “When will he be back?” she asked a little nervously.
“Probably not till tomorrow now,” the boy said. “What do you want? Can I help you instead? I’m Howl’s apprentice, Michael.”
This was better news than ever. “I’m afraid only the Wizard can possibly help me,” Sophie said quickly and firmly. It was probably true too. “I’ll wait, if you don’t mind.” It was clear Michael did mind. He hovered over her a little helplessly. To make it plain to him that she had no intention of being turned out by a mere boy apprentice, Sophie closed her eyes and pretended to go to sleep. “Tell him the name’s Sophie,” she murmured. “Old Sophie,” she added, to be on the safe side.
“That will probably mean waiting all night,” Michael said. Since this was exactly what Sophie wanted, she pretended not to hear. In fact, she almost certainly fell into a swift doze. She was so tired from all that walking. After a moment Michael gave her up and went back to the work he was doing at the workbench where the lamp stood.
So she would have a whole night’s shelter, even if it was on slightly false pretenses, Sophie thought drowsily. Since Howl was such a wicked man, it probably served him right to be imposed upon. But she intended to be well away from here by the time Howl came back and raised objections. She looked sleepily and slyly across at the apprentice. It rather surprised her to find him such a nice, polite boy. After all, she had forced her way in quite rudely and Michael had not complained at all. Perhaps Howl kept him in abject servility. But Michael did not look servile. He was a tall, dark boy with a pleasant, open sort of face, and he was most respectably dressed. In fact, if Sophie had not seen him at that moment carefully pouring green fluid out of a crooked flask onto black powder in a bent glass jar, she would have taken him for the son of a prosperous farmer. How odd!
Still, things were bound to be odd where wizards were concerned, Sophie thought. And this kitchen, or workshop, was beautifully cozy and very peaceful. Sophie went properly to sleep and snored. She did not wake up when there came a flash and a muted bang form the workbench, followed by a hurriedly bitten-off swear word from Michael. She did not wake when Michael, sucking his burned fingers, put the spell aside for the night and fetched bread and cheese out of the closet. She did not stir when Michael knocked her stick down with a clatter, reaching over her for a log to put on the fire, or when Michael, looking down into Sophie’s open mouth, remarked to the fireplace, “She’s got all her teeth. She’s not the Witch of the Waste, is she?”
“I wouldn’t have let her come in if she was,” the fireplace retorted.
Michael shrugged and picked Sophie’s stick politely up again.
Then he put a log on the fire with equal politeness and went away to bed somewhere overhead.
In the middle of the night Sophie was woken by someone snoring. She jumped upright, rather irritated to discover that she was the one who had been snoring. It seemed to her that she had only dropped off for a second or so, but Michael seemed to have vanished in those seconds, taking the light with him. No doubt a wizard’s apprentice learned to do that kind of thing in his first week. And he had left the fire very low. It was giving out irritating hissings and poppings. A cold draft blew on Sophie’s back. Sophie recalled that she was in a wizard’s castle, and also, with unpleasant distinctness, that there was a human skull on a workbench somewhere behind her.
She shivered and cranked her stiff old neck around, but there was only darkness behind her. “Let’s have a bit more light, shall we?” she said. Her cracked voice seemed to make no more noise than the crackling of the fire. Sophie was surprised. She had expected it to echo through the vaults of the castle. Still, there was a basket of logs beside her. She stretched out a creaking arm and heaved a log on the fire, which sent a spray of green and blue sparks flying through the chimney. She heaved on a second log and sat back, not without a nervous look or so behind her, where the blue-purple light form the fire was dancing over the polished brown bone of the skull. The room was quite small. There was no one in it but Sophie and the skull.
“He’s got both feet in the grave and I’ve only got one,” she consoled herself. She turned back to the fire, which was now flaring up into blue and green flames. “Must be salt in that wood,” Sophie murmured. She settled herself more comfortably, putting her knobby feet on the fender and her head into a corner of the chair, where she could stare into the colored flames, and began dreamily considering what she ought to do in the morning. But she was sidetracked a little by imagining a face in the flames. “It would be a thin blue face,” she murmured, “very long and thin, with a thin blue nose. But those curly green flames on top are most definitely your hair. Suppose I didn’t go until Howl gets back? Wizards can lift spells, I suppose. And those purple flames near the bottom make the mouth- you have savage teeth, my friend. You have two green tufts of flame for eyebrows…” Curiously enough, the only orange flames in the fire were under the green eyebrow flames, just like eyes, and they each had a little purple glint in the middle that Sophie could almost imagine was looking at her, like the pupil of an eye. “On the other hand,” Sophie continued, looking into the orange flames, “if the spell was off, I’d have my heart eaten before I could turn around.”
“Don’t you want your heart eaten?” asked the fire.
It was definitely the fire that spoke. Sophie saw its purple mouth move as the words came. Its voice was nearly as cracked as her own, full of the spitting and whining of burning wood. “Naturally I don’t,” Sophie answered. “What are you?”
“A fire demon,” answered the purple mouth. There was more whine than spit to its voice as it said, “I’m bound to this hearth by contract. I can’t move from this spot.” Then its voice became brisk and crackling. “And what are you?” it asked. “I can see you’re under a spell.”
This roused Sophie from her dreamlike state. “You see!” she exclaimed. “Can you take the spell off?”
There was a poppling, blazing silence while the orange eyes in the demon’s wavering blue face traveled up and down Sophie. “it’s a strong spell,” it said at length. “It feels like one of the Witch of the Waste’s to me.”
“It is,” said Sophie.
“But it seems more than that,” crackled the demon. “I detect two layers. And of course you won’t be able to tell anyone about it unless they know already.” It gazed at Sophie a moment longer. “I shall have to study it,” it said.
“How long will that take?” Sophie asked.
“It may take a while,” said the demon. And it added in a soft persuasive flicker, “How about making a bargain with me? I’ll break your spell if you agree to break this contract I’m under.”
Sophie looked warily at the demon’s thin blue face. It had a distinctly cunning look as it made this proposal. Everything she had read showed the extreme danger of making a bargain with a demon. And there was no doubt that this one did look extraordinarily evil. Those long purple teeth. “Are you sure you’re being quite honest?” she said.
“Not completely,” admitted the demon. “But do you want to stay like that till you die? That spell had shortened your life by about sixty years, if I am any judge of such things.”
This was a nasty thought, and one which Sophie had tried not to think about up to now. It made quite a difference. “This contract you’re under,” she said. “It’s with Wizard Howl, is it?”
“Of course,” said the demon. Its voice took on a bit of a whine again. “I’m fastened to this hearth and I can’t stir so much as a foot away. I’m forced to do most of the magic around here. I have to maintain the castle and keep it moving and do all the special effects that scare people off, as well as anything else Howl wants. Howl’s quite heartless, you know.”
Sophie did not need telling that Howl was heartless. On the other hand, the demon was probably quite as wicked. “Don’t you get anything out of this contract at all?” she said.
“I wouldn’t have entered into it if I didn’t,” said the demon, flickering sadly. “But I wouldn’t have done if I’d known what it would be like. I’m being exploited.”
In spite of her caution, Sophie felt a good deal of sympathy for the demon. She thought of herself making hats for Fanny while Fanny went gadding. “All right,” she said. “What are the terms of the contract? How do I break it?”
An eager purple grin spread across the demon’s blue face. “You agree to a bargain?”
“If you agree to break the spell on me,” Sophie said, with a brave sense of saying something fatal.
“Done!” cried the demon, his long face leaping gleefully up the chimney. “I’ll break your spell the very instant you break my contract!”
“Then tell me how I break your contract,” Sophie said.
The orange eyes glinted at her and looked away. “I can’t. Part of the contract is that neither the Wizard nor I can say what the main clause is.”
Sophie saw that she had been tricked. She opened her mouth to tell the demon that it could sit in the fireplace until Doomsday in that case.
The demon realized she was going to. “Don’t be hasty!” it crackled. “You can find out what it is if you watch and listen carefully. I implore you to try. The contract isn’t doing either of us any good in the long run. And I do keep my word. The fact that I’m stuck here shows that I keep it!”
It was in earnest, leaping about on its logs in an agitated way. Sophie again felt a great deal of sympathy. “But if I’m to watch and listen, that means I have to stay here in Howl’s castle,” she objected.
“Only about a month. Remember, I have to study your spell too,” the demon pleaded.
“But what possible excuse can I give for doing that?” Sophie asked.
“We’ll think of one. Howl’s pretty useless at most things. In fact,” the demon said, venomously hissing, “he’s too wrapped up in himself to see beyond his nose half the time. We can deceive him- as long as you’ll agree to stay.”
“Very well,” Sophie said. “I’ll stay. Now find an excuse.”
She settled herself comfortably in the chair while the demon thought. It thought aloud, in a little crackling, flickering murmur, which reminded Sophie rather of the way she had talked to her stick when she walked here. And it blazed while it thought with such a glad powerful roaring that she dozed again. She thought the demon did make a few suggestions. She remembered shaking her head to the notion that she should pretend to be Howl’s long- lost great- aunt, and to two other ones even more far- fetched, but she did not remember very clearly. The demon at length fell to singing a gentle, flickering little song. It was not in any language Sophie knew- or she thought not, until she distinctly heard the word “saucepan” in it several times- and it was very sleepy- sounding. Sophie fell into a deep sleep, with a slight suspicion that she was being bewitched now, as well as beguiled, but it did not bother her particularly. She would be free of the spell soon…..
Monday, October 31, 2011
Chapter 2 Sophie is compelled to seek her fortune
“What?” Sophie stared at the girl on the stool opposite her. She looked just like Lettie. She was wearing Lettie’s second-best blue dress, a wonderful blue that suited her perfectly. She had Lettie’s dark hair and blue eyes.
“I am Martha,” said her sister. “Who did you catch cutting up Lettie’s silk drawers? I never told Lettie that. Did you?”
“No,” said Sophie, quite stunned. She could see it was Martha now. There was Martha’s tilt to Lettie’s head, and Martha’s way of clasping her hands round her knees with her thumbs twiddling. “Why?”
“I’ve been dreading you coming to see me,” Martha said, “because I knew I’d have to tell you. It’s a relief now I have. Promise you won’t tell anyone. I know you won’t tell if you promise. You’re so honorable.”
“I promise,” Sophie said. “But why? How?”
“Lettie and I arranged it,” Martha said, twiddling her thumbs, “because Lettie wanted to learn witchcraft and I didn’t. Lettie’s got brains, and she wants a future where she can use them-only try telling that to Mother! Mother’s too jealous of Lettie even to admit she has brains!”
Sophie could not believe Fanny was like that, but she let it pass. “But what about you?”
“Eat your cake,” said Martha. “It’s good. Oh, yes, I can be clever too. It only took me two weeks at Mrs. Fairfax’s to find the spell we’re using. I got up at night and read her books secretly, and it was easy really. Then I asked if I could visit my family and Mrs. Fairfax said yes. She’s a dear. She thought I was homesick. So I took the spell and came here, and Lettie went back to Mrs. Fairfax pretending to be me. The difficult part was the first week, when I didn’t know all the things I was supposed to know. It was awful. But I discovered that people like me-they do, you know, if you like them-and then it was all right. And Mrs. Fairfax hasn’t kicked Lettie out, so I suppose she managed too.”
Sophie chomped at cake she was not really tasting. “But what made you want to do this?”
Martha rocked on her stool, grinning all over Lettie’s face, twirling her thumbs in a happy pink whirl. “I want to get married and have ten children.”
“You’re not quite old enough!” said Sophie.
“Not quite,” Martha agreed. “But you can see I’ve got to start quite soon in order to fit ten children in. And this way gives me time to wait and see if the person I want likes me for being me. The spell’s going to wear off gradually, and I shall get more and more like myself, you see.”
Sophie was so astonished that she finished her cake without noticing what kind it had been. “Why ten children?”
“Because that’s how many I want,” Said Martha.
“I never knew!”
“Well, it wasn’t much good going on about it when you were so busy backing Mother up about me making my fortune,” Martha said. “You thought Mother meant it. I did too, until Father died and I saw she was just trying to get rid of us- putting Lettie where she was bound to meet a lot of men and get married off, and sending me as far away as she could! I was so angry I thought, Why not? And I spoke to Lettie and she was just as angry and we fixed it up. We’re fine now. But we both feel bad about you. You’re far too clever and nice to be stuck in that shop for the rest of your life. We talked about it, but we couldn’t see what to do.”
“I’m all right,” Sophie protested. “Just a bit dull.”
“All right?” Martha exclaimed. “Yes, you prove you’re all right by not coming near here for months, and then turning up in a frightful gray dress and shawl, looking as if even I scare you! What’s Mother been doing to you?”
“Nothing,” Sophie said uncomfortably. “We’ve been rather busy. You shouldn’t talk about Fanny that way, Martha. She is your mother.”
“Yes, and I’m enough like her to understand her,” Martha retorted. “That’s why she sent me so far away, or tried to. Mother knows you don’t have to be unkind to someone in order to exploit them. She knows how dutiful you are. She knows you have this thing about being a failure because you’re only the eldest. She’s managed you perfectly and got you slaving away for her. I bet she doesn’t pay you.”
“I’m still an apprentice,” Sophie protested.
“So am I, but I get a wage. The Cesaris know I’m worth it,” said Martha. “That hat shop is making a mint these days, and all because of you! You made that green hat that makes the Mayor’s wife look like a stunning schoolgirl, didn’t you?”
“Caterpillar green. I trimmed it,” said Sophie.
“And the bonnet Jane Farrier was wearing when she met that nobleman,” Martha swept on. “You’re a genius with hats and clothes, and Mother knows it! You sealed your fate when you made Lettie that outfit last May Day. Now you earn the money while she goes off gadding-“
“She’s out doing the buying,” Sophie said.
“Buying!” Martha cried. Her thumbs whirled. “That takes her half a morning. I’ve seen her, Sophie, and heard the talk. She’s off in a hired carriage and new clothes on your earnings, visiting all the mansions down the valley! They’re saying she’s going to buy that big place down at Vale End and set up in style. And where are you?”
“Well, Fanny’s entitled to some pleasure after all her hard work bringing us up,” Sophie said. “I suppose I’ll inherit the shop.”
“What a fate!” Martha exclaimed. “Listen-“
But at that moment two empty cake racks were pulled away at the other end of the room, and an apprentice stuck his head through from the back somewhere “Thought I heard your voice, Lettie,” he said, grinning in the most friendly and flirtatious way. “The new baking’s just up. Tell them.” His head, curly and somewhat floury, disappeared again. Sophie thought he looked a nice lad. She longed to ask if he was the one Martha really liked, but she did not get a chance. Martha sprang up in a hurry, still talking.
“I must get the girls to carry all these through to the shop.” She said. “Help me with the end of this one.” She dragged out the nearest rack and Sophie helped her hump it past the door into the roaring, busy shop. “You must do something about yourself, Sophie,” Martha panted as they went. “Lettie kept saying she didn’t know what would happen to you when we weren’t around to give you some self-respect. She was right to be worried.”
In the shop Mrs. Cesari seized the rack from them in both massive arms, yelling instructions, and a line of people rushed away past Martha to fetch more. Sophie yelled goodbye and slipped away in the bustle. It did not seem right to take up more of Martha’s time. Besides, she wanted to be alone to think. She ran home. There were fireworks now, going up from the field by the river where the Fair was, competing with the blue bangs from Howl’s castle. Sophie felt more like an invalid than ever.
She thought and thought, and most of the following week, and all that happened was that she became confused and discontented. Things just did not seem to be the way she thought they were. She was amazed at Lettie and Martha. She had misunderstood them for years. But she could not believe Fanny was the kind of woman Martha said.
There was a lot of time for thinking, because Bessie duly left to be married and Sophie was mostly alone in the shop. Fanny did seem to be out a lot, gadding or not, and trade was slack after May Day. After three days Sophie plucked up enough courage to ask Fanny, “Shouldn’t I be earning a wage?”
“Of course, my love, with all you do!” Fanny answered warmly, fixing on a rose-trimmed hat in front of the shop mirror. “We’ll see about it as soon as I’ve done the accounts this evening.” Then she went out and did not come back until Sophie had shut the shop and taken that day’s hats through to the house to trim.
Sophie at first felt mean to have listened to Martha, but when Fanny did not mention a wage, either that evening or any time later that week, Sophie began to think that Martha had been right.
“Maybe I am being exploited,” she told a hat she was trimming with red silk and a bunch of wax cherries, “but someone has to do this or there will be no hats at all to sell.” She finished that hat and started on a stark black-and-white one, very modish, and a quite new thought came to her. “Does it matter if there are no hats to sell?” she asked it. She looked round at the assembled hats, on stands or waiting in a heap to be trimmed. “What good are you all?” she asked them. “You certainly aren’t doing me a scrap of good.”
And she was within an ace of leaving the house and settling out to seek her fortune, until she remembered she was the eldest and there was no point. She took up the hat again, sighing.
She was still discontented, alone in the shop next morning, when a very plain young woman customer stormed in, whirling a pleated mushroom bonnet by its ribbons. “Look at this!” the young lady shrieked. “You told me this was the same as the bonnet Jane Farrier was wearing when she met the Count. And you lied. Nothing has happened to me at all!”
“I’m not surprised,” Sophie said, before she had caught up with herself. “If you’re fool enough to wear that bonnet with a face like that, you wouldn’t have the wit to spot the King himself if he came a begging- if he hadn’t turned to stone first just at the sight of you.”
The customer glared. Then she threw the bonnet at Sophie and stormed out of the shop. Sophie carefully crammed the bonnet into the wastebasket, panting rather. The rule was : Lose your temper, lose a customer. She had just proven that rule. It troubled her to realize how very enjoyable it had been.
Sophie had no time to recover. There was the sound of wheels and horse hoofs and a carriage darkened the window. The shop bell clanged and the grandest customer she had ever seen sailed in, with a sable wrap drooping from her elbows and diamonds winking all over her dense black dress. Sophie’s eyes went to the lady’s wide hat first- real ostrich plume dyed to reflect the pinks and greens and blues winking in the diamonds and yet still look black. This was a wealthy hat. The lady’s face was carefully beautiful. The chestnut brown hair made her seem young, but…Sophie’s eyes took in the young man who followed the lady in, a slightly formless-faced person with reddish hair, quite well dressed, but pale and obviously upset. He stared at Sophie with a kind of beseeching horror. He was clearly younger than the lady. Sophie was puzzled.
“Miss Hatter?” the lady asked in a musical but commanding voice.
“Yes,” said Sophie. The man looked more upset than ever. Perhaps the lady was his mother.
“I hear you sell the most heavenly hats,” said the lady. “Show me.”
Sophie did not trust herself to answer in her present mood. She went and got out hats. None of them were in this lady’s class, but she could feel the man’s eyes following her and that made her uncomfortable. The sooner that lady discovered the hats were all wrong for her, the sooner this odd pair would go. She followed Fanny’s advice and got out the wrongest first.
The lady began rejecting hats instantly. “Dimples,” she said to the pink bonnet, and “Youth” to the caterpillar-green one. To the one of twinkles and veils she said, “Mysterious allure. How very obvious. What else have you?”
Sophie got out the modish black-and-white, which was the only hat even remotely likely to interest this lady.
The lady looked at it with contempt. “This one doesn’t do anything for anybody. You’re wasting my time, Miss Hatter.”
“Only because you came in and asked for hats” Sophie said. “This is only a small shop in a small town, Madam. Why did you-“ Behind the lady, the man gasped and seemed to be trying to signal warningly. “- bother to come in?” Sophie finished, wondering what was going on.
“I always bother when someone tries to set themselves up against the Witch of the Waste,” said the lady. “I’ve heard of you, Miss Hatter, and I don’t care for your competition or your attitude. I came to put a stop to you. There.” She spread out her hand in a flinging motion towards Sophie’s face.
“You mean you’re the Witch of the Waste?” Sophie quavered. Her voice seemed to have gone strange with fear and astonishment.
“I am,” said the lady. “And let that teach you to meddle with things that belong to me.”
“I don’t think I did. There must be some mistake,” Sophie croaked. The man was now staring at her in utter horror, though she could not see why.
“No mistake, Miss Hatter,” said the Witch. “Come, Gaston.” She turned and swept to the shop door. While the man was humbly opening it for her, she turned back to Sophie. “By the way, you won’t be able to tell anyone you’re under a spell,” she said. The shop door tolled like a funeral bell as she left.
Sophie put her hands to her face, wondering what the man had stared at. She felt soft, leathery wrinkles. She looked at her hands. They were wrinkled too, and skinny, with large veins in the back and knuckles like knobs. She pulled her gray skirt against her legs and looked down at skinny, decrepit ankles and feet which had made her shoes all knobbly. They were the legs of someone about ninety and they seemed to be real.
Sophie got herself to the mirror, and found she had to hobble. The face in the mirror was quite calm, because it was what she expected to see. It was the face of a gaunt old woman, withered and brownish, surrounded by wispy white hair. Her own eyes, yellow and watery, stared out at her, looking rather tragic.
“Don’t worry, old thing,” Sophie said to the face. “You look quite healthy. Besides, this is much more like you really are.”
She thought about her situation, quite calmly. Everything seemed to have gone calm and remote. She was not even particularly angry with the Witch of the Waste.
“Well, of course I shall have to do for her when I get the chance,” she told herself, “but meanwhile, if Lettie and Martha can stand being one another, I can stand being like this. But I can’t stay here. Fanny would have a fit. Let’s see. This gray dress is quite suitable, but I shall need my shawl and some food.”
She hobbled over to the shop door and carefully put up the CLOSED notice. Her joints creaked as she moved. She had to walk bowed and slow. But she was relieved to discover that she was quite a hale old woman. She did not feel weak or ill, just stiff. She hobbled to collect her shawl, and wrapped it over her head and shoulders, as old women did. Then she shuffled through into the house, where she collected her purse with a few coins in it and a parcel or bread and cheese. She let herself out of the house, carefully hiding the key in the usual place, and hobbled away down the street, surprised at how calm she still felt.
She did wonder if she should say goodbye to Martha. But she did not like the idea of Martha not knowing her. It was best just to go. Sophie decided she would write to both her sisters when she got wherever she was going, and shuffled on, though the field where the Fair had been, over the bridge, and on into the country lanes beyond. It was a warm spring day. Sophie discovered that being a crone did not stop her from enjoying the sight and smell of may in the hedgerows, though her sight was a little blurred. Her back began to ache. She hobbled sturdily enough, but she needed a stick. She searched the hedges as she went for a loose stake of some kind.
Evidently, her eyes were not as good as they had been. She thought she saw a stick, a mile or so on, but when she hauled on it, it proved to be the bottom end of an old scarecrow someone had thrown into the hedge. Sophie heaved the thing upright. It had a withered turnip for a face. Sophie found she had some fellow feeling for it. Instead of pulling it to pieces and taking the stick, she stuck it between two branches of the hedge, so that it stood looming rakishly above the may, with the tattered sleeves on its stick arms fluttering over the hedge.
“There,” she said, and her crackled old voice surprised her into giving a cracked old cackle of laughter. “Neither of us are up to much, are we, my friend? Maybe you’ll get back to your field if I leave you where people can see you.” She set off up the lane again, but a thought struck her and she turned back. “Now if I wasn’t doomed to failure because of my position in the family,” she told the scarecrow, “you could come to life and offer me help in making my fortune. But I wish you luck anyway.”
She cackled again as she walked on. Perhaps she was a little mad, but old women often were.
She found a stick an hour or so later when she sat down on the bank to rest and eat her bread and cheese. There were noises in the hedge behind her: little strangled squeakings, followed by heavings that shook may petals off the hedge. Sophie crawled on her bony knees to peer past leaves and flowers and thorns into the inside of the hedge, and discovered a thin gray dog in there. It was hopelessly trapped by a stout stick which had somehow got twisted into a rope that was tied around its neck. The stick had wedged itself between two branches on the hedge so that the dog could barely move. It rolled its eyes wildly at Sophie’s peering face.
As a girl, Sophie was scared of all dogs. Even as an old woman, she was quite alarmed by the two rows of white fangs in the creature’s open jaws. But she said to herself, “The way I am now, it’s scarcely worth worrying about,” and felt in her sewing pocket for her scissors. She reached into the hedge with the scissors and sawed away at the rope around the dog’s neck.
The dog was very wild. It flinched away from her and growled. But Sophie sawed bravely on. “You’ll starve or throttle to death, my friend,” she told the dog in her cracked old voice, “unless you let me cut you loose. In fact, I think someone has tried to throttle you already. Maybe that accounts for your wildness.” The rope had been tied quite tightly around the dog’s neck and the stick had been twisted viciously into it. It took a lot of sawing before the rope parted and the dog was able to drag itself out from under the stick.
“Would you like some bread and cheese?” Sophie asked it then. But the dog growled at her, forced its way out through the opposite side of the hedge, and slunk away. “There’s gratitude for you!” Sophie said, rubbing her prickled arms. “But you left me a gift in spite of yourself.” She pulled the stick that had trapped the dog out of the hedge and found it was a proper walking stick, well trimmed and tipped with iron. Sophie finished her bread and cheese and set off walking again. The lane became steeper and steeper and she found the stick a great help. It was also something to talk to. Sophie thumped along with a will, chatting to her stick. After all, old people often talk to themselves.
“There’s two encounters,” she said, “and not a scrap of magical gratitude from either. Still, you’re a good stick. I’ m not grumbling. But I’m surely due to have a third encounter, magical or not. In fact, I insist on one. I wonder what it will be.”
The third encounter came towards the end of the afternoon when Sophie had worked her way quite high into the hills. A countryman came whistling down the lane toward her. A shepherd, Sophie thought, going home after seeing to his sheep. He was a well-set-up young fellow of forty or so. “Gracious!” Sophie said to herself. “This morning I’d have seen him as an old man. How one’s point of view does alter!”
When the shepherd saw Sophie mumbling to herself, he moved rather carefully over to the other side of the lane and called out with great heartiness, “Good evening to you, Mother! Where are you off to?”
“Mother?” said Sophie. “I’m not your mother, young man!”
“A manner of speaking,” the shepherd said, edging along against the opposite hedge. “I was only meaning a polite inquiry, seeing you walk into the hills at the end of the day. You won’t get down into Upper Folding before nightfall, will you?”
Sophie had not considered this. She stood in the road and thought about it. “It doesn’t matter really,” she said, half to herself. “You can’t be fussy when you’re off to seek your fortune.”
“Can’t you indeed, Mother?” said the shepherd. He had now edged himself downhill of Sophie and seemed to feel better for it. “Then I wish you good luck, Mother, provided your fortune don’t have nothing to do with charming folks’ cattle.” And he took off down the road in great strides, almost running, but not quite.
Sophie stared after him indignantly. “He thought I was a witch!” she said to her stick. She had half a mind to scare the shepherd by shouting nasty things after him, but that seemed a little unkind. She plugged on uphill, mumbling. Shortly, the hedges gave way to bare banks and the land beyond became heathery upland, with a lot of steepness beyond that covered with yellow, rattling grass. Sophie kept grimly on. By now her knobby old feet ached, and her back, and her knees. She became too tired to mumble and simply plugged on, panting, until the sun was quite low. And all at once it became quite clear to Sophie that she could not walk a step further.
She collapsed onto a stone by the wayside, wondering what she would do now. “The only fortune I can think of is a comfortable chair!” she gasped.
The stone proved to be on a sort of headland, which gave Sophie a magnificent view of the way she had come. There was most of the valley spread out beneath her in the setting sun, all fields and walls and hedges, the winding of the river, and the fine mansions of rich people glowing our from clumps of trees, right down to blue mountains in the far distance. Just below her was Market Chipping. Sophie could look down into its well-known streets. There was Market Square and Cesari’s. She could have tossed a stone down the chimney pots of the house next to the hat shop.
“How near it still is!” Sophie told her stick in dismay. “All that walking just to get above my own rooftop!”
It got cold on the stone as the sun went down. An unpleasant wind blew whichever way Sophie turned to avoid it. Now it no longer seemed so unimportant that she would be out on the hills during the night. She found herself thinking more and more of a comfortable chair and a fireside, and also of darkness and wild animals. But if she went back to Market Chipping, it would be the middle of the night before she got there. She might just as well go on. She sighed and stood up, creaking. It was awful. She ached all over.
“I never realized before what old people had to put up with!” she panted as she labored uphill. “Still, I don’t think wolves will eat me. I must be far too dry and tough. That’s one comfort.”
Night was coming down fast now and the heathery uplands were blue-gray. The wind was also sharper. Sophie’s panting and the creaking of her limbs were so loud in her ears that it took her a while to notice that some of the grinding and puffing was not coming from herself at all. She looked up blurrily.
Wizard Howl’s castle was rumbling and bumping toward her across the moorland. Black smoke was blowing up in clouds from behind its black battlements. It looked tall and thin and heavy and ugly and very sinister indeed. Sophie leaned on her stick and watched it. She was not particularly frightened. She wondered how it moved. But the main thing in her mind was that all that smoke must mean a large fireside somewhere inside those tall black walls.
“Well, why not?” she said to her stick. “Wizard Howl is not likely to want my soul for his collection. He only takes young girls.”
She raised her stick and waved it imperiously at the castle.
“Stop!” she shrieked.
The castle obediently came to a rumbling, grinding halt about fifty feet uphill from her. Sophie felt rather gratified as she hobbled toward it.
“I am Martha,” said her sister. “Who did you catch cutting up Lettie’s silk drawers? I never told Lettie that. Did you?”
“No,” said Sophie, quite stunned. She could see it was Martha now. There was Martha’s tilt to Lettie’s head, and Martha’s way of clasping her hands round her knees with her thumbs twiddling. “Why?”
“I’ve been dreading you coming to see me,” Martha said, “because I knew I’d have to tell you. It’s a relief now I have. Promise you won’t tell anyone. I know you won’t tell if you promise. You’re so honorable.”
“I promise,” Sophie said. “But why? How?”
“Lettie and I arranged it,” Martha said, twiddling her thumbs, “because Lettie wanted to learn witchcraft and I didn’t. Lettie’s got brains, and she wants a future where she can use them-only try telling that to Mother! Mother’s too jealous of Lettie even to admit she has brains!”
Sophie could not believe Fanny was like that, but she let it pass. “But what about you?”
“Eat your cake,” said Martha. “It’s good. Oh, yes, I can be clever too. It only took me two weeks at Mrs. Fairfax’s to find the spell we’re using. I got up at night and read her books secretly, and it was easy really. Then I asked if I could visit my family and Mrs. Fairfax said yes. She’s a dear. She thought I was homesick. So I took the spell and came here, and Lettie went back to Mrs. Fairfax pretending to be me. The difficult part was the first week, when I didn’t know all the things I was supposed to know. It was awful. But I discovered that people like me-they do, you know, if you like them-and then it was all right. And Mrs. Fairfax hasn’t kicked Lettie out, so I suppose she managed too.”
Sophie chomped at cake she was not really tasting. “But what made you want to do this?”
Martha rocked on her stool, grinning all over Lettie’s face, twirling her thumbs in a happy pink whirl. “I want to get married and have ten children.”
“You’re not quite old enough!” said Sophie.
“Not quite,” Martha agreed. “But you can see I’ve got to start quite soon in order to fit ten children in. And this way gives me time to wait and see if the person I want likes me for being me. The spell’s going to wear off gradually, and I shall get more and more like myself, you see.”
Sophie was so astonished that she finished her cake without noticing what kind it had been. “Why ten children?”
“Because that’s how many I want,” Said Martha.
“I never knew!”
“Well, it wasn’t much good going on about it when you were so busy backing Mother up about me making my fortune,” Martha said. “You thought Mother meant it. I did too, until Father died and I saw she was just trying to get rid of us- putting Lettie where she was bound to meet a lot of men and get married off, and sending me as far away as she could! I was so angry I thought, Why not? And I spoke to Lettie and she was just as angry and we fixed it up. We’re fine now. But we both feel bad about you. You’re far too clever and nice to be stuck in that shop for the rest of your life. We talked about it, but we couldn’t see what to do.”
“I’m all right,” Sophie protested. “Just a bit dull.”
“All right?” Martha exclaimed. “Yes, you prove you’re all right by not coming near here for months, and then turning up in a frightful gray dress and shawl, looking as if even I scare you! What’s Mother been doing to you?”
“Nothing,” Sophie said uncomfortably. “We’ve been rather busy. You shouldn’t talk about Fanny that way, Martha. She is your mother.”
“Yes, and I’m enough like her to understand her,” Martha retorted. “That’s why she sent me so far away, or tried to. Mother knows you don’t have to be unkind to someone in order to exploit them. She knows how dutiful you are. She knows you have this thing about being a failure because you’re only the eldest. She’s managed you perfectly and got you slaving away for her. I bet she doesn’t pay you.”
“I’m still an apprentice,” Sophie protested.
“So am I, but I get a wage. The Cesaris know I’m worth it,” said Martha. “That hat shop is making a mint these days, and all because of you! You made that green hat that makes the Mayor’s wife look like a stunning schoolgirl, didn’t you?”
“Caterpillar green. I trimmed it,” said Sophie.
“And the bonnet Jane Farrier was wearing when she met that nobleman,” Martha swept on. “You’re a genius with hats and clothes, and Mother knows it! You sealed your fate when you made Lettie that outfit last May Day. Now you earn the money while she goes off gadding-“
“She’s out doing the buying,” Sophie said.
“Buying!” Martha cried. Her thumbs whirled. “That takes her half a morning. I’ve seen her, Sophie, and heard the talk. She’s off in a hired carriage and new clothes on your earnings, visiting all the mansions down the valley! They’re saying she’s going to buy that big place down at Vale End and set up in style. And where are you?”
“Well, Fanny’s entitled to some pleasure after all her hard work bringing us up,” Sophie said. “I suppose I’ll inherit the shop.”
“What a fate!” Martha exclaimed. “Listen-“
But at that moment two empty cake racks were pulled away at the other end of the room, and an apprentice stuck his head through from the back somewhere “Thought I heard your voice, Lettie,” he said, grinning in the most friendly and flirtatious way. “The new baking’s just up. Tell them.” His head, curly and somewhat floury, disappeared again. Sophie thought he looked a nice lad. She longed to ask if he was the one Martha really liked, but she did not get a chance. Martha sprang up in a hurry, still talking.
“I must get the girls to carry all these through to the shop.” She said. “Help me with the end of this one.” She dragged out the nearest rack and Sophie helped her hump it past the door into the roaring, busy shop. “You must do something about yourself, Sophie,” Martha panted as they went. “Lettie kept saying she didn’t know what would happen to you when we weren’t around to give you some self-respect. She was right to be worried.”
In the shop Mrs. Cesari seized the rack from them in both massive arms, yelling instructions, and a line of people rushed away past Martha to fetch more. Sophie yelled goodbye and slipped away in the bustle. It did not seem right to take up more of Martha’s time. Besides, she wanted to be alone to think. She ran home. There were fireworks now, going up from the field by the river where the Fair was, competing with the blue bangs from Howl’s castle. Sophie felt more like an invalid than ever.
She thought and thought, and most of the following week, and all that happened was that she became confused and discontented. Things just did not seem to be the way she thought they were. She was amazed at Lettie and Martha. She had misunderstood them for years. But she could not believe Fanny was the kind of woman Martha said.
There was a lot of time for thinking, because Bessie duly left to be married and Sophie was mostly alone in the shop. Fanny did seem to be out a lot, gadding or not, and trade was slack after May Day. After three days Sophie plucked up enough courage to ask Fanny, “Shouldn’t I be earning a wage?”
“Of course, my love, with all you do!” Fanny answered warmly, fixing on a rose-trimmed hat in front of the shop mirror. “We’ll see about it as soon as I’ve done the accounts this evening.” Then she went out and did not come back until Sophie had shut the shop and taken that day’s hats through to the house to trim.
Sophie at first felt mean to have listened to Martha, but when Fanny did not mention a wage, either that evening or any time later that week, Sophie began to think that Martha had been right.
“Maybe I am being exploited,” she told a hat she was trimming with red silk and a bunch of wax cherries, “but someone has to do this or there will be no hats at all to sell.” She finished that hat and started on a stark black-and-white one, very modish, and a quite new thought came to her. “Does it matter if there are no hats to sell?” she asked it. She looked round at the assembled hats, on stands or waiting in a heap to be trimmed. “What good are you all?” she asked them. “You certainly aren’t doing me a scrap of good.”
And she was within an ace of leaving the house and settling out to seek her fortune, until she remembered she was the eldest and there was no point. She took up the hat again, sighing.
She was still discontented, alone in the shop next morning, when a very plain young woman customer stormed in, whirling a pleated mushroom bonnet by its ribbons. “Look at this!” the young lady shrieked. “You told me this was the same as the bonnet Jane Farrier was wearing when she met the Count. And you lied. Nothing has happened to me at all!”
“I’m not surprised,” Sophie said, before she had caught up with herself. “If you’re fool enough to wear that bonnet with a face like that, you wouldn’t have the wit to spot the King himself if he came a begging- if he hadn’t turned to stone first just at the sight of you.”
The customer glared. Then she threw the bonnet at Sophie and stormed out of the shop. Sophie carefully crammed the bonnet into the wastebasket, panting rather. The rule was : Lose your temper, lose a customer. She had just proven that rule. It troubled her to realize how very enjoyable it had been.
Sophie had no time to recover. There was the sound of wheels and horse hoofs and a carriage darkened the window. The shop bell clanged and the grandest customer she had ever seen sailed in, with a sable wrap drooping from her elbows and diamonds winking all over her dense black dress. Sophie’s eyes went to the lady’s wide hat first- real ostrich plume dyed to reflect the pinks and greens and blues winking in the diamonds and yet still look black. This was a wealthy hat. The lady’s face was carefully beautiful. The chestnut brown hair made her seem young, but…Sophie’s eyes took in the young man who followed the lady in, a slightly formless-faced person with reddish hair, quite well dressed, but pale and obviously upset. He stared at Sophie with a kind of beseeching horror. He was clearly younger than the lady. Sophie was puzzled.
“Miss Hatter?” the lady asked in a musical but commanding voice.
“Yes,” said Sophie. The man looked more upset than ever. Perhaps the lady was his mother.
“I hear you sell the most heavenly hats,” said the lady. “Show me.”
Sophie did not trust herself to answer in her present mood. She went and got out hats. None of them were in this lady’s class, but she could feel the man’s eyes following her and that made her uncomfortable. The sooner that lady discovered the hats were all wrong for her, the sooner this odd pair would go. She followed Fanny’s advice and got out the wrongest first.
The lady began rejecting hats instantly. “Dimples,” she said to the pink bonnet, and “Youth” to the caterpillar-green one. To the one of twinkles and veils she said, “Mysterious allure. How very obvious. What else have you?”
Sophie got out the modish black-and-white, which was the only hat even remotely likely to interest this lady.
The lady looked at it with contempt. “This one doesn’t do anything for anybody. You’re wasting my time, Miss Hatter.”
“Only because you came in and asked for hats” Sophie said. “This is only a small shop in a small town, Madam. Why did you-“ Behind the lady, the man gasped and seemed to be trying to signal warningly. “- bother to come in?” Sophie finished, wondering what was going on.
“I always bother when someone tries to set themselves up against the Witch of the Waste,” said the lady. “I’ve heard of you, Miss Hatter, and I don’t care for your competition or your attitude. I came to put a stop to you. There.” She spread out her hand in a flinging motion towards Sophie’s face.
“You mean you’re the Witch of the Waste?” Sophie quavered. Her voice seemed to have gone strange with fear and astonishment.
“I am,” said the lady. “And let that teach you to meddle with things that belong to me.”
“I don’t think I did. There must be some mistake,” Sophie croaked. The man was now staring at her in utter horror, though she could not see why.
“No mistake, Miss Hatter,” said the Witch. “Come, Gaston.” She turned and swept to the shop door. While the man was humbly opening it for her, she turned back to Sophie. “By the way, you won’t be able to tell anyone you’re under a spell,” she said. The shop door tolled like a funeral bell as she left.
Sophie put her hands to her face, wondering what the man had stared at. She felt soft, leathery wrinkles. She looked at her hands. They were wrinkled too, and skinny, with large veins in the back and knuckles like knobs. She pulled her gray skirt against her legs and looked down at skinny, decrepit ankles and feet which had made her shoes all knobbly. They were the legs of someone about ninety and they seemed to be real.
Sophie got herself to the mirror, and found she had to hobble. The face in the mirror was quite calm, because it was what she expected to see. It was the face of a gaunt old woman, withered and brownish, surrounded by wispy white hair. Her own eyes, yellow and watery, stared out at her, looking rather tragic.
“Don’t worry, old thing,” Sophie said to the face. “You look quite healthy. Besides, this is much more like you really are.”
She thought about her situation, quite calmly. Everything seemed to have gone calm and remote. She was not even particularly angry with the Witch of the Waste.
“Well, of course I shall have to do for her when I get the chance,” she told herself, “but meanwhile, if Lettie and Martha can stand being one another, I can stand being like this. But I can’t stay here. Fanny would have a fit. Let’s see. This gray dress is quite suitable, but I shall need my shawl and some food.”
She hobbled over to the shop door and carefully put up the CLOSED notice. Her joints creaked as she moved. She had to walk bowed and slow. But she was relieved to discover that she was quite a hale old woman. She did not feel weak or ill, just stiff. She hobbled to collect her shawl, and wrapped it over her head and shoulders, as old women did. Then she shuffled through into the house, where she collected her purse with a few coins in it and a parcel or bread and cheese. She let herself out of the house, carefully hiding the key in the usual place, and hobbled away down the street, surprised at how calm she still felt.
She did wonder if she should say goodbye to Martha. But she did not like the idea of Martha not knowing her. It was best just to go. Sophie decided she would write to both her sisters when she got wherever she was going, and shuffled on, though the field where the Fair had been, over the bridge, and on into the country lanes beyond. It was a warm spring day. Sophie discovered that being a crone did not stop her from enjoying the sight and smell of may in the hedgerows, though her sight was a little blurred. Her back began to ache. She hobbled sturdily enough, but she needed a stick. She searched the hedges as she went for a loose stake of some kind.
Evidently, her eyes were not as good as they had been. She thought she saw a stick, a mile or so on, but when she hauled on it, it proved to be the bottom end of an old scarecrow someone had thrown into the hedge. Sophie heaved the thing upright. It had a withered turnip for a face. Sophie found she had some fellow feeling for it. Instead of pulling it to pieces and taking the stick, she stuck it between two branches of the hedge, so that it stood looming rakishly above the may, with the tattered sleeves on its stick arms fluttering over the hedge.
“There,” she said, and her crackled old voice surprised her into giving a cracked old cackle of laughter. “Neither of us are up to much, are we, my friend? Maybe you’ll get back to your field if I leave you where people can see you.” She set off up the lane again, but a thought struck her and she turned back. “Now if I wasn’t doomed to failure because of my position in the family,” she told the scarecrow, “you could come to life and offer me help in making my fortune. But I wish you luck anyway.”
She cackled again as she walked on. Perhaps she was a little mad, but old women often were.
She found a stick an hour or so later when she sat down on the bank to rest and eat her bread and cheese. There were noises in the hedge behind her: little strangled squeakings, followed by heavings that shook may petals off the hedge. Sophie crawled on her bony knees to peer past leaves and flowers and thorns into the inside of the hedge, and discovered a thin gray dog in there. It was hopelessly trapped by a stout stick which had somehow got twisted into a rope that was tied around its neck. The stick had wedged itself between two branches on the hedge so that the dog could barely move. It rolled its eyes wildly at Sophie’s peering face.
As a girl, Sophie was scared of all dogs. Even as an old woman, she was quite alarmed by the two rows of white fangs in the creature’s open jaws. But she said to herself, “The way I am now, it’s scarcely worth worrying about,” and felt in her sewing pocket for her scissors. She reached into the hedge with the scissors and sawed away at the rope around the dog’s neck.
The dog was very wild. It flinched away from her and growled. But Sophie sawed bravely on. “You’ll starve or throttle to death, my friend,” she told the dog in her cracked old voice, “unless you let me cut you loose. In fact, I think someone has tried to throttle you already. Maybe that accounts for your wildness.” The rope had been tied quite tightly around the dog’s neck and the stick had been twisted viciously into it. It took a lot of sawing before the rope parted and the dog was able to drag itself out from under the stick.
“Would you like some bread and cheese?” Sophie asked it then. But the dog growled at her, forced its way out through the opposite side of the hedge, and slunk away. “There’s gratitude for you!” Sophie said, rubbing her prickled arms. “But you left me a gift in spite of yourself.” She pulled the stick that had trapped the dog out of the hedge and found it was a proper walking stick, well trimmed and tipped with iron. Sophie finished her bread and cheese and set off walking again. The lane became steeper and steeper and she found the stick a great help. It was also something to talk to. Sophie thumped along with a will, chatting to her stick. After all, old people often talk to themselves.
“There’s two encounters,” she said, “and not a scrap of magical gratitude from either. Still, you’re a good stick. I’ m not grumbling. But I’m surely due to have a third encounter, magical or not. In fact, I insist on one. I wonder what it will be.”
The third encounter came towards the end of the afternoon when Sophie had worked her way quite high into the hills. A countryman came whistling down the lane toward her. A shepherd, Sophie thought, going home after seeing to his sheep. He was a well-set-up young fellow of forty or so. “Gracious!” Sophie said to herself. “This morning I’d have seen him as an old man. How one’s point of view does alter!”
When the shepherd saw Sophie mumbling to herself, he moved rather carefully over to the other side of the lane and called out with great heartiness, “Good evening to you, Mother! Where are you off to?”
“Mother?” said Sophie. “I’m not your mother, young man!”
“A manner of speaking,” the shepherd said, edging along against the opposite hedge. “I was only meaning a polite inquiry, seeing you walk into the hills at the end of the day. You won’t get down into Upper Folding before nightfall, will you?”
Sophie had not considered this. She stood in the road and thought about it. “It doesn’t matter really,” she said, half to herself. “You can’t be fussy when you’re off to seek your fortune.”
“Can’t you indeed, Mother?” said the shepherd. He had now edged himself downhill of Sophie and seemed to feel better for it. “Then I wish you good luck, Mother, provided your fortune don’t have nothing to do with charming folks’ cattle.” And he took off down the road in great strides, almost running, but not quite.
Sophie stared after him indignantly. “He thought I was a witch!” she said to her stick. She had half a mind to scare the shepherd by shouting nasty things after him, but that seemed a little unkind. She plugged on uphill, mumbling. Shortly, the hedges gave way to bare banks and the land beyond became heathery upland, with a lot of steepness beyond that covered with yellow, rattling grass. Sophie kept grimly on. By now her knobby old feet ached, and her back, and her knees. She became too tired to mumble and simply plugged on, panting, until the sun was quite low. And all at once it became quite clear to Sophie that she could not walk a step further.
She collapsed onto a stone by the wayside, wondering what she would do now. “The only fortune I can think of is a comfortable chair!” she gasped.
The stone proved to be on a sort of headland, which gave Sophie a magnificent view of the way she had come. There was most of the valley spread out beneath her in the setting sun, all fields and walls and hedges, the winding of the river, and the fine mansions of rich people glowing our from clumps of trees, right down to blue mountains in the far distance. Just below her was Market Chipping. Sophie could look down into its well-known streets. There was Market Square and Cesari’s. She could have tossed a stone down the chimney pots of the house next to the hat shop.
“How near it still is!” Sophie told her stick in dismay. “All that walking just to get above my own rooftop!”
It got cold on the stone as the sun went down. An unpleasant wind blew whichever way Sophie turned to avoid it. Now it no longer seemed so unimportant that she would be out on the hills during the night. She found herself thinking more and more of a comfortable chair and a fireside, and also of darkness and wild animals. But if she went back to Market Chipping, it would be the middle of the night before she got there. She might just as well go on. She sighed and stood up, creaking. It was awful. She ached all over.
“I never realized before what old people had to put up with!” she panted as she labored uphill. “Still, I don’t think wolves will eat me. I must be far too dry and tough. That’s one comfort.”
Night was coming down fast now and the heathery uplands were blue-gray. The wind was also sharper. Sophie’s panting and the creaking of her limbs were so loud in her ears that it took her a while to notice that some of the grinding and puffing was not coming from herself at all. She looked up blurrily.
Wizard Howl’s castle was rumbling and bumping toward her across the moorland. Black smoke was blowing up in clouds from behind its black battlements. It looked tall and thin and heavy and ugly and very sinister indeed. Sophie leaned on her stick and watched it. She was not particularly frightened. She wondered how it moved. But the main thing in her mind was that all that smoke must mean a large fireside somewhere inside those tall black walls.
“Well, why not?” she said to her stick. “Wizard Howl is not likely to want my soul for his collection. He only takes young girls.”
She raised her stick and waved it imperiously at the castle.
“Stop!” she shrieked.
The castle obediently came to a rumbling, grinding halt about fifty feet uphill from her. Sophie felt rather gratified as she hobbled toward it.
Chapter 1 Sophie talks to hats
In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first, and worst, if the three of you set out to seek your fortunes.
Sophie Hatter was the eldest of three sisters. She was not even the child of a poor woodcutter, which might have given her some chance of success. Her parents were well to do and kept a ladies’ hat shop in the prosperous town of Market Chipping. True, her own mother died when Sophie was just two years old and her sister Lettie was one year old, and their father married his youngest shop assistant, a pretty blonde girl called Fanny. Fanny shortly gave birth to the third sister, Martha. This ought to have made Sophie and Lettie into Ugly Sisters, but in fact all three girls grew up very pretty indeed, though Lettie was the one everyone said was most beautiful. Fanny treated all three girls with the same kindness and did not favor Martha in the least.
Mr. Hatter was proud of his three daughters and sent them all to the best school in town. Sophie was the most studious. She read a great deal, and very soon realized how little chance she had of an interesting future. It was a disappointment to her, but she was still happy enough, looking after her sisters and grooming Martha to seek her fortune when the time came. Since Fanny was always busy in the shop, Sophie was the one who looked after the younger two. There was a certain amount of screaming and hair-pulling between those younger two. Lettie was by no means resigned to being the one who, next to Sophie, was bound to be the least successful.
“It’s not fair!” Lettie would shout. “Why should Martha have the best of it just because she was born the youngest? I shall marry a prince, so there!”
To which Martha always retorted that she would end up disgustingly rich without having to marry anybody.
Then Sophie would have to drag them apart and mend their clothes. She was very deft with her needle. As time went on, she made clothes for her sisters too. There was one deep rose outfit she made for Lettie, the May Day before this story really starts, which Fanny said looked as if it had come from the most expensive shop in Kingsbury.
About this time everyone began talking of the Witch of the Waste again. It was said that the Witch had threatened the life of the King’s daughter and that the King had commanded his personal magician, Wizard Suliman, to go into the Waste and deal with the Witch. And it seemed that Wizard Suliman had not only failed to deal with the Witch: he had got himself killed by her.
So when, a few months after that, a tall black castle suddenly appeared on the hills above Market Chipping, blowing clouds of black smoke from its four tall, thin turrets, everybody was fairly sure that the Witch had moved out of the Waste again and was about to terrorize the country the way she used to fifty years ago. People got very scared indeed. Nobody went out alone, particularly, at night. What made it all the scarier was that the castle did not stay in the same place. Sometimes it was a tall black smudge on the moors to the northwest, sometimes it reared above the rocks to the east, and sometimes it came right downhill to sit in the heather only just beyond the last farm to the north. You could see it actually moving sometimes, with smoke pouring out from the turrets in dirty gray gusts. For a while everyone was certain that the castle would come right down into the valley before long, and the Mayor talked of sending to the King for help.
But the castle stayed roving about the hills, and it was learned that it did not belong to the Witch but to Wizard Howl. Wizard Howl was bad enough. Though he did not seem to want to leave the hills, he was known to amuse himself by collecting young girls and sucking the souls from them. Or some people said he ate their hearts. He was an utterly cold-blooded and heartless wizard and no young girl was safe from him if he caught her on her own. Sophie, Lettie, and Martha, along with all the other girls in Market Chipping, were warned never to go out alone, which was a great annoyance to them. They wondered what use Wizard Howl found for all the souls he collected.
They had other things on their minds before long, however, for Mr. Hatter had died suddenly just as Sophie was old enough to leave school for good. It then appeared that Mr. Hatter had been altogether too proud of his daughters. The school fees he had been paying had left the shop with quite heavy debts. When the funeral was over, Fanny sat down in the parlor in the house next door to the shop and explained the situation.
“You’ll all have to leave that school, I’m afraid,” she said. “I’ve been doing sums back and front and sideways, and the only way I can see to keep the business going and take care of the three of you is to see you all settled in a promising apprenticeship somewhere. It isn’t practical to have you all in the shop. I can’t afford it. So this is what I’ve decided. Lettie first-“
Lettie looked up, glowing with health and beauty which even sorrow and black clothes could not hide. “I want to go on learning,” she said.
“So you shall, love,” said Fanny. “I’ve arranged for you to be apprenticed to Cesari’s, the pastry cook in Market Square. They’ve a name for treating their learners like kings and queens, and you should be very happy there, as well as learning a useful trade. Mrs.Cesari’s a good customer and a good friend, and she’s agreed to squeeze you in as a favor.”
Lettie laughed in a way that showed she was not at all pleased. “Well, thank you,” she said. “Isn’t it lucky that I like cooking?”
Fanny looked relieved. Lettie could be awkwardly strong-minded at times. “Now Martha,” she said. “I know you’re full young to go out and work, so I’ve thought around for something that would give you a long, quiet apprenticeship and go on being useful to you whatever you decide to do after that. You know my old school friend Annabel Fairfax?”
Martha, who was slender and fair, fixed her big gray eyes on Fanny almost as strong-mindedly as Lettie. “You mean the one who talks such a lot,” she said. “Isn’t she a witch?”
“Yes, with a lovely house and clients all over the Folding Valley,” Fanny said eagerly. “She’s a good woman, Martha. She’ll introduce you to grand people she knows in Kingsbury. You’ll be all set up in life when she’s done with you.”
“She’s a nice lady,” Martha conceded. “All right.”
Sophie, listening, felt that Fanny had worked everything out just as it should be. Lettie, as the second daughter, was never likely to come to much, so Fanny had put her where she might meet a handsome young apprentice and live happily ever after. Martha, who was bound to strike out and make her fortune, would have witchcraft and rich friends to help her. As for Sophie herself, Sophie had no doubt what was coming. It did not surprise her when Fanny said, “Now, Sophie dear, it seems only right and just that you should inherit the hat shop when I retire, being the eldest as you are. So I’ve decided to take you on as an apprentice myself, to give you a chance to learn the trade. How do you feel about that?”
Sophie could hardly say that she simple felt resigned to the hat trade. She thanked Fanny gratefully.
“So that’s settled then!” Fanny said.
The next day Sophie helped Martha pack her clothes in a box, and the morning after that they all saw her off on the carrier’s cart, looking small and upright and nervous. For the way to Upper Folding, where Mrs. Fairfax lived, lay over the hills past Wizard Howl’s moving castle. Martha was understandably scared.
“ She’ll be all right,” said Lettie. Lettie refused all help with the packing. When the carrier’s cart was out of sight, Lettie crammed all her possessions into a pillow case and paid the neighbor’s bootboy sixpence to wheel it in a wheelbarrow to Cesari’s in Market Square. Lettie marched behind the wheelbarrow looking much more cheerful than Sophie expected. Indeed. She had the air of shaking the dust of the hat shop off her feet.
The bootboy brought back a scribbled note from Lettie, saying she had put her things in the girls’ dormitory and Cesari’s seemed great fun. A week later the carrier brought a letter from Martha to say that Martha had arrived safely and that Mrs. Fairfax was “a great dear and used honey with everything. She keeps bees.” That was all Sophie heard of her sisters for quite a while because she started her own apprenticeship the day Martha and Lettie left.
Sophie of course knew the hat trade quite well already. Since she was a tiny child she had run in and out of the big workshed across the yard where the hats were damped and molded on blocks, and flowers and fruit and other trimmings were made from wax and silk. She knew the people who worked there. Most of them had been there when her father was a boy. She knew Bessie, the only remaining shop assistant. She knew the customers who bought the hats and the man who drove the cart which fetched raw straw hats in from the country to be shaped on the blocks in the shed. She knew the other suppliers and how you made felt for winter hats. There was not really much that Fanny could teach her, except perhaps the best way to get a customer to buy a hat.
“You lead up to the right hat, love,” Fanny said. “Show them the ones that won’t quite do first, so they know the difference as soon as they put the right one on.”
In fact, Sophie did not sell hats very much. After a day or so observing in the workshed, and another day going round the clothier and the silk merchant’s with Fanny, Fanny set her to trimming hats. Sophie sat in a small alcove at the back of the shop, sewing roses to bonnets and veiling to velours, lining all of them with silk and arranging wax fruit and ribbons stylishly on the outsides. She was good at it. She quite liked doing it. But she felt so isolated and a little dull. The workshop people were too old to be much fun and, besides, they treated her as someone apart who was going to inherit the business someday. Bessie treated her the same way. Bessie’s only talk anyway was about the farmer she was going to marry the week after May Day. Sophie rather envied Fanny, who could bustle off to bargain with the silk merchant whenever she wanted.
The most interesting thing was the talk from the customers. Nobody can buy a hat without gossiping. Sophie sat in her alcove and stitched and heard that the Mayor never would eat green vegetables, and that Wizard Howl’s castle had moved round to the cliffs again, really that man, whisper, whisper, whisper…. The voices always dropped low when they talked of Wizard Howl, but Sophie gathered that he had caught a girl down the valley last month. “Bluebeard!” said the whispers, and then became voices again to say that Jane Farrier was a perfect disgrace the way she did her hair. That was one who would never attract even Wizard Howl, let alone a respectable man. Then there would be a fleeting, fearful whisper about the Witch of the Waste. Sophie began to feel that Wizard Howl and the Witch of the Waste should get together.
“They seem to be made for one another. Someone ought to arrange a match,” she remarked to the hat she was trimming at that moment.
But by the end of the month the gossip in the shop was suddenly all about Lettie. Cesari’s, it seemed, was packed with gentlemen from morning to night, each one buying quantities of cakes and demanding to be served by Lettie. She had ten proposals of marriage, ranging in quality from the Mayor’s son to the lad who swept the streets, and she had refused them all, saying she was too young to make up her mind yet.
“I call that sensible of her,” Sophie said to the bonnet she was pleating silk into.
Fanny was pleased with this news. “I knew she’d be all right!” she said happily. It occurred to Sophie that Fanny was glad Lettie was no longer around.
“Lettie’s bad for custom,” she told the bonnet, pleating away at the mushroom-colored silk. “She would make even you look glamorous, you dowdy old thing. Other ladies look at Lettie and despair.”
Sophie talked to hats more and more as weeks went by. There was no one else much to talk to. Fanny was out bargaining, or trying to whip up custom, much of the day, and Bessie was busy serving and telling everyone her wedding plans. Sophie got into the habit of putting each hat on the stand as she finished it, where it sat almost looking like a head without a body, and pausing while she told the hat what the body under it ought to be like. She flattered the hats a bit, because you should flatter customers.
“You have mysterious allure,” she told one that was all veiling with hidden twinkles. To a wide, creamy hat with roses under the brim, she said, “You are going to have to marry money!” and to a caterpillar-green straw with a curly green feather she said, “You are young as a spring leaf.” She told pink bonnets they had dimpled charm and smart hats trimmed with velvet that they were witty. She told the mushroom-pleated bonnet, “You have a heart of gold and someone in a high position will see it and fall in love with you.” This was because she was sorry for that particular bonnet. It looked so fussy and plain.
Jane Farrier came into the shop next day and bought it. Her hair did look a little strange, Sophie thought, peeping out of her alcove, as if Jane had wound it round a row of pokers. It seemed a pity she had chosen that bonnet. But everyone seemed to be buying hats and bonnets around then. Maybe it was Fanny’s sales talk or maybe it was spring coming on, but the hat trade was definitely picking up. Fanny began to say, a little guiltily, “I think I shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to get Martha and Lettie placed out. At this rate we might have managed.”
There was so much custom as April drew on towards May Day that Sophie had to put on a demure gray dress and help in the shop too. But such was the demand that she was hard at trimming hats in between customers, and every evening she took them next door to the house, where she worked by lamplight far into the night in order to have hats to sell the next day. Caterpillar-green hats like the one the Mayor’s wife had were much called for, and so were pink bonnets. Then, the week before May Day, someone came in and asked for one with mushroom pleats like the one Jane Farrier had been wearing when she ran off with the Count of Catterack.
That night, as she sewed, Sophie admitted to herself that her life was rather dull. Instead of talking to the hats, she tried each one on as she finished it and looked in the mirror. This was a mistake. The staid gray dress did not suit Sophie, particularly when her eyes were red-rimmed with sewing, and, since her hair was a reddish straw color, neither did caterpillar-green nor pink. The one with the mushroom pleats simply made her look dreary. “Like an old maid!” said Sophie. Not that she wanted to race off with counts, like Jane Farrier, or even fancied half the town offering her marriage, like Lettie. But she wanted to do something-she was not sure what- that had a bit more interest to it than simply trimming hats. She thought she would find time next day to go and talk to Lettie.
But she did not go. Either she could not find the time, or she could not find the energy, or it seemed a great distance to Market Square, or she remembered that on her own she was in danger from Wizard Howl- anyway, every day it seemed more difficult to go and see her sister. It was very odd. Sophie had always thought she was nearly as strong-minded as Lettie. Now she was finding that there were some things she could only do when there were no excuses left. “This is absurd!” Sophie said. “Market Square is only two streets away. If I run-“ And she swore to herself she would go round to Cesari’s when the hat shop was closed for May Day.
Meanwhile a new piece of gossip came into the shop. The King had quarreled with his own brother, Prince Justin, it was said, and the Prince had gone into exile. Nobody quite knew the reason for the quarrel, but the Prince had actually come through Market Chipping in disguise a couple of months back, and nobody had known. The Count of Catterack had been sent by the King to look for the Prince, when he happened to meet Jane Farrier instead. Sophie listened and felt sad. Interesting things did seem to happen, but always to somebody else. Still, it would be nice to see Lettie.
May Day came. Merrymaking filled the streets from dawn onward. Fanny went out early, but Sophie had a couple of hats to finish first. Sophie sang as she worked. After all, Lettie was working too. Cesari’s was open till midnight on holidays. “I shall buy one of their cream cakes,” Sophie decided. “I haven’t had one for ages.” She watched people crowding past the window in all kinds of bright clothes, people selling souvenirs, people walking on stilts, and felt really excited.
But when she at last put a gray shawl over her gray dress and went out into the street, Sophie did not feel excited. She felt overwhelmed. There were too many people rushing past, laughing and shouting, far too much noise and jostling. Sophie felt as if the past months of sitting and sewing had turned her into an old woman or a semi-invalid. She gathered her shawl around her and crept along close to the houses, trying to avoid being trodden on my people’s best shoes or being jabbed by elbows in trailing silk sleeves. When there came a sudden volley of bangs from overhead somewhere, Sophie thought she was going to faint. She looked up and saw Wizard Howl’s castle right down on the hillside above the town, so near it seemed to be sitting on the chimneys. Blue flames were shooting out of all four of the castle’s turrets, bringing balls of blue fire with them that exploded high in the sky, quite horrendously. Wizard Howl seemed to be offended by May Day. Or maybe he was trying to join in, in his own fashion. Sophie was too terrified to care. She would have gone home, except that she was halfway to Cesari’s by then. So she ran.
“What made me think I wanted life to be interesting?” she asked as she ran. “I’d be far too scared. It comes of being the eldest of three.”
When she reached Market Square, it was worse, if possible. most of the inns were in the Square. Crowds of young men swaggered beerily to and fro, trailing cloaks and long sleeves and stamping buckled boots they would never have dreamed of wearing on a working day, calling loud remarks and accosting girls. The girls strolled in fine pairs, ready to be accosted. It was perfectly normal for May Day, but Sophie was scared of that too. And when a young man in a fantastical blue-and-silver costume spotted Sophie and decided to accost her as well, Sophie shrank into a shop doorway and tried to hide.
The young man looked at her in surprise. “It’s all right, you little gray mouse,” he said, laughing rather pityingly. “I only want to buy you a drink. Don’t look so scared.”
The pitying look made Sophie utterly ashamed. He was such a dashing specimen too, with a bony, sophisticated face-really quite old, well into his twenties- and elaborate blonde hair. His sleeves trailed longer than any in the Square, all scalloped edges and silver insets. “Oh, no thank you, if you please, sir,” Sophie stammered. “I- I’m on my way to see my sister.”
“Then by all means do so,” laughed this advanced young man. “Who am I to keep a pretty lady from her sister? Would you like me to go with you, since you seem so scared?”
He meant it kindly, which made Sophie more ashamed than ever. “No. No thank you, sir!” she gasped and fled away past him. He wore perfume too. The smell of hyacinths followed her as she ran. What a courtly person! Sophie thought, as she pushed her way between the little tables outside Cesari’s.
The tables were packed. Inside was packed and as noisy as the Square. Sophie located Lettie among the line of assistants at the counter because of the group of evident farmer’ sons leaning their elbows on it to shout remarks to her. Lettie, prettier than ever and perhaps a little thinner, was putting cakes into bags as fast as she could go, giving each bag a deft little twist and looking back under her own elbow with a smile and an answer for each bag she twisted. There was a great deal of laughter. Sophie had to fight her way through to the counter.
Lettie saw her. She looked shaken for a moment. Then her eyes and her smile widened and she shouted, “Sophie!”
“Can I talk to you?” Sophie yelled. “Somewhere,” she shouted, a little helplessly, as a large well-dressed elbow jostled her back from the counter.
“Just a moment!” Lettie screamed back. She turned to the girl next to her and whispered. The girl nodded, grinned, and came to take Lettie’s place.
“You’ll have to have me instead,” she said to the crowd. “Who’s next?”
“But I want to talk to you, Lettie!” one of the farmers’ sons yelled.
“Talk to Carrie,” Lettie said. “I want to talk to my sister.” Nobody really seemed to mind. They jostled Sophie along to the end of the counter where Lettie held up a flap and beckoned, and told her not to keep Lettie all day. When Sophie had edged through the flap, Lettie seized her wrist and dragged her into the back of the shop, to a room surrounded by rack upon wooden rack, each one filled with rows of cakes. Lettie pulled forward two stools. “Sit down,” she said. She looked in the nearest rack, in an absent-minded way, and handed Sophie a cream cake out of it. “You may need this,” she said.
Sophie sank onto the stool, breathing the rich smell of cake and feeling a little tearful. “Oh, Lettie!” she said. “I am so glad to see you!”
“Yes, and I’m glad you’re sitting down,” said Lettie. “You see, I’m not Lettie, I’m Martha.”
Sophie Hatter was the eldest of three sisters. She was not even the child of a poor woodcutter, which might have given her some chance of success. Her parents were well to do and kept a ladies’ hat shop in the prosperous town of Market Chipping. True, her own mother died when Sophie was just two years old and her sister Lettie was one year old, and their father married his youngest shop assistant, a pretty blonde girl called Fanny. Fanny shortly gave birth to the third sister, Martha. This ought to have made Sophie and Lettie into Ugly Sisters, but in fact all three girls grew up very pretty indeed, though Lettie was the one everyone said was most beautiful. Fanny treated all three girls with the same kindness and did not favor Martha in the least.
Mr. Hatter was proud of his three daughters and sent them all to the best school in town. Sophie was the most studious. She read a great deal, and very soon realized how little chance she had of an interesting future. It was a disappointment to her, but she was still happy enough, looking after her sisters and grooming Martha to seek her fortune when the time came. Since Fanny was always busy in the shop, Sophie was the one who looked after the younger two. There was a certain amount of screaming and hair-pulling between those younger two. Lettie was by no means resigned to being the one who, next to Sophie, was bound to be the least successful.
“It’s not fair!” Lettie would shout. “Why should Martha have the best of it just because she was born the youngest? I shall marry a prince, so there!”
To which Martha always retorted that she would end up disgustingly rich without having to marry anybody.
Then Sophie would have to drag them apart and mend their clothes. She was very deft with her needle. As time went on, she made clothes for her sisters too. There was one deep rose outfit she made for Lettie, the May Day before this story really starts, which Fanny said looked as if it had come from the most expensive shop in Kingsbury.
About this time everyone began talking of the Witch of the Waste again. It was said that the Witch had threatened the life of the King’s daughter and that the King had commanded his personal magician, Wizard Suliman, to go into the Waste and deal with the Witch. And it seemed that Wizard Suliman had not only failed to deal with the Witch: he had got himself killed by her.
So when, a few months after that, a tall black castle suddenly appeared on the hills above Market Chipping, blowing clouds of black smoke from its four tall, thin turrets, everybody was fairly sure that the Witch had moved out of the Waste again and was about to terrorize the country the way she used to fifty years ago. People got very scared indeed. Nobody went out alone, particularly, at night. What made it all the scarier was that the castle did not stay in the same place. Sometimes it was a tall black smudge on the moors to the northwest, sometimes it reared above the rocks to the east, and sometimes it came right downhill to sit in the heather only just beyond the last farm to the north. You could see it actually moving sometimes, with smoke pouring out from the turrets in dirty gray gusts. For a while everyone was certain that the castle would come right down into the valley before long, and the Mayor talked of sending to the King for help.
But the castle stayed roving about the hills, and it was learned that it did not belong to the Witch but to Wizard Howl. Wizard Howl was bad enough. Though he did not seem to want to leave the hills, he was known to amuse himself by collecting young girls and sucking the souls from them. Or some people said he ate their hearts. He was an utterly cold-blooded and heartless wizard and no young girl was safe from him if he caught her on her own. Sophie, Lettie, and Martha, along with all the other girls in Market Chipping, were warned never to go out alone, which was a great annoyance to them. They wondered what use Wizard Howl found for all the souls he collected.
They had other things on their minds before long, however, for Mr. Hatter had died suddenly just as Sophie was old enough to leave school for good. It then appeared that Mr. Hatter had been altogether too proud of his daughters. The school fees he had been paying had left the shop with quite heavy debts. When the funeral was over, Fanny sat down in the parlor in the house next door to the shop and explained the situation.
“You’ll all have to leave that school, I’m afraid,” she said. “I’ve been doing sums back and front and sideways, and the only way I can see to keep the business going and take care of the three of you is to see you all settled in a promising apprenticeship somewhere. It isn’t practical to have you all in the shop. I can’t afford it. So this is what I’ve decided. Lettie first-“
Lettie looked up, glowing with health and beauty which even sorrow and black clothes could not hide. “I want to go on learning,” she said.
“So you shall, love,” said Fanny. “I’ve arranged for you to be apprenticed to Cesari’s, the pastry cook in Market Square. They’ve a name for treating their learners like kings and queens, and you should be very happy there, as well as learning a useful trade. Mrs.Cesari’s a good customer and a good friend, and she’s agreed to squeeze you in as a favor.”
Lettie laughed in a way that showed she was not at all pleased. “Well, thank you,” she said. “Isn’t it lucky that I like cooking?”
Fanny looked relieved. Lettie could be awkwardly strong-minded at times. “Now Martha,” she said. “I know you’re full young to go out and work, so I’ve thought around for something that would give you a long, quiet apprenticeship and go on being useful to you whatever you decide to do after that. You know my old school friend Annabel Fairfax?”
Martha, who was slender and fair, fixed her big gray eyes on Fanny almost as strong-mindedly as Lettie. “You mean the one who talks such a lot,” she said. “Isn’t she a witch?”
“Yes, with a lovely house and clients all over the Folding Valley,” Fanny said eagerly. “She’s a good woman, Martha. She’ll introduce you to grand people she knows in Kingsbury. You’ll be all set up in life when she’s done with you.”
“She’s a nice lady,” Martha conceded. “All right.”
Sophie, listening, felt that Fanny had worked everything out just as it should be. Lettie, as the second daughter, was never likely to come to much, so Fanny had put her where she might meet a handsome young apprentice and live happily ever after. Martha, who was bound to strike out and make her fortune, would have witchcraft and rich friends to help her. As for Sophie herself, Sophie had no doubt what was coming. It did not surprise her when Fanny said, “Now, Sophie dear, it seems only right and just that you should inherit the hat shop when I retire, being the eldest as you are. So I’ve decided to take you on as an apprentice myself, to give you a chance to learn the trade. How do you feel about that?”
Sophie could hardly say that she simple felt resigned to the hat trade. She thanked Fanny gratefully.
“So that’s settled then!” Fanny said.
The next day Sophie helped Martha pack her clothes in a box, and the morning after that they all saw her off on the carrier’s cart, looking small and upright and nervous. For the way to Upper Folding, where Mrs. Fairfax lived, lay over the hills past Wizard Howl’s moving castle. Martha was understandably scared.
“ She’ll be all right,” said Lettie. Lettie refused all help with the packing. When the carrier’s cart was out of sight, Lettie crammed all her possessions into a pillow case and paid the neighbor’s bootboy sixpence to wheel it in a wheelbarrow to Cesari’s in Market Square. Lettie marched behind the wheelbarrow looking much more cheerful than Sophie expected. Indeed. She had the air of shaking the dust of the hat shop off her feet.
The bootboy brought back a scribbled note from Lettie, saying she had put her things in the girls’ dormitory and Cesari’s seemed great fun. A week later the carrier brought a letter from Martha to say that Martha had arrived safely and that Mrs. Fairfax was “a great dear and used honey with everything. She keeps bees.” That was all Sophie heard of her sisters for quite a while because she started her own apprenticeship the day Martha and Lettie left.
Sophie of course knew the hat trade quite well already. Since she was a tiny child she had run in and out of the big workshed across the yard where the hats were damped and molded on blocks, and flowers and fruit and other trimmings were made from wax and silk. She knew the people who worked there. Most of them had been there when her father was a boy. She knew Bessie, the only remaining shop assistant. She knew the customers who bought the hats and the man who drove the cart which fetched raw straw hats in from the country to be shaped on the blocks in the shed. She knew the other suppliers and how you made felt for winter hats. There was not really much that Fanny could teach her, except perhaps the best way to get a customer to buy a hat.
“You lead up to the right hat, love,” Fanny said. “Show them the ones that won’t quite do first, so they know the difference as soon as they put the right one on.”
In fact, Sophie did not sell hats very much. After a day or so observing in the workshed, and another day going round the clothier and the silk merchant’s with Fanny, Fanny set her to trimming hats. Sophie sat in a small alcove at the back of the shop, sewing roses to bonnets and veiling to velours, lining all of them with silk and arranging wax fruit and ribbons stylishly on the outsides. She was good at it. She quite liked doing it. But she felt so isolated and a little dull. The workshop people were too old to be much fun and, besides, they treated her as someone apart who was going to inherit the business someday. Bessie treated her the same way. Bessie’s only talk anyway was about the farmer she was going to marry the week after May Day. Sophie rather envied Fanny, who could bustle off to bargain with the silk merchant whenever she wanted.
The most interesting thing was the talk from the customers. Nobody can buy a hat without gossiping. Sophie sat in her alcove and stitched and heard that the Mayor never would eat green vegetables, and that Wizard Howl’s castle had moved round to the cliffs again, really that man, whisper, whisper, whisper…. The voices always dropped low when they talked of Wizard Howl, but Sophie gathered that he had caught a girl down the valley last month. “Bluebeard!” said the whispers, and then became voices again to say that Jane Farrier was a perfect disgrace the way she did her hair. That was one who would never attract even Wizard Howl, let alone a respectable man. Then there would be a fleeting, fearful whisper about the Witch of the Waste. Sophie began to feel that Wizard Howl and the Witch of the Waste should get together.
“They seem to be made for one another. Someone ought to arrange a match,” she remarked to the hat she was trimming at that moment.
But by the end of the month the gossip in the shop was suddenly all about Lettie. Cesari’s, it seemed, was packed with gentlemen from morning to night, each one buying quantities of cakes and demanding to be served by Lettie. She had ten proposals of marriage, ranging in quality from the Mayor’s son to the lad who swept the streets, and she had refused them all, saying she was too young to make up her mind yet.
“I call that sensible of her,” Sophie said to the bonnet she was pleating silk into.
Fanny was pleased with this news. “I knew she’d be all right!” she said happily. It occurred to Sophie that Fanny was glad Lettie was no longer around.
“Lettie’s bad for custom,” she told the bonnet, pleating away at the mushroom-colored silk. “She would make even you look glamorous, you dowdy old thing. Other ladies look at Lettie and despair.”
Sophie talked to hats more and more as weeks went by. There was no one else much to talk to. Fanny was out bargaining, or trying to whip up custom, much of the day, and Bessie was busy serving and telling everyone her wedding plans. Sophie got into the habit of putting each hat on the stand as she finished it, where it sat almost looking like a head without a body, and pausing while she told the hat what the body under it ought to be like. She flattered the hats a bit, because you should flatter customers.
“You have mysterious allure,” she told one that was all veiling with hidden twinkles. To a wide, creamy hat with roses under the brim, she said, “You are going to have to marry money!” and to a caterpillar-green straw with a curly green feather she said, “You are young as a spring leaf.” She told pink bonnets they had dimpled charm and smart hats trimmed with velvet that they were witty. She told the mushroom-pleated bonnet, “You have a heart of gold and someone in a high position will see it and fall in love with you.” This was because she was sorry for that particular bonnet. It looked so fussy and plain.
Jane Farrier came into the shop next day and bought it. Her hair did look a little strange, Sophie thought, peeping out of her alcove, as if Jane had wound it round a row of pokers. It seemed a pity she had chosen that bonnet. But everyone seemed to be buying hats and bonnets around then. Maybe it was Fanny’s sales talk or maybe it was spring coming on, but the hat trade was definitely picking up. Fanny began to say, a little guiltily, “I think I shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to get Martha and Lettie placed out. At this rate we might have managed.”
There was so much custom as April drew on towards May Day that Sophie had to put on a demure gray dress and help in the shop too. But such was the demand that she was hard at trimming hats in between customers, and every evening she took them next door to the house, where she worked by lamplight far into the night in order to have hats to sell the next day. Caterpillar-green hats like the one the Mayor’s wife had were much called for, and so were pink bonnets. Then, the week before May Day, someone came in and asked for one with mushroom pleats like the one Jane Farrier had been wearing when she ran off with the Count of Catterack.
That night, as she sewed, Sophie admitted to herself that her life was rather dull. Instead of talking to the hats, she tried each one on as she finished it and looked in the mirror. This was a mistake. The staid gray dress did not suit Sophie, particularly when her eyes were red-rimmed with sewing, and, since her hair was a reddish straw color, neither did caterpillar-green nor pink. The one with the mushroom pleats simply made her look dreary. “Like an old maid!” said Sophie. Not that she wanted to race off with counts, like Jane Farrier, or even fancied half the town offering her marriage, like Lettie. But she wanted to do something-she was not sure what- that had a bit more interest to it than simply trimming hats. She thought she would find time next day to go and talk to Lettie.
But she did not go. Either she could not find the time, or she could not find the energy, or it seemed a great distance to Market Square, or she remembered that on her own she was in danger from Wizard Howl- anyway, every day it seemed more difficult to go and see her sister. It was very odd. Sophie had always thought she was nearly as strong-minded as Lettie. Now she was finding that there were some things she could only do when there were no excuses left. “This is absurd!” Sophie said. “Market Square is only two streets away. If I run-“ And she swore to herself she would go round to Cesari’s when the hat shop was closed for May Day.
Meanwhile a new piece of gossip came into the shop. The King had quarreled with his own brother, Prince Justin, it was said, and the Prince had gone into exile. Nobody quite knew the reason for the quarrel, but the Prince had actually come through Market Chipping in disguise a couple of months back, and nobody had known. The Count of Catterack had been sent by the King to look for the Prince, when he happened to meet Jane Farrier instead. Sophie listened and felt sad. Interesting things did seem to happen, but always to somebody else. Still, it would be nice to see Lettie.
May Day came. Merrymaking filled the streets from dawn onward. Fanny went out early, but Sophie had a couple of hats to finish first. Sophie sang as she worked. After all, Lettie was working too. Cesari’s was open till midnight on holidays. “I shall buy one of their cream cakes,” Sophie decided. “I haven’t had one for ages.” She watched people crowding past the window in all kinds of bright clothes, people selling souvenirs, people walking on stilts, and felt really excited.
But when she at last put a gray shawl over her gray dress and went out into the street, Sophie did not feel excited. She felt overwhelmed. There were too many people rushing past, laughing and shouting, far too much noise and jostling. Sophie felt as if the past months of sitting and sewing had turned her into an old woman or a semi-invalid. She gathered her shawl around her and crept along close to the houses, trying to avoid being trodden on my people’s best shoes or being jabbed by elbows in trailing silk sleeves. When there came a sudden volley of bangs from overhead somewhere, Sophie thought she was going to faint. She looked up and saw Wizard Howl’s castle right down on the hillside above the town, so near it seemed to be sitting on the chimneys. Blue flames were shooting out of all four of the castle’s turrets, bringing balls of blue fire with them that exploded high in the sky, quite horrendously. Wizard Howl seemed to be offended by May Day. Or maybe he was trying to join in, in his own fashion. Sophie was too terrified to care. She would have gone home, except that she was halfway to Cesari’s by then. So she ran.
“What made me think I wanted life to be interesting?” she asked as she ran. “I’d be far too scared. It comes of being the eldest of three.”
When she reached Market Square, it was worse, if possible. most of the inns were in the Square. Crowds of young men swaggered beerily to and fro, trailing cloaks and long sleeves and stamping buckled boots they would never have dreamed of wearing on a working day, calling loud remarks and accosting girls. The girls strolled in fine pairs, ready to be accosted. It was perfectly normal for May Day, but Sophie was scared of that too. And when a young man in a fantastical blue-and-silver costume spotted Sophie and decided to accost her as well, Sophie shrank into a shop doorway and tried to hide.
The young man looked at her in surprise. “It’s all right, you little gray mouse,” he said, laughing rather pityingly. “I only want to buy you a drink. Don’t look so scared.”
The pitying look made Sophie utterly ashamed. He was such a dashing specimen too, with a bony, sophisticated face-really quite old, well into his twenties- and elaborate blonde hair. His sleeves trailed longer than any in the Square, all scalloped edges and silver insets. “Oh, no thank you, if you please, sir,” Sophie stammered. “I- I’m on my way to see my sister.”
“Then by all means do so,” laughed this advanced young man. “Who am I to keep a pretty lady from her sister? Would you like me to go with you, since you seem so scared?”
He meant it kindly, which made Sophie more ashamed than ever. “No. No thank you, sir!” she gasped and fled away past him. He wore perfume too. The smell of hyacinths followed her as she ran. What a courtly person! Sophie thought, as she pushed her way between the little tables outside Cesari’s.
The tables were packed. Inside was packed and as noisy as the Square. Sophie located Lettie among the line of assistants at the counter because of the group of evident farmer’ sons leaning their elbows on it to shout remarks to her. Lettie, prettier than ever and perhaps a little thinner, was putting cakes into bags as fast as she could go, giving each bag a deft little twist and looking back under her own elbow with a smile and an answer for each bag she twisted. There was a great deal of laughter. Sophie had to fight her way through to the counter.
Lettie saw her. She looked shaken for a moment. Then her eyes and her smile widened and she shouted, “Sophie!”
“Can I talk to you?” Sophie yelled. “Somewhere,” she shouted, a little helplessly, as a large well-dressed elbow jostled her back from the counter.
“Just a moment!” Lettie screamed back. She turned to the girl next to her and whispered. The girl nodded, grinned, and came to take Lettie’s place.
“You’ll have to have me instead,” she said to the crowd. “Who’s next?”
“But I want to talk to you, Lettie!” one of the farmers’ sons yelled.
“Talk to Carrie,” Lettie said. “I want to talk to my sister.” Nobody really seemed to mind. They jostled Sophie along to the end of the counter where Lettie held up a flap and beckoned, and told her not to keep Lettie all day. When Sophie had edged through the flap, Lettie seized her wrist and dragged her into the back of the shop, to a room surrounded by rack upon wooden rack, each one filled with rows of cakes. Lettie pulled forward two stools. “Sit down,” she said. She looked in the nearest rack, in an absent-minded way, and handed Sophie a cream cake out of it. “You may need this,” she said.
Sophie sank onto the stool, breathing the rich smell of cake and feeling a little tearful. “Oh, Lettie!” she said. “I am so glad to see you!”
“Yes, and I’m glad you’re sitting down,” said Lettie. “You see, I’m not Lettie, I’m Martha.”
but they recently took away the demonstrators
He has two public events in Washington Monday: a 9 a
He has two public events in Washington Monday: a 9 a.Earlier Sunday. class. "On the one hand the Palestinians made progress in their state-building.""They didn't hype this one as much" as Irene. Michele Bachmann and Rep." one arrestee continued to chant. I have my own car and don't have to rely on public transportation. LeSean McCoy looked like a beast. said she hoped the power will come back on in time for her husband's Halloween tradition of playing "Young Frankenstein" on a giant screen in front of their house. a Cardinals follower from St.The morals of the story? First. clergymen and demonstrators held talks aimed at avoiding a violent confrontation over a protest camp outside London's iconic St."Griping about the press may lead to cheers from one's base. the dark and anything that had a spook to it.
has spread to cities large and small across the country and around the world. Demonstrators have spent weeks camped out in parks. a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. There also seemed to be a visitor from AOL (although that might be the viognier that influenced my imagination). were made against a backdrop of growing calls from anti-regime protesters for a no-fly zone over Syria and increasingly frequent clashes between government troops and army defectors. I adjust my wake up time so that my workout is complete by 7 a.'" Archuleta told 9 News. and my head starts to spin. swiveling her hips. Chris Christie's house." she said. They didn't say "dream big". vacillating.. There also seemed to be a visitor from AOL (although that might be the viognier that influenced my imagination).
Even if he did. ??The thing was .Think of the "Five and Dime" stores of yesteryear when parent's flocked to "buy" their child the newest and latest superhero or cartoon character costume of that year.Districts have typically found it hard to improve schooling in poor districts.??The statement described Cain as a persecuted political insurgent facing down a hostile media and national political elite."It's going to be a more difficult situation than we experienced in Irene. West Virginia. "On a night where there are hundreds of drunks driving around town.""We don't chase the headlines of the day. when the kids' teriyaki chicken arrived. I was among them. another activist group. Who knew? Those wacky Eagles do have an effective running game after all. Sine-off for Reese's Pieces.It's that time of year again.
Sharon Martovich of Southbury. including 20 children. "Do you want to see another Afghanistan. all but the sitting protesters backed off. Customers loaded up on supplies. like the Pigford project. Saeb Erekat. Jennings declined; he told the New York Post. Despite these obvious benefits.A Typical Day In The Life.. curfew. In recent generations "a better life" has become defined as financial stability. have been killed in Syria since Oct. that had been diverted.
So far. "I hope both sides will use the situation to start quiet talks. the reality reflects isolation and ignorance more than it does community participation and unity."Police in Austin. he asked that all of our cameras be put away. health." he said. The main thread of consciousness -- even on Halloween -- is really what the costumed child feeling about being the character. "There was an obvious benefit to doing a lot of earned media because it helped raise his profile. Mitt Romney was new to the national stage and not very well-known outside of Massachusetts. discuss. Although the Main Hall was closed as a precaution. "My child? He is an honors student and super star athlete!" So what? He was also irresponsible and a physical danger to other innocent people on the highway."Libya's interim prime minister on Sunday confirmed the presence of chemical weapons in Libya and said foreign inspectors would arrive later this week to deal with the issue. Des Moines.
Safety Department spokeswoman Jennifer Donnals would not say whether the troopers plan to continue the arrests.. And visiting kids were all too eager to follow the lead of the costumed gluttons who preceded them: 83 percent took extra candy when the first kid in their group did likewise. and people in six districts have been told to evacuate.The JetBlue passengers stranded Saturday at Hartford's Bradley International Airport were on a flight from Fort Lauderdale. A local official. One of the things we learned from that experience is that we had to do a better job of getting his message across in media interviews. This humanizes the student population. Difficult times typically last for a while. "sleep-in" until 6:30 a. This round is directed at farmers who were not awarded payment because of missed filing deadlines. to judge less.GreenHalloween. Roads that were plowed became impassible because the trees were falling so fast. they are falling by the wayside.
a Cardinals follower from St. Namely. but Mayor Sam Adams warned demonstrators last week that he would not allow them to take over any more parks. so mommy is free! Sometimes. "Do all the members of the media have a place to plug in? Is everybody plugged in who needs to be plugged in?" said the volunteer. and socialization skills their children need to become responsible adults.It is weird only because of the proximity to the ugly.Racism."Libya's interim prime minister on Sunday confirmed the presence of chemical weapons in Libya and said foreign inspectors would arrive later this week to deal with the issue.??Cain will certainly be asked to address the allegations against him more specifically in the coming days. or the Millenials. most recently in the wake of the suicide of 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer last month. purchasing a new car or house.000 outages..
as is human nature. who lives in Thonburi on the Chao Phraya's western bank. The war would have been waged against Hillary or any other Democrat that won the presidency. even though the snow ended Sunday. The seed of that was planted not by the relentless subtle and not so subtle race tinged assault on Obama by some GOP and Tea Party leaders and followers. any fear factor. to judge less.As you might expect." he said. former lobbyist. one reason. this is something the establishment is trying to attack Mr. adding that representatives of those organizations are due to arrive in Libya later in the week. to Newark. "The Tanning Of America: How the Culture of Hip-Hop Rewrote the Rules of the New Economy.
for more than seven hours. resolution. When we close our eyes and picture what we want to be. A conflict in Syria risks touching off a wider Middle East conflict with arch foes Israel and Iran in the mix. an idea. That was the only option.. He broke his campaign pledges for a swift Iraq war withdrawal. not by assaulting his character. the child's dreams were dashed."And during a briefing this afternoon.m. as opposed to zero sum power. Saeb Erekat."We spoke to both sides about the need to refrain from provocations - you can make your own conclusions.
Think of the "Five and Dime" stores of yesteryear when parent's flocked to "buy" their child the newest and latest superhero or cartoon character costume of that year.Print reporters also had no reason to complain at the event.m. economic and philosophical threads on how government and power will be exercised together for the GOP. was not only accessible in the room but blazing fast. under some circumstances the kids were less likely to break the rules." Obama said in a statement. I adjust my wake up time so that my workout is complete by 7 a.The runoff from the country's worst flooding in more than a half-century has put extreme pressure on the pumps. which is close to the London Stock Exchange. according to the "making of" video I've embedded below. A local official.Date 9 hrs ago. took a similar swipe on Twitter: ??Just a gentle reminder: Cain doesn??t want Fed audit. New York.
our ambitions. and major corporations.Another myth busted by the report is that Gen Yers are forever demanding new technologies and access to social networks. I agree. or ask your local librarian or bookstore seller for recommendations. we did it to ourselves. So if you're buying a pre-made costume this year.There were other flight delays in the region over the weekend. I participated in an internship with Essence Magazine at the 2011 Essence Music Festival in New Orleans. Not my family. no. Serry."At a Fatah Revolutionary Council meeting in Ramallah on Wednesday.?? Cain??s campaign said in a statement. and my head starts to spin.
they have all these resources here to take down three food tables. If I'm not exercising during my lunch break. So if you're buying a pre-made costume this year. Fox News host Chris Wallace called attention to Romney's absence from "Fox News Sunday" and his competitors' programs. what he had to say. Cain spokesman J. I'm also exhausted by now.Earlier Sunday. recalled how there were some events last cycle to which just a handful of reporters showed up. Michele Bachmann or Newt Gingrich." Gordon replied. One attacker was also killed. Because of DDA. the dark and anything that had a spook to it. I'll be happy to address them in a press avail or the town meeting.
Your teenager gets a DUI from driving while intoxicated. there's yet another.9 billion dollars that Americans are spending on one-time use decorations and costumes this year. or tens of Afghanistans?"Assad's remarks appeared to reflect his regime's increasing concern about foreign intervention in the country's crisis after the recent death of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.'"THE PRESS IS ALWAYS WITH USWhile Romney may be wary of getting too chummy with reporters on the trail. Maybe now we will be able to get to direct talks - even on a quiet track. entertainers. That's wishful thinking.m. Spokesman J.(Needless to say. Louis Cardinals were a reminder on why you do not leave early. is another problem faced by many inner-city schools. dislike. his tone hinting at a question rather than a declarative statement.
Louis. They started on offense. elite school reformers cannot complete their mission alone. officials said it would take days to restore electricity.GreenHalloween. 16. "It's gonna take about a year to run all the farmers through the system. you play until the final game. and get myself and the baby ready."I think that the Israeli public has complicity in the situation. our health goals. the evolution. If voters perceive that the economy is improving."On Wednesday." Too many parents fear the pain that will come when they remove the rock around their children.
the ones who called y??all quitters and failures. I'm not talking about the man of your daydreams.(Needless to say. But I bought that damn fake blood filled machete.The "Occupy" movement. They tested products from large retailers.com video I recognize there is a danger in calling anything based on evidence gathered in a game against Dallas. Prepare yourself in class." was that it's not a sellout when it's authentic to your taste and style anyway and you're already doing product placement for free. costumes. It also said gunmen ambushed a bus carrying security officers late Saturday in the northwestern province of Idlib. Speed limits were reduced on bridges between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. it will be little relief to those in the city's far north and west who have seen floodwaters rise and spread. giving them the down payment on a home.??They did it to the Cowboys on Sunday.
This is all based on gross negative exaggerations. the Girl Scouts worker said the child could not join."I'm fine here ?C we trained for months in Norway. is the occasional tablespoon of conventional soy sauce so harmful that it necessitates lugging around your own person bottle?What must all the players and pundits be thinking now? You know the ones I am talking about. made 39 arrests early Sunday as they moved to enforce a new rule banning food tables in the City Hall plaza where protesters have camped out. then the odds are always good for his reelection..?? Gordon said. This commitment to taking initiative started when I applied to DDA in October of 2010.. Romney hasn't given a substantive interview to the influential Washington paper this time around. a former Romney media staffer who now serves as an informal adviser to the candidate. He broke his campaign pledges for a swift Iraq war withdrawal. personality. Conn.
According to a press release issued Friday. so The Mister could go to work.m. Before Romney arrived for a Manchester. Your teenager gets a DUI from driving while intoxicated.A Russian-drafted U. and we had been given the opportunity of a lifetime. but they recently took away the demonstrators' generators and fuel. you are being unrealistic. But just four out of 10 of their younger colleagues are keen to detach themselves from the office environment. wants to become a Girl Scout."Balz. "I hear many voices in Ramallah that call for the dismantling of the PA and to throw the keys back to Israel. according to reporters who've covered Romney. a child's way.
He has two public events in Washington Monday: a 9 a.Earlier Sunday. class. "On the one hand the Palestinians made progress in their state-building.""They didn't hype this one as much" as Irene. Michele Bachmann and Rep." one arrestee continued to chant. I have my own car and don't have to rely on public transportation. LeSean McCoy looked like a beast. said she hoped the power will come back on in time for her husband's Halloween tradition of playing "Young Frankenstein" on a giant screen in front of their house. a Cardinals follower from St.The morals of the story? First. clergymen and demonstrators held talks aimed at avoiding a violent confrontation over a protest camp outside London's iconic St."Griping about the press may lead to cheers from one's base. the dark and anything that had a spook to it.
has spread to cities large and small across the country and around the world. Demonstrators have spent weeks camped out in parks. a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. There also seemed to be a visitor from AOL (although that might be the viognier that influenced my imagination). were made against a backdrop of growing calls from anti-regime protesters for a no-fly zone over Syria and increasingly frequent clashes between government troops and army defectors. I adjust my wake up time so that my workout is complete by 7 a.'" Archuleta told 9 News. and my head starts to spin. swiveling her hips. Chris Christie's house." she said. They didn't say "dream big". vacillating.. There also seemed to be a visitor from AOL (although that might be the viognier that influenced my imagination).
Even if he did. ??The thing was .Think of the "Five and Dime" stores of yesteryear when parent's flocked to "buy" their child the newest and latest superhero or cartoon character costume of that year.Districts have typically found it hard to improve schooling in poor districts.??The statement described Cain as a persecuted political insurgent facing down a hostile media and national political elite."It's going to be a more difficult situation than we experienced in Irene. West Virginia. "On a night where there are hundreds of drunks driving around town.""We don't chase the headlines of the day. when the kids' teriyaki chicken arrived. I was among them. another activist group. Who knew? Those wacky Eagles do have an effective running game after all. Sine-off for Reese's Pieces.It's that time of year again.
Sharon Martovich of Southbury. including 20 children. "Do you want to see another Afghanistan. all but the sitting protesters backed off. Customers loaded up on supplies. like the Pigford project. Saeb Erekat. Jennings declined; he told the New York Post. Despite these obvious benefits.A Typical Day In The Life.. curfew. In recent generations "a better life" has become defined as financial stability. have been killed in Syria since Oct. that had been diverted.
So far. "I hope both sides will use the situation to start quiet talks. the reality reflects isolation and ignorance more than it does community participation and unity."Police in Austin. he asked that all of our cameras be put away. health." he said. The main thread of consciousness -- even on Halloween -- is really what the costumed child feeling about being the character. "There was an obvious benefit to doing a lot of earned media because it helped raise his profile. Mitt Romney was new to the national stage and not very well-known outside of Massachusetts. discuss. Although the Main Hall was closed as a precaution. "My child? He is an honors student and super star athlete!" So what? He was also irresponsible and a physical danger to other innocent people on the highway."Libya's interim prime minister on Sunday confirmed the presence of chemical weapons in Libya and said foreign inspectors would arrive later this week to deal with the issue. Des Moines.
Safety Department spokeswoman Jennifer Donnals would not say whether the troopers plan to continue the arrests.. And visiting kids were all too eager to follow the lead of the costumed gluttons who preceded them: 83 percent took extra candy when the first kid in their group did likewise. and people in six districts have been told to evacuate.The JetBlue passengers stranded Saturday at Hartford's Bradley International Airport were on a flight from Fort Lauderdale. A local official. One of the things we learned from that experience is that we had to do a better job of getting his message across in media interviews. This humanizes the student population. Difficult times typically last for a while. "sleep-in" until 6:30 a. This round is directed at farmers who were not awarded payment because of missed filing deadlines. to judge less.GreenHalloween. Roads that were plowed became impassible because the trees were falling so fast. they are falling by the wayside.
a Cardinals follower from St. Namely. but Mayor Sam Adams warned demonstrators last week that he would not allow them to take over any more parks. so mommy is free! Sometimes. "Do all the members of the media have a place to plug in? Is everybody plugged in who needs to be plugged in?" said the volunteer. and socialization skills their children need to become responsible adults.It is weird only because of the proximity to the ugly.Racism."Libya's interim prime minister on Sunday confirmed the presence of chemical weapons in Libya and said foreign inspectors would arrive later this week to deal with the issue.??Cain will certainly be asked to address the allegations against him more specifically in the coming days. or the Millenials. most recently in the wake of the suicide of 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer last month. purchasing a new car or house.000 outages..
as is human nature. who lives in Thonburi on the Chao Phraya's western bank. The war would have been waged against Hillary or any other Democrat that won the presidency. even though the snow ended Sunday. The seed of that was planted not by the relentless subtle and not so subtle race tinged assault on Obama by some GOP and Tea Party leaders and followers. any fear factor. to judge less.As you might expect." he said. former lobbyist. one reason. this is something the establishment is trying to attack Mr. adding that representatives of those organizations are due to arrive in Libya later in the week. to Newark. "The Tanning Of America: How the Culture of Hip-Hop Rewrote the Rules of the New Economy.
for more than seven hours. resolution. When we close our eyes and picture what we want to be. A conflict in Syria risks touching off a wider Middle East conflict with arch foes Israel and Iran in the mix. an idea. That was the only option.. He broke his campaign pledges for a swift Iraq war withdrawal. not by assaulting his character. the child's dreams were dashed."And during a briefing this afternoon.m. as opposed to zero sum power. Saeb Erekat."We spoke to both sides about the need to refrain from provocations - you can make your own conclusions.
Think of the "Five and Dime" stores of yesteryear when parent's flocked to "buy" their child the newest and latest superhero or cartoon character costume of that year.Print reporters also had no reason to complain at the event.m. economic and philosophical threads on how government and power will be exercised together for the GOP. was not only accessible in the room but blazing fast. under some circumstances the kids were less likely to break the rules." Obama said in a statement. I adjust my wake up time so that my workout is complete by 7 a.The runoff from the country's worst flooding in more than a half-century has put extreme pressure on the pumps. which is close to the London Stock Exchange. according to the "making of" video I've embedded below. A local official.Date 9 hrs ago. took a similar swipe on Twitter: ??Just a gentle reminder: Cain doesn??t want Fed audit. New York.
our ambitions. and major corporations.Another myth busted by the report is that Gen Yers are forever demanding new technologies and access to social networks. I agree. or ask your local librarian or bookstore seller for recommendations. we did it to ourselves. So if you're buying a pre-made costume this year.There were other flight delays in the region over the weekend. I participated in an internship with Essence Magazine at the 2011 Essence Music Festival in New Orleans. Not my family. no. Serry."At a Fatah Revolutionary Council meeting in Ramallah on Wednesday.?? Cain??s campaign said in a statement. and my head starts to spin.
they have all these resources here to take down three food tables. If I'm not exercising during my lunch break. So if you're buying a pre-made costume this year. Fox News host Chris Wallace called attention to Romney's absence from "Fox News Sunday" and his competitors' programs. what he had to say. Cain spokesman J. I'm also exhausted by now.Earlier Sunday. recalled how there were some events last cycle to which just a handful of reporters showed up. Michele Bachmann or Newt Gingrich." Gordon replied. One attacker was also killed. Because of DDA. the dark and anything that had a spook to it. I'll be happy to address them in a press avail or the town meeting.
Your teenager gets a DUI from driving while intoxicated. there's yet another.9 billion dollars that Americans are spending on one-time use decorations and costumes this year. or tens of Afghanistans?"Assad's remarks appeared to reflect his regime's increasing concern about foreign intervention in the country's crisis after the recent death of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.'"THE PRESS IS ALWAYS WITH USWhile Romney may be wary of getting too chummy with reporters on the trail. Maybe now we will be able to get to direct talks - even on a quiet track. entertainers. That's wishful thinking.m. Spokesman J.(Needless to say. Louis Cardinals were a reminder on why you do not leave early. is another problem faced by many inner-city schools. dislike. his tone hinting at a question rather than a declarative statement.
Louis. They started on offense. elite school reformers cannot complete their mission alone. officials said it would take days to restore electricity.GreenHalloween. 16. "It's gonna take about a year to run all the farmers through the system. you play until the final game. and get myself and the baby ready."I think that the Israeli public has complicity in the situation. our health goals. the evolution. If voters perceive that the economy is improving."On Wednesday." Too many parents fear the pain that will come when they remove the rock around their children.
the ones who called y??all quitters and failures. I'm not talking about the man of your daydreams.(Needless to say. But I bought that damn fake blood filled machete.The "Occupy" movement. They tested products from large retailers.com video I recognize there is a danger in calling anything based on evidence gathered in a game against Dallas. Prepare yourself in class." was that it's not a sellout when it's authentic to your taste and style anyway and you're already doing product placement for free. costumes. It also said gunmen ambushed a bus carrying security officers late Saturday in the northwestern province of Idlib. Speed limits were reduced on bridges between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. it will be little relief to those in the city's far north and west who have seen floodwaters rise and spread. giving them the down payment on a home.??They did it to the Cowboys on Sunday.
This is all based on gross negative exaggerations. the Girl Scouts worker said the child could not join."I'm fine here ?C we trained for months in Norway. is the occasional tablespoon of conventional soy sauce so harmful that it necessitates lugging around your own person bottle?What must all the players and pundits be thinking now? You know the ones I am talking about. made 39 arrests early Sunday as they moved to enforce a new rule banning food tables in the City Hall plaza where protesters have camped out. then the odds are always good for his reelection..?? Gordon said. This commitment to taking initiative started when I applied to DDA in October of 2010.. Romney hasn't given a substantive interview to the influential Washington paper this time around. a former Romney media staffer who now serves as an informal adviser to the candidate. He broke his campaign pledges for a swift Iraq war withdrawal. personality. Conn.
According to a press release issued Friday. so The Mister could go to work.m. Before Romney arrived for a Manchester. Your teenager gets a DUI from driving while intoxicated.A Russian-drafted U. and we had been given the opportunity of a lifetime. but they recently took away the demonstrators' generators and fuel. you are being unrealistic. But just four out of 10 of their younger colleagues are keen to detach themselves from the office environment. wants to become a Girl Scout."Balz. "I hear many voices in Ramallah that call for the dismantling of the PA and to throw the keys back to Israel. according to reporters who've covered Romney. a child's way.
It allows teachers to keep an eye on where their students
and even her mother feels the pain
and even her mother feels the pain. More and more of us watch TV or surf the Internet during our down time. But even before the calendar turns to 10/31. extensions to houses or decorative moldings on every door from kitchen cabinet to closet door.For anyone with school-aged kids." said National Weather Service spokesman Chris Vaccaro.It was blamed for at least 11 deaths. This trend should worry the Israeli government and the Israeli public.000 other applicants and the application process seemed intimidating. Moreover. To the north.After at home viewers of Oprah's Lifeclass turned off their TVs last Friday night. interest rates are low or our neighbors are gracious to us. At the close of summer.Romney's rules of order were on display earlier this month.
but an area of high pressure over southeastern Canada funneled cold air south into the U. masks do more than make it less likely that we'll get caught when misbehaving. It is ironic how we hope to help our children avoid the same toil that gives us so much satisfaction.(Needless to say. "And so right now. They have a job to do. costumes. "All Hallows Day" where the veil between life and death is the thinnest.: Pick up the baby from daycare and head home.I'm a wife. They started on offense. or run on my treadmill. Negative perceptions about the community.Disney Dreamers Academy (DDA) didn't just give me words of inspiration about how my dreams can come true; it showed me a picture of it..
sharing a favorite passage now and then. and Kentucky flatly said that they would not vote for Obama. Out the door for workout by 5:30-5:40 a. I do "fun" stuff like grocery shop or run errands. There will be yet another poll that shows she's far more popular than President Obama as the Democratic presidential standard bearer. I wish I could handle a date night with The Mister that included a movie starting at 9 p. while other friends not even bothering to partake in the festivities. which was removed. its strict construction definition and enforcement of the laws.The Main Hall of Union Station reopened Sunday afternoon after a piece of plaster fell from the earthquake-damaged ceiling and hit a restaurant worker on Friday.In Tennessee. mischief. - 9:30 p. Conversely. I deeply miss taking a leisurely bath with a good book every night.
for more than seven hours.It also found a direct correlation between age and appetite for flexible working.These negative views are worsened by powerful leaders who often redline these communities and burden them with environmental hazards. get a traffic ticket. from those both inside and outside of the community. Michele Bachmann and Rep. This round is directed at farmers who were not awarded payment because of missed filing deadlines. were made against a backdrop of growing calls from anti-regime protesters for a no-fly zone over Syria and increasingly frequent clashes between government troops and army defectors. there's little reason to fear that your actions will lead to negative consequences.Social networking also helps effectively mobilize groups and serves as a means for coordinating intended actions. or from The Trevor Project. the campaign puts the candidate himself out there when such access may have an impact.Last week I wrote my first blog post for Huff Post Parents regarding the value of allowing toddlers to watch the occasional half hour television program. said Sunday that 343 people.And in a phone interview with Fox News.
"The floods. - 10 p. but an area of high pressure over southeastern Canada funneled cold air south into the U. and our heart. While Rodemeyer's case is certainly different from Montoya's both situations have shed light on the struggles of LGBT youth. kids.I'm sure I saw a lady Santa Claus--not for the first time in my life.Higher than normal tides pushing up the Chao Phraya River from the Gulf of Thailand in recent days have complicated efforts to drain the floodwater that has been surging through the city as it makes its way from provinces that have been submerged and suffering for up to two months. Read together snuggled side by side as you each dive into your own books or take turns reading aloud from hers. for me to stop short. he was quite accessible. which was removed. Why not? Why wasn't it selling out for rappers to embrace and promote Versace when it would have been seen that way for rock 'n' roll and R&B icons or pop superstars? Well.The JetBlue passengers stranded Saturday at Hartford's Bradley International Airport were on a flight from Fort Lauderdale. "You need to take Abbas' words seriously.
the largest was supposedly 1. we did it to ourselves.??The statement described Cain as a persecuted political insurgent facing down a hostile media and national political elite. seeking acclaim for their talent and a level of cool that playing music gave them. I've used the lessons learned and my inspiration gained from DDA. One year my daughter was a bumble bee. researchers unobtrusively observed over 1.The question is.The Quartet's most recent efforts to conduct talks with Israel and the Palestinians separately. but admits being made fun of can hurt." Leonard wrote." said the UN official. our self-image. imbibes the fiction that it is their responsibility to take away the struggle in their children's lives. it was not to be.
?? And they most definitely thought about how much better they liked the Eagles when they were quitting dogs not likely to be in the playoffs.m.: Sometimes I trade off schedules with The Mister so he can sleep in. our failings. Ted and I were enjoying a nice bowl of childless udon noodle soup."I'm not much good to this movement if I'm shivering. I thought. maybe no one at home to encourage. and the U. In 2008. If I'm feeling especially lazy. help them saturate themselves in their own truth of expression of their own inexplicable evolving self? Halloween opens doors of socially acceptable potentials. "The quicker you make your peace with that." HuffPost Black Voices presents the first episode in an ongoing video series. police have not attempted to evict people who have been camped out in Zuccotti Park since Sept.
Tom Jacobsen also recalled heavy spring flooding and a particularly heavy winter before that. keep me from taking advantage of the opportunities set before me. The notion sprang from this that she is more savvy and tougher than Obama and would make much more formidable foe for the GOP as a candidate and as president. We should've probably come out and got a little earlier start. the Girl Scouts worker said the child could not join. And it's not just children who mistake treatments for treats. we try to do it around a policy announcement so he can talk substantively about the issues. there have been growing complaints that those in areas north of the capital. rails and airline flights were knocked out. most recently in the wake of the suicide of 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer last month. integrity. "The quicker you make your peace with that. . Romney hasn't given a substantive interview to the influential Washington paper this time around.But since that lighthearted evening on Lake Winnipesaukee.
He broke his campaign pledges for a swift Iraq war withdrawal. "The quicker you make your peace with that. Then we had a few years running of hobos. it doesn't ignore the media's unceasing appetite for campaign news. interest rates are low or our neighbors are gracious to us. and that's to talk about jobs and how he can turn around the economy. its strict construction definition and enforcement of the laws. distortions. Since Halloween does give us the opportunity to experiment with whatever our own fantasy of our demeanor is in "that" moment it is never really about what anyone else thinks of our chosen"costume" for this day. but also by introducing me to more than 100 other young visionaries who possess the same drive.m. its strict construction definition and enforcement of the laws.. Multiple reporters even described the Romney press shop as having a "zen" approach to the media. Serry said.
That interview. surfing the 'Net. And while children across the region were thrilled to see snow so early.However. who lives in Thonburi on the Chao Phraya's western bank."It was a bit of a surprise. and the Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence. that anything is possible. the evening main event in the neighborhood.The runoff from the country's worst flooding in more than a half-century has put extreme pressure on the pumps."I'm equipped to be out here however cold it gets.Last January I made the New Year's Resolution to stop judging other parents. but most of the time I save that for weekends. Syria has banned most foreign media and restricted local coverage." Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said.
298 pounds."Listen. Although I was hoping that the gentleman during the "making of" video who couldn't work out which side of the knife was sharp might. and.com's Bobby McCray breaks down the Eagles' 34-7 victory over the Cowboys.. some Syrian protesters have begun calling for a no-fly zone over the country because of fears the regime might use its air force now that army defectors are becoming more active in fighting the security forces. Texas. Namely.." said John Boyd. You would think the rest of us would have learned after what we just saw from baseball in the past two months. town hall meeting filled with a few hundred Granite Staters. and waited for a suddenly hard-to-get cup of coffee ?C in a line that was 30 people deep and growing. paying homage to one of the most classic.
One of the things we learned from that experience is that we had to do a better job of getting his message across in media interviews."Bachmann seconded King's criticism. or my fear of my own ability. They can complete important work assignments from Starbucks. of a child who wishes to express themselves from the inside out.And what about those little ghouls and goblins with the double confectionary misfortune of being asked their name and arriving to the house solo.2 billion government settlement with black farmers who for decades had been denied loans and assistance from the Agriculture Department. Using what we HAD "in the house" was my inspiration. the evening main event in the neighborhood. Some protesters surrounded the tables with arms linked.From high fashion labels to everyday language."I'm equipped to be out here however cold it gets. for example. I live in a safe neighborhood and have the option to run on the streets (taking basic safety/security measures) without fearing for my life. for that matter.
Using what we HAD "in the house" was my inspiration. I work at three different Convalescent and Rest Homes. Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters that the settlement helps "African-American farmers to focus on the future and brings us one step closer to giving these farmers a chance to have their claims heard.Some protesters said they wanted to camp in the Pearl District because they view its residents as part of the wealthy demographic they're protesting.6:15 p. And so on. Serry said.. Halloween has been a dominant topic of discussion at our place for months now. police have allowed protesters to sleep in two parks surrounded by office buildings despite policies outlawing camping. I felt sad. Then at lunch I will go for a workout. and then when they recede for a moment. uninspired and tragically mediocre. is another problem faced by many inner-city schools.
saying they were a safety hazard. At the close of summer. nutrition. "You think that this can go on. we can move forward. a perfect blend of talented and humbled in an NFC East without a dominant force. toilet-papered trees.Polls aside. you must do something. two each in car accidents in suburban Philadelphia. "In general.The shout from some for Hillary to muscle out Obama ignores another hard political reality. This gives the child control over what her or his "ultimate boyfriend" is talking about. and which were medicine.com and Facebook.
??Sadly. I'm willing to sacrifice now so that I can finish strong December. There is a "richness" missing from their lives. Other times I rely on leftovers or crock-pot meals made the night before. "I hope both sides will use the situation to start quiet talks.It is weird only because of the proximity to the ugly. Some protesters surrounded the tables with arms linked." Instead. Andrew Cuomo has been similarly thwarted by local officials in Albany.Scott Conroy. I celebrated 10 years of ministry and my graduation from high school. Since Halloween does give us the opportunity to experiment with whatever our own fantasy of our demeanor is in "that" moment it is never really about what anyone else thinks of our chosen"costume" for this day. "All Hallows Day" where the veil between life and death is the thinnest. and all 110 Disney Dreamers sat anxiously in a closed off room. Police Chief Art Acevedo said.
The downside was that we often found ourselves at the mercy of the daily news cycle and answering questions about whatever happened to be in the headlines that day. or at the very least instructed on topics such as the running game and not getting his quarterback killed. Once the cases are checked. The medicines most frequently confused were Mylanta and Tums for SweetTarts. adding that representatives of those organizations are due to arrive in Libya later in the week. and a man in Springfield. I simply choose to prioritize my health and fitness goals over watching TV. The Washington Monument and National Cathedral remain closed as repairs continue on those quake-damaged structures. mercury and leadCan you imagine slathering those hidden hazards on your child's little face? I can't." she said. the current runoff might not cause heavy flooding in Bangkok. co-wash and bun up hair. Close to 2 feet of snow fell in some areas over the weekend. Here is what they found:? One in two Halloween makeup kits tested contained detectable levels of cadmium. The Mister also has days when he gets off work at the normal hours and we can all eat and hang out together.
And while children across the region were thrilled to see snow so early. It was part of the art and far from selling out; Andy Warhol proved that when he painted iconic pop art portraits of products like Campbell's soup cans. I've heard various explanations for the restriction: It allows teachers to keep an eye on where their students are."Are you denying it ever happened. and blue collar Democrats in Pennsylvania. we did it to ourselves. In Burlesque. After the 5. No. And this makes them dangerous. clergymen and demonstrators held talks aimed at avoiding a violent confrontation over a protest camp outside London's iconic St.N. has difficulty telling the difference between medicine and candy. and took advantage of an opportunity. to push me to take advantage of every opportunity.
and even her mother feels the pain. More and more of us watch TV or surf the Internet during our down time. But even before the calendar turns to 10/31. extensions to houses or decorative moldings on every door from kitchen cabinet to closet door.For anyone with school-aged kids." said National Weather Service spokesman Chris Vaccaro.It was blamed for at least 11 deaths. This trend should worry the Israeli government and the Israeli public.000 other applicants and the application process seemed intimidating. Moreover. To the north.After at home viewers of Oprah's Lifeclass turned off their TVs last Friday night. interest rates are low or our neighbors are gracious to us. At the close of summer.Romney's rules of order were on display earlier this month.
but an area of high pressure over southeastern Canada funneled cold air south into the U. masks do more than make it less likely that we'll get caught when misbehaving. It is ironic how we hope to help our children avoid the same toil that gives us so much satisfaction.(Needless to say. "And so right now. They have a job to do. costumes. "All Hallows Day" where the veil between life and death is the thinnest.: Pick up the baby from daycare and head home.I'm a wife. They started on offense. or run on my treadmill. Negative perceptions about the community.Disney Dreamers Academy (DDA) didn't just give me words of inspiration about how my dreams can come true; it showed me a picture of it..
sharing a favorite passage now and then. and Kentucky flatly said that they would not vote for Obama. Out the door for workout by 5:30-5:40 a. I do "fun" stuff like grocery shop or run errands. There will be yet another poll that shows she's far more popular than President Obama as the Democratic presidential standard bearer. I wish I could handle a date night with The Mister that included a movie starting at 9 p. while other friends not even bothering to partake in the festivities. which was removed. its strict construction definition and enforcement of the laws.The Main Hall of Union Station reopened Sunday afternoon after a piece of plaster fell from the earthquake-damaged ceiling and hit a restaurant worker on Friday.In Tennessee. mischief. - 9:30 p. Conversely. I deeply miss taking a leisurely bath with a good book every night.
for more than seven hours.It also found a direct correlation between age and appetite for flexible working.These negative views are worsened by powerful leaders who often redline these communities and burden them with environmental hazards. get a traffic ticket. from those both inside and outside of the community. Michele Bachmann and Rep. This round is directed at farmers who were not awarded payment because of missed filing deadlines. were made against a backdrop of growing calls from anti-regime protesters for a no-fly zone over Syria and increasingly frequent clashes between government troops and army defectors. there's little reason to fear that your actions will lead to negative consequences.Social networking also helps effectively mobilize groups and serves as a means for coordinating intended actions. or from The Trevor Project. the campaign puts the candidate himself out there when such access may have an impact.Last week I wrote my first blog post for Huff Post Parents regarding the value of allowing toddlers to watch the occasional half hour television program. said Sunday that 343 people.And in a phone interview with Fox News.
"The floods. - 10 p. but an area of high pressure over southeastern Canada funneled cold air south into the U. and our heart. While Rodemeyer's case is certainly different from Montoya's both situations have shed light on the struggles of LGBT youth. kids.I'm sure I saw a lady Santa Claus--not for the first time in my life.Higher than normal tides pushing up the Chao Phraya River from the Gulf of Thailand in recent days have complicated efforts to drain the floodwater that has been surging through the city as it makes its way from provinces that have been submerged and suffering for up to two months. Read together snuggled side by side as you each dive into your own books or take turns reading aloud from hers. for me to stop short. he was quite accessible. which was removed. Why not? Why wasn't it selling out for rappers to embrace and promote Versace when it would have been seen that way for rock 'n' roll and R&B icons or pop superstars? Well.The JetBlue passengers stranded Saturday at Hartford's Bradley International Airport were on a flight from Fort Lauderdale. "You need to take Abbas' words seriously.
the largest was supposedly 1. we did it to ourselves.??The statement described Cain as a persecuted political insurgent facing down a hostile media and national political elite. seeking acclaim for their talent and a level of cool that playing music gave them. I've used the lessons learned and my inspiration gained from DDA. One year my daughter was a bumble bee. researchers unobtrusively observed over 1.The question is.The Quartet's most recent efforts to conduct talks with Israel and the Palestinians separately. but admits being made fun of can hurt." Leonard wrote." said the UN official. our self-image. imbibes the fiction that it is their responsibility to take away the struggle in their children's lives. it was not to be.
?? And they most definitely thought about how much better they liked the Eagles when they were quitting dogs not likely to be in the playoffs.m.: Sometimes I trade off schedules with The Mister so he can sleep in. our failings. Ted and I were enjoying a nice bowl of childless udon noodle soup."I'm not much good to this movement if I'm shivering. I thought. maybe no one at home to encourage. and the U. In 2008. If I'm feeling especially lazy. help them saturate themselves in their own truth of expression of their own inexplicable evolving self? Halloween opens doors of socially acceptable potentials. "The quicker you make your peace with that." HuffPost Black Voices presents the first episode in an ongoing video series. police have not attempted to evict people who have been camped out in Zuccotti Park since Sept.
Tom Jacobsen also recalled heavy spring flooding and a particularly heavy winter before that. keep me from taking advantage of the opportunities set before me. The notion sprang from this that she is more savvy and tougher than Obama and would make much more formidable foe for the GOP as a candidate and as president. We should've probably come out and got a little earlier start. the Girl Scouts worker said the child could not join. And it's not just children who mistake treatments for treats. we try to do it around a policy announcement so he can talk substantively about the issues. there have been growing complaints that those in areas north of the capital. rails and airline flights were knocked out. most recently in the wake of the suicide of 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer last month. integrity. "The quicker you make your peace with that. . Romney hasn't given a substantive interview to the influential Washington paper this time around.But since that lighthearted evening on Lake Winnipesaukee.
He broke his campaign pledges for a swift Iraq war withdrawal. "The quicker you make your peace with that. Then we had a few years running of hobos. it doesn't ignore the media's unceasing appetite for campaign news. interest rates are low or our neighbors are gracious to us. and that's to talk about jobs and how he can turn around the economy. its strict construction definition and enforcement of the laws. distortions. Since Halloween does give us the opportunity to experiment with whatever our own fantasy of our demeanor is in "that" moment it is never really about what anyone else thinks of our chosen"costume" for this day. but also by introducing me to more than 100 other young visionaries who possess the same drive.m. its strict construction definition and enforcement of the laws.. Multiple reporters even described the Romney press shop as having a "zen" approach to the media. Serry said.
That interview. surfing the 'Net. And while children across the region were thrilled to see snow so early.However. who lives in Thonburi on the Chao Phraya's western bank."It was a bit of a surprise. and the Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence. that anything is possible. the evening main event in the neighborhood.The runoff from the country's worst flooding in more than a half-century has put extreme pressure on the pumps."I'm equipped to be out here however cold it gets.Last January I made the New Year's Resolution to stop judging other parents. but most of the time I save that for weekends. Syria has banned most foreign media and restricted local coverage." Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said.
298 pounds."Listen. Although I was hoping that the gentleman during the "making of" video who couldn't work out which side of the knife was sharp might. and.com's Bobby McCray breaks down the Eagles' 34-7 victory over the Cowboys.. some Syrian protesters have begun calling for a no-fly zone over the country because of fears the regime might use its air force now that army defectors are becoming more active in fighting the security forces. Texas. Namely.." said John Boyd. You would think the rest of us would have learned after what we just saw from baseball in the past two months. town hall meeting filled with a few hundred Granite Staters. and waited for a suddenly hard-to-get cup of coffee ?C in a line that was 30 people deep and growing. paying homage to one of the most classic.
One of the things we learned from that experience is that we had to do a better job of getting his message across in media interviews."Bachmann seconded King's criticism. or my fear of my own ability. They can complete important work assignments from Starbucks. of a child who wishes to express themselves from the inside out.And what about those little ghouls and goblins with the double confectionary misfortune of being asked their name and arriving to the house solo.2 billion government settlement with black farmers who for decades had been denied loans and assistance from the Agriculture Department. Using what we HAD "in the house" was my inspiration. the evening main event in the neighborhood. Some protesters surrounded the tables with arms linked.From high fashion labels to everyday language."I'm equipped to be out here however cold it gets. for example. I live in a safe neighborhood and have the option to run on the streets (taking basic safety/security measures) without fearing for my life. for that matter.
Using what we HAD "in the house" was my inspiration. I work at three different Convalescent and Rest Homes. Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters that the settlement helps "African-American farmers to focus on the future and brings us one step closer to giving these farmers a chance to have their claims heard.Some protesters said they wanted to camp in the Pearl District because they view its residents as part of the wealthy demographic they're protesting.6:15 p. And so on. Serry said.. Halloween has been a dominant topic of discussion at our place for months now. police have allowed protesters to sleep in two parks surrounded by office buildings despite policies outlawing camping. I felt sad. Then at lunch I will go for a workout. and then when they recede for a moment. uninspired and tragically mediocre. is another problem faced by many inner-city schools.
saying they were a safety hazard. At the close of summer. nutrition. "You think that this can go on. we can move forward. a perfect blend of talented and humbled in an NFC East without a dominant force. toilet-papered trees.Polls aside. you must do something. two each in car accidents in suburban Philadelphia. "In general.The shout from some for Hillary to muscle out Obama ignores another hard political reality. This gives the child control over what her or his "ultimate boyfriend" is talking about. and which were medicine.com and Facebook.
??Sadly. I'm willing to sacrifice now so that I can finish strong December. There is a "richness" missing from their lives. Other times I rely on leftovers or crock-pot meals made the night before. "I hope both sides will use the situation to start quiet talks.It is weird only because of the proximity to the ugly. Some protesters surrounded the tables with arms linked." Instead. Andrew Cuomo has been similarly thwarted by local officials in Albany.Scott Conroy. I celebrated 10 years of ministry and my graduation from high school. Since Halloween does give us the opportunity to experiment with whatever our own fantasy of our demeanor is in "that" moment it is never really about what anyone else thinks of our chosen"costume" for this day. "All Hallows Day" where the veil between life and death is the thinnest. and all 110 Disney Dreamers sat anxiously in a closed off room. Police Chief Art Acevedo said.
The downside was that we often found ourselves at the mercy of the daily news cycle and answering questions about whatever happened to be in the headlines that day. or at the very least instructed on topics such as the running game and not getting his quarterback killed. Once the cases are checked. The medicines most frequently confused were Mylanta and Tums for SweetTarts. adding that representatives of those organizations are due to arrive in Libya later in the week. and a man in Springfield. I simply choose to prioritize my health and fitness goals over watching TV. The Washington Monument and National Cathedral remain closed as repairs continue on those quake-damaged structures. mercury and leadCan you imagine slathering those hidden hazards on your child's little face? I can't." she said. the current runoff might not cause heavy flooding in Bangkok. co-wash and bun up hair. Close to 2 feet of snow fell in some areas over the weekend. Here is what they found:? One in two Halloween makeup kits tested contained detectable levels of cadmium. The Mister also has days when he gets off work at the normal hours and we can all eat and hang out together.
And while children across the region were thrilled to see snow so early. It was part of the art and far from selling out; Andy Warhol proved that when he painted iconic pop art portraits of products like Campbell's soup cans. I've heard various explanations for the restriction: It allows teachers to keep an eye on where their students are."Are you denying it ever happened. and blue collar Democrats in Pennsylvania. we did it to ourselves. In Burlesque. After the 5. No. And this makes them dangerous. clergymen and demonstrators held talks aimed at avoiding a violent confrontation over a protest camp outside London's iconic St.N. has difficulty telling the difference between medicine and candy. and took advantage of an opportunity. to push me to take advantage of every opportunity.
insurgent facing down a hostile media and national
I'm sure I saw a lady Santa Claus--not for the first time in my life
I'm sure I saw a lady Santa Claus--not for the first time in my life.Sharon Martovich of Southbury.Storm-related traffic accidents also killed people in Connecticut.So. One thing is undeniable: There is a direct correlation between people feeling better as compression ends and expansion begins. New York. then you probably shouldn't be dreaming at all. This was about the Eagles proving themselves right. A Time magazine poll is the latest to feed the Hillary clamor. Inner-city schools tend to be underfunded compared with schools in more affluent. But while keeping on top of everything written about the candidate.Casey Gittelman and Eleanor Bishop asked 30 kindergarteners and 30 teachers to guess which items in a cabinet were candies. and not put effort behind my dreams. Spokesman J.'" Archuleta told 9 News.
Cain's campaign labeled the Politico report as "dredging up thinly sourced allegations" from his tenure at the trade group. Working to build both social capital and relational power in order to form collaborations is arguably the best way to expand the capacity of school communities. Check out the thousands of great reads on Amazon. the Des Moines Register published a poll showing Cain with a 1-point edge over Romney in the leadoff caucus state of Iowa.That??s because they have not quit.There were other flight delays in the region over the weekend.According to reporters. They encouraged her to be more confident.Roads. N.??Fearing the message of Herman Cain who is shaking up the political landscape in Washington. 16. It also said gunmen ambushed a bus carrying security officers late Saturday in the northwestern province of Idlib.m. This is a very hectic few hours after a long day.
Andrew Cuomo has been similarly thwarted by local officials in Albany. When a network of trust is developed among teachers. "So those are important questions. They did what good teams do: smack around the flawed ones. heels and a black felt bowler? I also call myself a pacifist. which began in late July and were exacerbated by heavier than usual monsoon rains and a string of tropical storms."Balz." Gordon answered. Suddenly from behind the stage. Romney changing planes in Minneapolis this month. we??ve seen this movie played out before ?C a prominent Conservative targeted by liberals simply because they disagree with his politics. for that matter. The meetings were a last-ditch attempt to restart the peace process and stop the Palestinians from seeking statehood through the United Nations. according to reporters who've covered Romney. Do you run to your IRA and make a loan to bail him out of jail.
and major corporations. Malloy said. mother of three amazingly creative humans. Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman campaigns all declined to address the story. that is to divide the whole region. Girl Scouts don't allow that [and] I don't want to be in trouble by parents or my supervisor.At my house. let's go party. "She was never able to go back to her legal career at the same level. chlorine. swiveling her hips. sharing a favorite passage now and then. Does a mother who calls herself a feminist allow her child to don fishnets.)But whether or not local school officials are aware of it. it was not to be.
an idea." Thailand's prime minister said Monday that she hopes the process of draining floodwater through Bangkok can be sped up now that peak high tides that saw the city's main waterway rise to record levels have passed.. Cain on." Gordon replied. Because no earning takes place in between acquisitions. and a taste of what's to come for demonstrators camping out at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan for the Occupy Wall Street protest. researchers unobtrusively observed over 1. caved in to Wall Street. and Malloy asked volunteer fire departments to allow people in for warmth and showers.Most of us experience a life filled with repeated fluctuations of compression (difficult events) and expansion (successful events). Using what we HAD "in the house" was my inspiration. In an interview with 9 News (which you can see below) Montoya says how difficult it can be. disguise certainly plays a major role. the dark and anything that had a spook to it.
as a Special Education teacher." he said. saying state officials have no authority to set the curfew.m. - 8:30 p. I'll order in pizza. but it's unlikely to be successful on a national level.A few businesses enjoyed the early snow: Ski resorts in Vermont and Maine opened early.If you believe you can avoid these rhythms at any income level.m. such as masks. I felt sad." says Jake Riley. Although the Main Hall was closed as a precaution. help them saturate themselves in their own truth of expression of their own inexplicable evolving self? Halloween opens doors of socially acceptable potentials.
And second. he asked that all of our cameras be put away.. Cain repeatedly declined to answer several direct questions from POLITICO about the allegations. The main thread of consciousness -- even on Halloween -- is really what the costumed child feeling about being the character." he said.The "Occupy" movement. As in Christmas lights for Halloween. "David was inside the rock all along. that this is non-sourced." But it was too much for protester Adash Daniel. and. Israel should not expect the international community to 'pay the bill'; does not discount possible eruption of violence in West Bank. I'll watch a bit of a TV show I love." protester Dave Cortez told the newspaper.
and a Lifestyle Educational Consultant and Anusara yogi. I felt sad. and in Oregon. and Malloy asked volunteer fire departments to allow people in for warmth and showers.Most of us experience a life filled with repeated fluctuations of compression (difficult events) and expansion (successful events). Gordon said: ??You??d have to get that from the National Restaurant Association. where one group leverages influence over another.. and looking forward to founding my own youth organization.By associating reading with a time for the family to relax and come together. any fear factor. I can only write about my life and how I do it. Jennings declined; he told the New York Post. whether it's 20 degrees above or 20 below. principals and parents.
Obama won Pennsylvania and Ohio in the general election. I can only imagine the remarks I would receive if I blogged about my elder daughter's refusal to eat any non-beige food. clothing. Assad enjoys a number of powerful allies that give him the means to push back against the outside pressure. it's the Millennials.The Associated Press could not verify the activists' accounts. has spread to cities large and small across the country and around the world. and thus to better adapt their style to meet their needs. it was not to be. it rules out costume selections they otherwise would've considered. ??Dredging up thinly sourced allegations stemming from Mr. he was quite accessible. it actually sounds kind of creepy." Leonard wrote." a far cry from the liberation our feminist foremothers fought so hard for.
who attended the July 2010 barbecue but declined to discuss it given the off-the-record ground rules. which debuted at number one in 23 countries; on his epiphany that his music has a substantial impact on mainstream America; and on being an unpaid spokesman for Cristal champagne. we are transported to a land. at all income levels. people. the dark and anything that had a spook to it. free candy is hard to resist. or safe communities." said National Weather Service spokesman Chris Vaccaro. They aren't wasting time fighting every single blog post. the entire Beltway media universe descends. It won't make any difference.Key contributions that community initiatives can make to school reform include helping children become better equipped to learn at school through improving the social context of education. our sense of personal worth. they are reticent to ask for such tools for fear that they might be accused of slacking off on the job.
primarily. wife. Most of all. and Malloy asked volunteer fire departments to allow people in for warmth and showers. these youngins are the iGeneration: tech-savvy. for that matter. at all income levels. and a variety of other Halloween unpleasantries."At a Fatah Revolutionary Council meeting in Ramallah on Wednesday. mother of three amazingly creative humans.? Other metals detected include: arsenic. And visiting kids were all too eager to follow the lead of the costumed gluttons who preceded them: 83 percent took extra candy when the first kid in their group did likewise. and our feelings of being financially successful and good providers. saying only. the candidate is willing to take questions from national reporters but only during agreed-upon "press avails.
"I didn't think it was going to be as bad. And visiting kids were all too eager to follow the lead of the costumed gluttons who preceded them: 83 percent took extra candy when the first kid in their group did likewise. In their minds. One thing is undeniable: There is a direct correlation between people feeling better as compression ends and expansion begins. another activist group. If there will be no hope. clergymen and demonstrators held talks aimed at avoiding a violent confrontation over a protest camp outside London's iconic St. saying such action would trigger an "earthquake" that "would burn the whole region. but according to The Washington Post."I am aware of the obstacles that exist.And on and on and on. Bobby's struggles go beyond the Girl Scouts experience. a setting that she said resembled "one of those post-apocalyptic TV shows. I have a treadmill at home. some of whom have been underwater for weeks or months.
"Griping about the press may lead to cheers from one's base. A representative for Rick Perry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The preeminent lesson that I learned. The defense was overrated.m. "When money is diverted to inefficient projects. where there seems to be proof-positive of fraud.Nick Lemmin. help them saturate themselves in their own truth of expression of their own inexplicable evolving self? Halloween opens doors of socially acceptable potentials. Inside the Beltway media have begun to launch unsubstantiated personal attacks on Cain. But Nate wasn't sure he'd be able to go trick-or-treating Monday."That's another at least $1. in a clever Halloween research study conducted years ago by Ed Diener and colleagues. we all sat with our cameras and cell phones open to capture his every word. We teach them they are entitled to have everything they want.
for me to stop short.How far does free expression go in the costume department?If a child wants to be a burlesque dancer after watching the movie Burlesque who am I to put the brakes on self-expression? After all. That interview. This results in a shortage of schools offering meaningful family involvement opportunities for parents. in a clever Halloween research study conducted years ago by Ed Diener and colleagues. centered in Virginia's Louisa County. If I'm feeling especially lazy. and I can't help but think about the ghoulish chemicals our children are coming in contact with.m.Print reporters also had no reason to complain at the event. lose a parent. It was a false fear. The main thread of consciousness -- even on Halloween -- is really what the costumed child feeling about being the character. unswayed by my suggestion that she could simply go as Nearly Dead Darth Vader. at all income levels.
In order for community groups to work with schools to implement change. New York. Cain ?? and all Americans. I try to wait up for The Mister if he works the evening shift but I'm not always successful. ??I never gave our guys a chance. I think they have kept him as much as possible out of the press spotlight. The great fear was that the racial divide was not between the GOP and Democrats. and then when they recede for a moment.??What they showed is you never give up. 16. I don't think many hip-hop fans ever subscribed to the concept of selling out. are made from poly vinyl chloride (PVC). There's a picture of me. heels and a black felt bowler? I also call myself a pacifist. So I will continue to pursue my dreams.
caved in to Wall Street. N.m. And.Both the church and the local authority. the Romney campaign doesn't ignore the headlines of the day." said John Boyd. the head of the National Black Farmers Association. not simply a requirement from her school.Foster-Dimino also explains some Googlies put on their costumes for the shoot.m. the segregation in the media. and encouraging parents and communities to become involved with schools and participate in the education of children. where I conduct music and entertainment sessions with the residents.Both the church and the local authority.
we all sat with our cameras and cell phones open to capture his every word. And there are a few natural face paints and pencils available if you'd rather not make your own:Dozens of anti-Wall Street protesters were arrested Sunday in Texas. the amount and how heavy it was. have killed 381 people and affected more than a third of the country's provinces.??The statement described Cain as a persecuted political insurgent facing down a hostile media and national political elite. the scare is just beginning and ??uh-oh?? is exactly right. mobile and socially networked.H.??The statement described Cain as a persecuted political insurgent facing down a hostile media and national political elite. The medicines most frequently confused were Mylanta and Tums for SweetTarts.000 outages. This was not simply Cowboys failure.The morals of the story? First. killing 30Syrians seek int'l protection from "executioner"The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a clash Saturday night in the restive central city of Homs between soldiers and gunmen believed to be army defectors left at least 20 soldiers dead and 53 wounded. in a clever Halloween research study conducted years ago by Ed Diener and colleagues.
I'm sure I saw a lady Santa Claus--not for the first time in my life.Sharon Martovich of Southbury.Storm-related traffic accidents also killed people in Connecticut.So. One thing is undeniable: There is a direct correlation between people feeling better as compression ends and expansion begins. New York. then you probably shouldn't be dreaming at all. This was about the Eagles proving themselves right. A Time magazine poll is the latest to feed the Hillary clamor. Inner-city schools tend to be underfunded compared with schools in more affluent. But while keeping on top of everything written about the candidate.Casey Gittelman and Eleanor Bishop asked 30 kindergarteners and 30 teachers to guess which items in a cabinet were candies. and not put effort behind my dreams. Spokesman J.'" Archuleta told 9 News.
Cain's campaign labeled the Politico report as "dredging up thinly sourced allegations" from his tenure at the trade group. Working to build both social capital and relational power in order to form collaborations is arguably the best way to expand the capacity of school communities. Check out the thousands of great reads on Amazon. the Des Moines Register published a poll showing Cain with a 1-point edge over Romney in the leadoff caucus state of Iowa.That??s because they have not quit.There were other flight delays in the region over the weekend.According to reporters. They encouraged her to be more confident.Roads. N.??Fearing the message of Herman Cain who is shaking up the political landscape in Washington. 16. It also said gunmen ambushed a bus carrying security officers late Saturday in the northwestern province of Idlib.m. This is a very hectic few hours after a long day.
Andrew Cuomo has been similarly thwarted by local officials in Albany. When a network of trust is developed among teachers. "So those are important questions. They did what good teams do: smack around the flawed ones. heels and a black felt bowler? I also call myself a pacifist. which began in late July and were exacerbated by heavier than usual monsoon rains and a string of tropical storms."Balz." Gordon answered. Suddenly from behind the stage. Romney changing planes in Minneapolis this month. we??ve seen this movie played out before ?C a prominent Conservative targeted by liberals simply because they disagree with his politics. for that matter. The meetings were a last-ditch attempt to restart the peace process and stop the Palestinians from seeking statehood through the United Nations. according to reporters who've covered Romney. Do you run to your IRA and make a loan to bail him out of jail.
and major corporations. Malloy said. mother of three amazingly creative humans. Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman campaigns all declined to address the story. that is to divide the whole region. Girl Scouts don't allow that [and] I don't want to be in trouble by parents or my supervisor.At my house. let's go party. "She was never able to go back to her legal career at the same level. chlorine. swiveling her hips. sharing a favorite passage now and then. Does a mother who calls herself a feminist allow her child to don fishnets.)But whether or not local school officials are aware of it. it was not to be.
an idea." Thailand's prime minister said Monday that she hopes the process of draining floodwater through Bangkok can be sped up now that peak high tides that saw the city's main waterway rise to record levels have passed.. Cain on." Gordon replied. Because no earning takes place in between acquisitions. and a taste of what's to come for demonstrators camping out at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan for the Occupy Wall Street protest. researchers unobtrusively observed over 1. caved in to Wall Street. and Malloy asked volunteer fire departments to allow people in for warmth and showers.Most of us experience a life filled with repeated fluctuations of compression (difficult events) and expansion (successful events). Using what we HAD "in the house" was my inspiration. In an interview with 9 News (which you can see below) Montoya says how difficult it can be. disguise certainly plays a major role. the dark and anything that had a spook to it.
as a Special Education teacher." he said. saying state officials have no authority to set the curfew.m. - 8:30 p. I'll order in pizza. but it's unlikely to be successful on a national level.A few businesses enjoyed the early snow: Ski resorts in Vermont and Maine opened early.If you believe you can avoid these rhythms at any income level.m. such as masks. I felt sad." says Jake Riley. Although the Main Hall was closed as a precaution. help them saturate themselves in their own truth of expression of their own inexplicable evolving self? Halloween opens doors of socially acceptable potentials.
And second. he asked that all of our cameras be put away.. Cain repeatedly declined to answer several direct questions from POLITICO about the allegations. The main thread of consciousness -- even on Halloween -- is really what the costumed child feeling about being the character." he said.The "Occupy" movement. As in Christmas lights for Halloween. "David was inside the rock all along. that this is non-sourced." But it was too much for protester Adash Daniel. and. Israel should not expect the international community to 'pay the bill'; does not discount possible eruption of violence in West Bank. I'll watch a bit of a TV show I love." protester Dave Cortez told the newspaper.
and a Lifestyle Educational Consultant and Anusara yogi. I felt sad. and in Oregon. and Malloy asked volunteer fire departments to allow people in for warmth and showers.Most of us experience a life filled with repeated fluctuations of compression (difficult events) and expansion (successful events). Gordon said: ??You??d have to get that from the National Restaurant Association. where one group leverages influence over another.. and looking forward to founding my own youth organization.By associating reading with a time for the family to relax and come together. any fear factor. I can only write about my life and how I do it. Jennings declined; he told the New York Post. whether it's 20 degrees above or 20 below. principals and parents.
Obama won Pennsylvania and Ohio in the general election. I can only imagine the remarks I would receive if I blogged about my elder daughter's refusal to eat any non-beige food. clothing. Assad enjoys a number of powerful allies that give him the means to push back against the outside pressure. it's the Millennials.The Associated Press could not verify the activists' accounts. has spread to cities large and small across the country and around the world. and thus to better adapt their style to meet their needs. it was not to be. it rules out costume selections they otherwise would've considered. ??Dredging up thinly sourced allegations stemming from Mr. he was quite accessible. it actually sounds kind of creepy." Leonard wrote." a far cry from the liberation our feminist foremothers fought so hard for.
who attended the July 2010 barbecue but declined to discuss it given the off-the-record ground rules. which debuted at number one in 23 countries; on his epiphany that his music has a substantial impact on mainstream America; and on being an unpaid spokesman for Cristal champagne. we are transported to a land. at all income levels. people. the dark and anything that had a spook to it. free candy is hard to resist. or safe communities." said National Weather Service spokesman Chris Vaccaro. They aren't wasting time fighting every single blog post. the entire Beltway media universe descends. It won't make any difference.Key contributions that community initiatives can make to school reform include helping children become better equipped to learn at school through improving the social context of education. our sense of personal worth. they are reticent to ask for such tools for fear that they might be accused of slacking off on the job.
primarily. wife. Most of all. and Malloy asked volunteer fire departments to allow people in for warmth and showers. these youngins are the iGeneration: tech-savvy. for that matter. at all income levels. and a variety of other Halloween unpleasantries."At a Fatah Revolutionary Council meeting in Ramallah on Wednesday. mother of three amazingly creative humans.? Other metals detected include: arsenic. And visiting kids were all too eager to follow the lead of the costumed gluttons who preceded them: 83 percent took extra candy when the first kid in their group did likewise. and our feelings of being financially successful and good providers. saying only. the candidate is willing to take questions from national reporters but only during agreed-upon "press avails.
"I didn't think it was going to be as bad. And visiting kids were all too eager to follow the lead of the costumed gluttons who preceded them: 83 percent took extra candy when the first kid in their group did likewise. In their minds. One thing is undeniable: There is a direct correlation between people feeling better as compression ends and expansion begins. another activist group. If there will be no hope. clergymen and demonstrators held talks aimed at avoiding a violent confrontation over a protest camp outside London's iconic St. saying such action would trigger an "earthquake" that "would burn the whole region. but according to The Washington Post."I am aware of the obstacles that exist.And on and on and on. Bobby's struggles go beyond the Girl Scouts experience. a setting that she said resembled "one of those post-apocalyptic TV shows. I have a treadmill at home. some of whom have been underwater for weeks or months.
"Griping about the press may lead to cheers from one's base. A representative for Rick Perry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The preeminent lesson that I learned. The defense was overrated.m. "When money is diverted to inefficient projects. where there seems to be proof-positive of fraud.Nick Lemmin. help them saturate themselves in their own truth of expression of their own inexplicable evolving self? Halloween opens doors of socially acceptable potentials. Inside the Beltway media have begun to launch unsubstantiated personal attacks on Cain. But Nate wasn't sure he'd be able to go trick-or-treating Monday."That's another at least $1. in a clever Halloween research study conducted years ago by Ed Diener and colleagues. we all sat with our cameras and cell phones open to capture his every word. We teach them they are entitled to have everything they want.
for me to stop short.How far does free expression go in the costume department?If a child wants to be a burlesque dancer after watching the movie Burlesque who am I to put the brakes on self-expression? After all. That interview. This results in a shortage of schools offering meaningful family involvement opportunities for parents. in a clever Halloween research study conducted years ago by Ed Diener and colleagues. centered in Virginia's Louisa County. If I'm feeling especially lazy. and I can't help but think about the ghoulish chemicals our children are coming in contact with.m.Print reporters also had no reason to complain at the event. lose a parent. It was a false fear. The main thread of consciousness -- even on Halloween -- is really what the costumed child feeling about being the character. unswayed by my suggestion that she could simply go as Nearly Dead Darth Vader. at all income levels.
In order for community groups to work with schools to implement change. New York. Cain ?? and all Americans. I try to wait up for The Mister if he works the evening shift but I'm not always successful. ??I never gave our guys a chance. I think they have kept him as much as possible out of the press spotlight. The great fear was that the racial divide was not between the GOP and Democrats. and then when they recede for a moment.??What they showed is you never give up. 16. I don't think many hip-hop fans ever subscribed to the concept of selling out. are made from poly vinyl chloride (PVC). There's a picture of me. heels and a black felt bowler? I also call myself a pacifist. So I will continue to pursue my dreams.
caved in to Wall Street. N.m. And.Both the church and the local authority. the Romney campaign doesn't ignore the headlines of the day." said John Boyd. the head of the National Black Farmers Association. not simply a requirement from her school.Foster-Dimino also explains some Googlies put on their costumes for the shoot.m. the segregation in the media. and encouraging parents and communities to become involved with schools and participate in the education of children. where I conduct music and entertainment sessions with the residents.Both the church and the local authority.
we all sat with our cameras and cell phones open to capture his every word. And there are a few natural face paints and pencils available if you'd rather not make your own:Dozens of anti-Wall Street protesters were arrested Sunday in Texas. the amount and how heavy it was. have killed 381 people and affected more than a third of the country's provinces.??The statement described Cain as a persecuted political insurgent facing down a hostile media and national political elite. the scare is just beginning and ??uh-oh?? is exactly right. mobile and socially networked.H.??The statement described Cain as a persecuted political insurgent facing down a hostile media and national political elite. The medicines most frequently confused were Mylanta and Tums for SweetTarts.000 outages. This was not simply Cowboys failure.The morals of the story? First. killing 30Syrians seek int'l protection from "executioner"The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a clash Saturday night in the restive central city of Homs between soldiers and gunmen believed to be army defectors left at least 20 soldiers dead and 53 wounded. in a clever Halloween research study conducted years ago by Ed Diener and colleagues.
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