When I returned home, I was so chastened from my licentious stay in Bath that I hardly remembered the day of the week. My mother said that the shop was “fine” and that she and Viviana were “well,” so I did not know what to make of anything.

Fortunately, my little girl was able to tell me what her grandmother could not. She went into great detail about how Mr. Camp had tried to sell granny some milk that had gone off, and how he had also gotten into the strange habit of handing about disjointed political literature for all of his customers to read. She told me that the middle daughter of Mrs. Biddle, our neighbor, was marrying a sailor and meant to travel.

The biggest news that my daughter had to share involved her hat designs. She had one with a great swath of velvet, cut and shaped to make it into something slightly resembling a feather, sticking nearly straight up from the hat itself. Another had so many feathers that it looked rather like a deceased bird.

“I’m not sure it is a wise idea to put these in the shop, Vivi,” I told her, holding another hat with great puffs of lace on it.

She smiled at me. “You’re always just talking of the money in it, mama.”

“Darling, much of what goes into a business is money.”

This earned me only a sigh from my daughter. “Yes, but how are you ever to make more money if you have no interesting notions?”

I decided to end the discussion. “You’d do better to finish your Latin.”

Viviana only twirled about the room. “Mama, I am sick of Latin. You must recall how dull it is.”

I went looking for her books, talking to her over my shoulder. “Yes, but it will serve you well as an educated young woman.”

“I do not see how. You never use it yourself.”

“As a governess I did.”

This stopped her for a moment. “Mama, you were a governess?”

I rubbed at my temples. “Yes. Well, not exactly. I advertised my services as a governess, but I ended up starting the shop instead.”

It was not exactly a lie. After all, I had been in the business of being a governess for only three years before my disastrous marriage and Viviana’s birth. I had been a hat shop proprietress for far longer, and the Latin had been useful enough there. I could impress customers, or understand what they were saying when they spoke to each other in Latin or French, trying to be clever while making silly remarks about the quality of my hats not being high enough to justify the prices.

“So you were never actually a governess in any homes?”

I sighed. “Viviana, I will try one of the hats.”

She smiled, but I held up a finger. “Only if you make all the copies of it yourself. I know that you do not like to sew, so consider if you will want to make several more of these hats.”

At this she only smiled. “I love sewing, mama. It’s just that I find the work you always give me rather dull, and so you think I don’t like to sew at all.”

“Dull? That is the very work that keeps us fed.”

“Mama, I know. But beautiful hats like mine will feed our minds.”

Feed our minds, indeed. Sometimes I wondered what in heaven was happening in my daughter’s mind, and how it might veer even farther from mine as she neared womanhood.