~~~
And on top of everything else there was a wedding to plan before they could go. Since Jack had been at the St. Francis School for Boys, she expected the male orphans would be attending that as well.
Good training for them all, she concluded.
CHAPTER 15 – Emily
Working in the Nursery with the infants and toddlers, Emily had finally, gradually, ever so little-by-little, begun to come out of her shell and respond to others. It had started when the older babies started demanding she interact with them. They were learning to talk and they wanted her to talk back. Now she was even reading to the children at bed time.
Although Emily had never fully recovered her strength after childbirth, she did seem to have recovered at least part of her personality and now spoke when spoken to. She still had no use for school, her reading skills adequate for the infant books she read, and preferred to work in the Nursery whenever she could.
Sister Teresa Rose, in charge of the Infirmary and Nursery, watched Emily at work and concluded she was, in fact, a very competent helper, not just in the Nursery but in the Infirmary. However, it did not make sense for her to go back and forth between the two and possibly spread infection.
That concept was a relatively new one but Sister Teresa Rose had been studying notes and papers produced by doctors treating military patients during the recent War Between the States.
As a woman, she would have had a great deal of difficulty getting educated and permitted to practice medicine as a doctor, but there was no law against studying on her own, and over the years she had taught herself an enormous amount about the workings of the human body and its reaction to various diseases, exploring far beyond what she had learned in Nursing School.
It was too bad Emily so firmly rejected the idea of reading and learning when she was obviously so talented medically. She had a wonderful touch with the infants, and a very acute sense of diagnosis. Perhaps she was just a bit closer to the angels, thought Sister Teresa Rose.
Now that her mind seemed to be recovering, Sister Teresa Rose began to have hope that she might even get Emily to start studying medicine instead of just going by instinct.
CHAPTER 16 – Preparations
The congregation of St. Francis had become as excited as the girls about the upcoming trip. The Ladies Sodality had done a fundraiser to ensure each girl was properly set up, and had a valise, a travel outfit, and a dress for church. Thanks to Mother Evangeline’s hints that the congregation of St. Mary’s on the Hill would be judging St. Francis by how well the girls were turned out, new bolts of fabric and trim were offered, not just the usual discards.
Barbara examined the donated materials, most of which were sturdy fabrics in subdued colors, which would be entirely appropriate for travel costumes. She would design a basic dress and travel coat and then make each unique with furbelows and trim, she decided. The dull colors would hide the grime which would naturally accumulate on everything, and would be a splendid background to the embellishments she envisioned for each outfit.
Rail travel was not especially clean, with wood or coal smoke belching from smokestacks and blowing through open windows. Not that she’d ever been on a train herself, but she’d read the descriptions of the vagaries of travel in Godey’s Lady Book while checking out the latest trends. She was pleased at the much narrower skirts being worn, with a modest drape. They would require far less fabric and be much less cumbersome to travel in.
Working with the best seamstresses in the school, every sewing machine that could be begged, borrowed, or commandeered was set up in the ballroom, as the girls called the large room in which they enjoyed their monthly dances.
Barbara cut out each costume herself, pinning the pieces together and basting a nametag into the pocket seam. Then she passed it on to her teams who worked in stages. The basted outfit was fitted to its recipient and adjusted seams and hems sewn before being draped on a dress form. With ten ladies to sew for, the loan of a few extra forms was appreciated.
Barbara was sorry that a few more of her specialty workers were not coming with her. She had carefully trained the girls to do buttonholes, embroidery, frogging, and create unique details to set each dress apart. And fourteen year old Caitlin had become her apprentice for design and overall costume completion. She was not utterly abandoning the remaining orphans to a return to drab clothing.
“How am I to manage in Kansas without you, Cindy? No one can turn a facing the way you do!”
“Sarah, let’s do military style buttons on this one for Judith. She can carry it off nicely.”
“Shelley, I am going to pin the navy draping to show the final shape. Did you want to do the silver edging first or would it be easier to work with the final shape?”
Each dress, when complete, was as distinctive as Barbara had envisioned and, by dint of carefully placed swaths of color, each gave the impression of being of its accent hue. One did not notice the dresses were gray or brown but saw them as pink or red or green. And the drapery was subtly different for each, designed to highlight its owner’s best features and, when necessary, mask flaws.
~~~
The donated valises arrived, sturdy, practical, drab, and identical. Barbara’s first thought was to picture Judith grabbing the wrong bag and trying to get Barbara’s skirt to fasten closed.
