The Florist Beeves

This Lela--the deaf mute--had a scullery maid’s aplomb for rearranging sock drawers and linen hampers, which she did quietly and with steadied poise. She scrubbed dirt and sweat-rings from other people’s shirts using her bare hands and a bishopric-lye she kept in a tin box underneath her bed. She accepted very little in return, as compensation for helping others was as sinful as wearing petunia-oil on Sundays or leaving the cat out in the rain. She’d rather they smile or smell the lilac of her neck, a place seldom touched by hands other than her own. Her days were divided between scullery-work and seamstressing, stitching collars and frayed pant’s bottoms and wayward coat-sleeves. She used a bone-thimble and a seven-gage sewing needle and thread so thick you could dress chickens with it.

The florist Beeves made nosegays for the deaf mute Lela, carefully choosing each flower, then arranging them into exquisite bouquets: Windflowers and Daffodils, Whortleberry and Venus’s Looking-glass, Toad-flax and Teasel, Sweet William and Silver-weed, Persian Candy-tuft and Narcissus, Mandrake and yellow Madder, Larkspur and Ladies’ Bedstraw, Jonquille and Indian cane, Hornbeam and Hawthorn, Goosefoot and Goats-rue, Foxglove and Dodder, Date-plum and Cinquefoil, Chaste-tree and Bugloss, Bladder-senna and Black thorn, Arum and Amaranth. He wove and tweezed them together with the greatest care, never once misplacing a Toad-flax or a Foxglove, a Silver-weed or a Candy-tuft.