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with black silk lining and matching velvet hat with pink curled feathers.
    ‘Oh!’ I gasped, and I put out my hand to stroke the velvet. ‘It is most beautiful. May I have this as well, Sarah?’
    ‘Of course not!’ my sister said. ‘It’s much too grand for the likes of us. And, anyway, it’s far too warm at the moment for such a covering.’
    ‘I could keep it until I needed it,’ I said longingly, for it seemed to me that the pink velvet cloak was the finest and most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life.
    Sarah frowned. ‘You wouldn’t get the wear out of something like that. Besides, pink with your hair—’ She shook her head at me and said no more.
    I wondered afterwards whether she’d spoken about the colour of my hair just to put me off the cloak, but anyway, I settled on the green taffeta and was mighty pleased with it.
    As we left the market a street-seller called to us, bidding us to buy her fresh gooseberry syllabub, and we did so, sharing a dish between us and finding it most refreshing, for it was again very hot. On the way home we also bought some gay coloured-paper parasols against the sun, and some new pattens to wear over our shoes. They made us seem very tall, but Sarah said they needed to, for when it rained the waste would wash along the street outside the shop to a depth of several inches. In view of their height, though, we decided to practise walking in them at home before we went out in them.
    Throughout the trip to Houndsditch we had not seen nor heard one mention of the plague, apart from a poster on the door of the Green Dragon Tavern which read:
    A most efficacious cordial against the plague may be obtained at the Green Dragon. The only true guard against infection at six pence a pint’.
    Because we were in a happy mood, talking of home and our brothers and sisters, Sarah and I both affected not to see this notice.
    Back in our room, I tried on the green dress, patted my curls down as much as possible and tied them back with a green ribbon. I then put a few drops of orange water behind my ears and, feeling very fine, my skirts rustling about me, I walked up and down outside the shop to take the air, hoping that someonemight come along and see me. I suppose the ‘someone’ I was thinking about was Tom, but my friend Abby would have done nearly as well.
    However, the only persons around whom I knew were young Jacob and Dickon, who engaged me in a game of gleek. This was easier played sitting on the ground, but as I was not willing to kneel on the dirt in my finery, I let Dickon play my turn for me. Pretty soon, a minister of the church came by and chastised us for playing a gambling game on a Sunday, and though the boys protested that we were not playing for tokens or money, he bade us put away the counters and act in a way which was more suited to the Lord’s Day.
    I went indoors a little later, musing on the fact that I had not been to a church service at all since coming to London. This was not because of a sudden turning away from the teachings, but because (and I must confess I was not displeased at this) there always seemed something else to do: cooking or cleaning, washing or repairing our clothes. And with the shop open all the other days of the week, there was only Sunday to do these things. Sarah told me it wasn’t just us who did not keep the Lord’s Day, for since King Charles had been restored to the throne in 1660, far fewer people went to church on a regular basis. The ministers blamed the king himself for this, for they said that he and his court were a byword for gaiety and freedom and did not set an example to the people by leading pious and godly lives as the nobility were supposed to do.
    Indoors, I found Sarah was starting to make marchpane fruits. It was for this sweetmeat that we’dprepared all the almonds a day or so before and, as I was anxious to learn all the secrets of our trade, I changed out of my new gown and hung it in our room with a sheet