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day, and says I snore. I don’t believe it. He likes to be rid of me for a little while, I think. Did your dream return?”
    “No. Did thou speak to thy—friends?”
    He grinned. “They told me you had opened your heart to them and listened. They would have allowed you to sleep from now on anyway.”
    “My thanks, just the same.”
    “You’re welcome. May I see your needle?”
    She handed it to him. He held it close to his eyes.
    “So fine and sharp,” he marveled.
    “These needles have quite spoiled me, I’m afraid. I grew so accustomed to their delicacy, their ease and precision, I indulged myself in a lifetime supply before leaving London. Not very patriotic, my father scolds. He has succumbed to no English finery, but I—” She frowned. Her lower lip was more full than the upper one. Washington imagined the feel of those lips on his own.
    “Forgive me, I do not usually prattle on so about frivolous things,” she was saying now.
    “Art is not frivolous.”
    “My mending is art?”
    “Yes.”
    She laughed a full, musical laugh then. Soprano. No, deeper. Alto soprano. Washington lost himself in its sound. He wanted it all for himself, not for those on the outskirts of their lantern’s circle of light—the masters of the Midwatch, the seamen throwing dice in the shadows, the ones aloft among the rigging. “May I finish the seam, Judith?” he asked. “My hands are clean, see?” He removed the leather thimbles from his left fingers to demonstrate.
    Curiosity joined the mirth in her ever-changing gray eyes. “So they are. Not a trace of tar tonight, Friend Washington. And thou are scented somehow—savory?”
    He ground his teeth. “That was Fayette’s idea. I feel like a cured slab of meat. He has been very peculiar lately.”
    She laughed, handing him the garment. He examined the seam. “It has ripped here before,” he observed.
    “At the shoulder? Yes. Always reaching, that’s Papa.”
    Belonging to her father. A shirt, then. “I will show you a lockstitch.”
    He was amazed at the way the gleaming needle eased among the strands of the shirt’s weave. He followed Judith Mercer’s straight stitches to the rip’s end. Then he doubled back on them, and around the selvage. “Loop, see? Then lock.”
    She leaned in closer. “Do it again.”
    He did, more slowly.
    “Let me try!”
    He held the cloth between his fingers as she plunged the needle through. She was so close, a wisp of her hair glanced his chin. The silver strands were soft but strong, he could feel that even through the heat of his blush. Those strands, they would work well in the task he had in mind for them, he was sure of it.
    She sighed. The rose part of her scent intensified. “I’ve gone too wide, haven’t I?”
    “Try placing them closer. And do not—don’t—” he amended, “pull so tightly.”
    She went back to her task, absorbed. Could she hear his heart? Would the sound frighten her away? He tried to think of the design for the ketch, of keeping watch for unfamiliar officers, of anything he’d once thought important.
    “There!” she called, triumphant. “What genius thou has!”
    He exaggerated a scowl. “I am not an artist?”
    “An artist in the Quaker tradition. An artist of thy life.”
    “Judith”—he summoned laughing eyes—“tell me what that means.”
    “We Friends desire to be remembered by our deeds, so our lives become our art. We take great joy in a well-planted field, a straight, strong seam. We see God in these things.”
    “But why do you not see God in plays, painting, poetry, songs?”
    A whisper of a sigh escaped her. “Fayette has been speaking of our morning talks on deck?”
    He bowed his head. “Yes.”
    “Washington, my father and I have tried to convince him that we Friends do not denounce. We have a loving approach to life. It’s just that, for us, we see what thou calls art as an imitation of life, and so distracting from life itself. No, we have no poets, as thy dear