Following Rabbits
He saw Meredith poke her head in the work shed and wince at the smell of mercury oxide that hung like a cloud. “John, it’s tea time,” she said and shut the door behind her.
He wiped the sweat from his brow and sighed. He wouldn’t be as behind as he was if it hadn’t been for a hole in the roof that he had to take half a day to repair. If he hadn’t had lost those five or six hours, he thought, perhaps he wouldn’t be scrambling so hard here at the end of the week to get together enough hats to take to market. You see, John was a hatter.
John looked back down at the seam he was working on. He was half done with the stitching, and then this one would be ready for the brim. Carefully, managing to steady the shakiness of his hands, he began stitching along the seam again, pulling the thick thread through the felt. He worked diligently, never looking up despite the pain in his neck and the cramping in his forearms. He sniffed a lot, careful to not let any snot fall from his nose onto the new hat. Snot had a way of not coming out of felt.
very very good