the designs she had glimpsed in the design room and she could barely wait for the morning to come.
She had a good feeling inside her and for now sleep was the last thing on her mind. Eventually she went to the window and after drawing back the curtains, she sat with her chin on her hands staring out into the night. Somewhere she could hear a wise old owl hooting his greeting to the night. She sighed dreamily. At last she was allowed into the design department and although it was only as a cleaner, it was a start.
The next morning, Amy set off for work bright and early as usual. Apart from the navvies who shouted their usual cheery greeting the cobbled streets were deserted.
After collecting her mop and pail from the cupboard at the factory she set about her duties and soon the workforce began to arrive. They took their seats at the machines that dotted the factory floor and within an hour the whole place was a hive of activity, with people having to shout to be heard above the whirr of the machinery.
For the whole day Amy was run ragged, fetching and carrying and running to see to the workers’ needs, and by the time the last one had left late that evening she was tired out. But even so as she entered the design room to begin her work in there, there was a little bubble of excitement in her stomach.
She set to with a vengeance and didn’t stop once until the whole room was spick and span. Then she stood for some minutes enjoying the peace and quiet and gazed about with fascination. Large easels and drawing boards were stood here and there with designs from start to finish of hats of all shapes and sizes sketched upon them. Dotted about were wooden hatstands displaying hats of all kinds, from the very plainest of styles to elaborately decorated creations. Amy eyed each one critically, turning her head this way and that, looking at them from different angles and seeing them in her mind’s eye as she would have dressed them.
Her mind was full of ideas and that evening when she arrived home she immediately began to draw sketches of the styles she had seen. Both Molly and Toby were deeply impressed but Amy impatiently waved aside their compliments.
‘Look at this one here,’ she ordered, pointing at a sketch of a very elaborate bonnet. ‘I think it should have a long length of veil, very fine, tied round the brim and trailing down the back like this.’
With a few strokes of her pencil she demonstrated to them what she meant, and after patting his chin thoughtfully, Toby slowly nodded in agreement.
‘I see what you mean,’ he admitted. ‘That does look much nicer than those flowers.’
Amy grinned at his approval before going on to show him some of her other ideas.
‘Why don’t you show some of these to the designers?’ he suggested after a while.
Amy shook her head. ‘Can you just imagine what they’d say?’ she frowned. ‘A cleaning girl telling them their job?’
Toby’s heart went out to her. Amy had such talent that it saddened him to see it going to waste. But still he was also a great optimist. He had always believed deep in his soul that Amy was destined for better things and had a feeling that somehow things would surely come right for her in the end.
By the end of the week, Amy was finding it hard to keep her hands off the unfinished hats in the design department. It was late on Saturday evening and everyone else had gone long since. Although she had finished her chores, still she lingered eyeing one particular hat. Next to it was a sketch of how it would look when it was finished and she felt that the design was totally wrong. Shaking her head, she sighed with frustration. It was a sophisticated style taken from a man’s top hat with clean straight lines. Amy felt that the flowers planned to adorn it were too fussy. It needed something more elegant and clean cut. Her fingers were itching to dress it as she felt it should be dressed, and suddenly she could resist the temptation no longer.
Hurrying over to another table she carefully selected two tall brightly coloured peacock feathers. Then, crossing to another table, she selected a length of plain scarlet silk ribbon. After carefully cutting the feathers to the length she required,