Tiffany Girl (23 page)

She finished cutting the pieces for Christ’s throne, then studied the cartoon. The sheets Nan had chosen for a nativity scene disrupted the flow, had the wrong texture, or didn’t produce the luminosity of a true Tiffany piece.

Worrying her lip, she glanced about the room. Aggie wrapped foil around cut pieces of glass, using beeswax as adhesive. Mary, the daughter of a portrait painter, worked on a new cartoon. Ella, who drank enough tea for the entire British Empire, selected glass for a window of Christ blessing evangelists while Elizabeth worked as her partner cutting it.

Flossie looked again at the cartoon depicting the nativity scene. She could do a better job selecting than Nan had. She knew she could. If Mrs. Driscoll had been there, she’d have asked permission first. But she wasn’t.

Flossie wasn’t worried, though. Mrs. Driscoll had asked to be surprised. Well, once she saw the glass Flossie selected, she’d not only be surprised, she’d be pleased. Turning to the trays of discarded sheets, Flossie pulled new glass. Her fingers flew to the different selections, much like a typesetter who was so in tune with the type he hardly had to look to find the exact letter he needed.

Once she’d made her final decisions, she cut the pieces and pasted them to the glass easel. Never had she worked so fast and with so much joy.

When she finished the section, she stared at her work, a sluice of euphoria sweeping through her. This was what it meant to be an artist. This was what she wanted to do. This was where her talents lay.

Once again, she imagined Mrs. Driscoll’s reaction, then hugged herself. She could hardly wait.

CHAPTER

27

W
hat is the meaning of this?” Mrs. Driscoll made a sweeping gesture with her arm to indicate the section of window Flossie had redesigned.

The maroons and golds of the wise men’s robes offered a rich contrast to Mary’s brown outer tunic. The sky in the background hinted of morning colors. Yet Mrs. Driscoll’s tone indicated displeasure. Perhaps she was referring to the section where a bearded Jesus preached to the apostles. Flossie hadn’t much cared for the color selections in it, but she’d only had time to change the nativity scene.

“Which part exactly?”

“These!” Mrs. Driscoll pointed to the nativity scene—the exact part Flossie had changed.

She fingered a button on her shirtwaist. “You mean, the places I selected colors for?”

The other Tiffany Girls had yet to arrive. Flossie, however, made sure she was always the first one in and the last one to leave. Her parents had told her over and over to be the very best at everything she did. Arriving early was part of that, and so was picking out the very best colors for the windows. At least, so she’d thought.

“
What on earth possessed you to select colors? You cut the glass, and at a more leisurely pace than ideal as it is.”

Leisurely pace? She might not be as fast as Elizabeth, but she wasn’t slow, either. She shifted her weight to the other foot. “Nan wasn’t herself yesterday and I was simply trying to keep us from having to redo anything.” She looked to the door to make sure no one was coming, then lowered her voice. “You should have seen the selections Nan made for this section. They weren’t very good at all. I tried to offer my suggestions, but she refused to listen.”

Mrs. Driscoll stared at her with an incredulous look. “Miss Upton didn’t select the colors for this section. Didn’t you notice she failed to hold them to the light, but instead simply took them from the tray, pulled the template, and handed them to you?”

Flossie stiffened. “That’s why I was so distressed. I thought she was trying to hurry things up and was sacrificing the quality of the window.” She looked at the nativity scene. “Was there something you didn’t like about the glass I chose?”

“Yes, I liked the glass that had been previously chosen.”

“I mean no disrespect, Mrs. Driscoll, but did you look at the glass that had been chosen for that part of the cartoon? I don’t know who did the selecting, but whoever she was, she picked ridged glass for the Virgin Mary’s gown, rippled glass for the wise men’s gifts, and fibrillated textures for baby Jesus.”

For a long moment Mrs. Driscoll said nothing. Her light-brown eyes merely studied Flossie as if she were an oddity in a curiosity shop. “I’m sure this will come as a shock to you, Miss Jayne, but Mr. Tiffany himself selected the glass for this section of the window.”

Flossie’s mouth slackened. She took a step back.

Looking to the side, Mrs. Driscoll let out a huff of air, then turned back to Flossie. “Mr. Tiffany also
invented
ridged glass for the specific reason that when it is made by his formula, it looks like clothing draped into folds. As for fibrillated glass, he uses it in
places which call for a rather soft glow—much like a baby would have. He developed rippled glass because it creates a sort of fiery glitter, which would be quite suitable for the treasures the wise men bestowed upon Jesus.”

Flossie’s breathing grew deep. Her head became light.

Placing her hands on the table, Mrs. Driscoll leaned toward her. “Just this once, I’m going to pretend you never said the things you said, nor did the things you did. But if you
ever
do another task you were not personally assigned by me to do, I will dismiss you. Do we have an understanding?”

“Yes, Mrs. Driscoll.”

“Good. Now, I suggest you get back over to your station and start looking for the templates you discarded yesterday. You have done us a great disservice. I will have to find the pieces Mr. Tiffany chose—if I even can. If I can’t, then he will have to do them over, and he will not be pleased about it.”

Flossie’s heart began to hammer. “I’m—”

“In addition to that, you are going to get even more behind on your cutting because you’ll have to put the templates back on the easel once you find them, you’ll have to remove all the glass pieces you have up there, and you’ll have yesterday’s and today’s cutting to do instead of just today’s. We won’t even mention the cost of the glass you’ve ruined, but from here on out, if you make any mistakes or break any pieces, the cost of the glass will be taken out of your pay.”

“Yes, Mrs. Driscoll. I’ll be careful. And I’ll hurry. You’ll see.”

After curtseying, she rushed back to her station, tears stinging her eyes, the cut marks in her rough wooden table blurring. Shoving her glasscutters to the side, she rifled through the trash bin for templates. She couldn’t see a thing, but she made sure no sounds escaped as her shoulders shook.

What if she wasn’t chosen to go to the fair because of this? She had to be. She simply had to be. It was just one mistake. She’d
work doubly hard—harder than any of the other Tiffany Girls, so hard that she’d be irreplaceable.

Finally, with a trembling breath, she wiped her eyes, laid out what numbered templates she had, then began to switch them out for the pieces she’d cut.

BOARDERS AT DINNER 
¹⁷

“Everyone looked at the Trostles, the new elderly couple who’d just moved in.”

CHAPTER

28

D
oes anyone know where today’s
New York World
is?” Nettels asked. “It’s not in the parlor.”

Everyone looked at the Trostles, the new elderly couple who’d just moved in, assuming it was them who’d removed it from its proper place.

“Oh, dear.” Mrs. Holliday worried her lip. “I’m afraid I’m the culprit. I was reading
The Merry Maid of Mumford Street
.”

Reeve choked on his coffee.

Oyster slapped him on the back. “Oh, I saw that this morning. A delightful story, indeed.”

Capturing his breath, Reeve looked up. How in the blazes did they know about the satire he’d written?

“We should have someone do a reading of it tonight,” Mrs. Trostle suggested. The woman exuded a level of wealth none of the other boarders could match. Reeve briefly wondered if Miss Jayne’s mother might have sewn for her, but if that were the case, what was the woman doing in Klausmeyer’s Boardinghouse?

“But Miss Jayne isn’t here,” Mrs. Holliday countered.

“Miss Jayne?” Mr. Trostle shouted, overcompensating for the fact that he couldn’t hear too well. He was every bit as old as his wife, but hadn’t aged as gracefully. His forehead was stacked with
wrinkles like a pug, and his gray goatee bobbed at the end of a protruding lower jaw that was missing a few teeth. “Is she the Tiffany Girl?”

The start of the fair had come and gone, but the Tiffany Girls still hadn’t finished the windows and had been kept at work for long hours, so the Trostles had yet to meet Miss Jayne. Reeve had heard her leave early every morning and come home late in the evenings. He never waited up, nor did he go looking for her, but, much to his frustration, neither could he fall asleep until he heard her return.

Smoothing his tie down his chest, Nettles straightened in his chair. “I suppose I could read it in Miss Jayne’s absence.”

Reeve only listened with one ear to the rest of the conversation. His day had been taken up with some follow-up interviews with glass strikers. Surely the story Mrs. Holliday mentioned wasn’t his. Yet, he’d not noticed it in his drawer lately. Had he somehow accidentally stuffed it in an envelope with one of his other assignments?