The dressmaker lino always works her sewing machine at her own easy pace.
The linos are all unhurried, so there is no such thing as a rush job.
With all that time, every piece of work is done with care.
When she makes summer clothes, she begins by getting into a summer mood. She sets sand she once gathered on a beach beside the machine, hums a summer song, and sews summer into the clothes. Oh yes, and she'll order a tropical juice from the café downstairs.
When she makes children's clothes, she opens the diary she kept as a little girl, lines up stuffed animals and building blocks, and has warm milk and cookies.
When she makes a school uniform, she puts on glasses, sits up straight, and gets out a new pencil and a new notebook. She'd like a handmade student card too. And what to put in the lunch basket?
Clatter-clatter-clatter, clack-a-clack. Today too, the sewing machine runs merrily along.
One autumn night, while she was happily making clothes this way, she fell asleep and, a little while later, had a strange dream. Someone came asking her to make rabbit clothes. But the figure was blurred, and she couldn't make it out at all.
She woke with a start. Rabbit clothes? What are those? Who was that? She thought about it hazily, but before long she was itching, itching, itching to make rabbit clothes, and could not help herself.
Normally she would spread leather all over the floor and go hopping about with a carrot in her hand, but it was the middle of the night. The person in the room below might be asleep, and she mustn't make a racket.
So she put on a dress with a rabbit pattern at least, tucked a puff of cotton on her behind, and sat down at the machine. Clatter-clatter-clatter... and the machine stopped at once.
Something was missing.
What could it be, what could it be. She thought, drawing rabbits on a scrap of paper. She'd have liked to order a carrot juice, but it was the middle of the night.
Then she happened to look up at the night sky, and a perfectly round moon was looking her way. The moon shone softly and quietly on the linos' house. The dressmaker lino tried turning off the lamp, and the moonlight fell just exactly on the sewing machine.
She began to work the treadle, lightly, and the light glancing off the machine scattered in sparkles, and little stars flickered in time, keeping the beat. The lino felt as if she were right in the middle of the stars.
The end