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Chapter 3
Playclothes

After breakfast, the children all looked at her with Well, now what? expressions, like they had when she'd stopped singing to shut her window during the thunderstorm, and that was when Maria clapped her hands together and told them her idea.

"I'm a rather good seamstress, you see," she explained. "I've been able to sew my own clothes for some time. Frau Schmidt told me that there are going to be new drapes for the windows in my room, and it seems a shame to let the old ones go to waste. I think, if you'll let me measure each of you, I could sew playclothes for you children quite easily out of the old curtains."

It was a difficult to gauge the children's reactions, for they immediately all began arguing and talking over each other.

"Playclothes? Father doesn't allow us any time to play."

"Father's off in Vienna. Who's going to tell him? You?"

"Well, what's he going to say when he comes back? He said he was bringing Baroness Schraeder back with him, remember?"

"Fraulein Maria's curtains have ugly green patterns all over," Louisa scoffed, with a roll of her eyes that was all the worst of teenage-girl attitude. Maria had a feeling that Louisa might take the longest to open up. "I am not wearing them."

Maria was listening to them talk, and then she realized... she was listening to them talk – with their voices, not their eyes and expressions. From what she had observed, these children didn't really need words to speak to each other. They could've said all of this silently, without her knowing, but they weren't. Maria listened to them go on, debating her idea, and the sound of their voices alone was enough to make her heart sing. Slowly but surely, she was making progress with these children.

"If we go around wearing old curtains, people will laugh at us."

"I think it could be fun to wear a curtain."

"And I'd like to have some clothes to play and get dirty in."

"Yes, me too!"

"Should we decide at the next meeting?"

"The next meeting is days away!"

There it was again – the next meeting. She remembered hearing Liesl and Friedrich mention it last night, too. She was more curious than ever about this mysterious meeting, but before she could ask, she noticed that one of the children had slipped out of the room.

"Wait a minute," Maria interrupted loudly. "Where's Gretl?"

The six older children fell silent and looked around for her, but before they even had time to wonder where Gretl had gone, she came back into the room. She skipped right over to Maria, holding a book that was much too thick for any five-year-old to read.

"Fraulein Maria, can you make me overalls?" she asked excitedly, holding the book up to her. "I want overalls, like his."

Maria smiled. The book's cover showed a drawing of a boy in a wide-brimmed straw hat and patchwork overalls. Maria had never read it, but she recognized the title as a German translation of some American book. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Maria was about to ask Gretl where she had gotten it, but apparently, Liesl already knew. "Brigitta," she said sternly, glaring at her sister, "have you been reading out of that to Gretl? That book is not appropriate for her."

Brigitta glared back. "I haven't been reading to her from it," she huffed defensively. "I've just been letting her look at the drawings. Honestly, Liesl, she's just learning her ABCs. You think she would be interested in hearing Huckleberry Finn?"

"Well, now, there's no harm just in letting her look at the drawings," Maria said quickly, trying to settle the waters. She flipped through the book and saw illustrations of the overalled boy and a man fishing and rafting down a river. "It's just an adventure story, isn't it?"

"It's more... moralistic," Brigitta corrected. "It's about how Huck realizes that Jim has more value as a person than he's given by the society they live in."

"Stop it!" Kurt suddenly yelled, startling them all. He pressed both hands over his ears. "I won't listen! I won't learn anything during summer vacation!"

Friedrich rolled his eyes, tugged his brother's arm down, and asked, "Oh, relax, Kurt. Why don't you just tune out Brigitta like you do your teachers at school?"

The other children giggled, and Maria did, too. She felt that little thrill again, at having learned something new and interesting about her charges. Brigitta was only ten. Who would have ever thought that a ten-year-old girl would be bright enough to even read a book like Huckleberry Finn, much less enjoy it, much less understand it? Yes, she would wager that these children were full of surprises.

Gretl tugged on her skirt, distracting her. "Fraulein Maria, can you?" she asked again. "Can you make me overalls? I want overalls like his."

Maria looked again at the wide, baggy shape of Huck's patched-up overalls. "Well, I can't make overalls exactly like his, Gretl," she smiled, "but I can get pretty close, yes."

"Goody!" Gretl exclaimed, jumping up and down a bit.

Her enthusiasm was hard to resist. Kurt stepped closer and asked, "Can you really make us all clothes out the curtains? Have you got curtains enough?"

"Yes, I think so. I took them down last night and measured them out. I asked your f – " But Maria stopped abruptly. She probably shouldn't say that she'd asked the Captain for material to make playclothes for the children but he'd refused. The relationship between the Captain and his children was bad enough already, and the Lord had brought her to this family to help make it better, not worse. She would make it better.

"You'll make playclothes for us, even though Father doesn't allow us any time to play?" Liesl asked, and she raised her eyebrows, as if in a challenge. It was a challenge, Maria suddenly realized – a challenge to directly, deliberately disobey the orders of their father, her employer. Except for the two littlest girls, the other children all looked at her, awaiting her answer, and the mood in the room grew tense.

Maria hesitated, wondering for a moment if maybe she shouldn't make playclothes for the children after all. But then the Captain's stern voice repeated in her head. You will see to it that they conduct themselves at all times with orderliness and decorum, and she nearly scoffed again. She'd never heard of anything so ridiculous as not letting children act like children. "Well," she answered Liesl evenly, "I'm supposed to, ah, strictly enforce bedtime, I think were his words, and you've all seen what a failure I was at that."

The children giggled again, remembering how much fun they'd had in Maria's room during the thunderstorm last night. Maria saw a few more of them soften, and she felt relieved, knowing that she had just won another battle.