'I'd like to see you operate my sewing machine, Hugh Collins.'

At the time he hadn't thought much of it. Only now, having been put to the test, he was sweating like a bucket of curds and whey under the sun. He looked apprehensively at the machine. It stared smugly back at him. Were sewing machines like dogs? He wondered. Did they take on the personalities of their owners? Dot had a similar expression when she had led him over to it.

She'd shown him how to loop the thread around the thingamabob and into the needle. Set up the pedal and control it with the slightest tap of the foot. Too heavy and the machine whirred away and twisted thread all over the material like a malevolent spider. Fighting to keep it under control, he hadn't managed even one straight seam.

Several times, the thread twitched out of the needle and he had a hard time fumbling around trying to get it back in the needle. He nipped himself several times just trying to adjust the pins and yelped with frustration. It was bloody fiddly. He didn't understand how Dottie sat there and spun magic with a clunky beast of a machine like this. The thread bunched up again and the machine jammed up yet again.

He cursed as he pricked his clumsy fingers again. Looking guiltily around, he hoped that she hadn't heard him. There was silence beyond the door. He looked at the hash of the task before him and groaned. It looked like a child's drawing.

Little did he know that Dot was just outside smothering a laugh while watching him in the hand mirror that Miss Fisher had generously lent her for the undertaking.

Thought it was so easy, did he? Ha.

Think again, Hugh Collins.