


Which ain't to say we ain't got a sewing machine. I pay my sewing machine tax to the city, which is fifty dollar a week, and they don't care if your sewing machine's got a foot treadle, if you take my meaning. So I guess that makes me a seamstress, just like Beatrice and Miss Francina and Pollywog and Effie and all the other girls. But most just say it's Madame Damnable's Sewing Circle and have done. "Hôtel" has a little hat over the o like that. See, my name is Karen Memery, like "memory" only spelt with an e, and I'm one of the girls what works in the Hôtel Mon Cherie on Amity Street. You ain't gonna like what I have to tell you, but I'm gonna tell you anyway.
