The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

from London in. Still, I had three blouses, two skirts, two sweaters, a dress, a
coat, and a pair of riding pants: more clothes than I’d owned in my lifetime. I
couldn’t imagine needing anything else. “Dressing gowns,” Miss Smith said,
as though reading my mind. “For winter. Something warm you can ride in.
Perhaps something pretty? The red dress is very nice, but it’s not the best
color for you.” She looked at me in a way that gave me the feeling of being a
fish on a slab. “Blue, perhaps. Or a nice bottle green. Green’s a good color
with your complexion. Velvet? I loved the velvet dress I had as a girl.”
“I hate velvet,” I said.
She laughed. “You wouldn’t know velvet if your underwear was made
from it,” she said. “Ada, that’s a fib. Why?”
I said, “I don’t want you making me things.”
Her smile faded. “Why not?”
I shrugged. I had more than I needed. More than I felt comfortable with,
really. I was still the girl I’d seen in the train station mirror, still the feebleminded
girl stuck behind a window. The simple one. I was okay with wearing
Maggie’s castoffs, but I knew my limits.
Jamie leaned forward. “Will you make me a velvet?” he asked.
Miss Smith’s smile returned. “I will not,” she said. “I’ll make you
something stout and manly.”
Jamie nodded. “Like in the book,” he said.
In the book, that stupid Swiss Family Robinson was all the time making
and finding things. It was like magic, it was, how the father would think it
was a shame they didn’t have any wheat for bread, and next thing they’d
stumble onto a whole wheatfield, or a wild pig would run out of the forest just
when they got a hankering for bacon. They’d build a mill to grind the wheat
to flour, and a smokehouse for the pork, out of nails and wood they just
happened to have on hand. Jamie loved it; he begged for more of the story
every night. I was tired of those idiots living on an island with everything they
could ever want. I didn’t care if I never heard another word.
“You won’t have time to make us anything,” I said. “We won’t be here that
long.”
Miss Smith paused. “The war doesn’t seem to be moving very quickly,”
she said.
“Right.” More and more of the evacuated children had gone back to
London, but not us. Not yet. “You’ll be glad to get rid of us,” I said. “You
didn’t want us in the first place.”