Words for Wednesday April 4, 2019

This month's Weekly Words for Wednesday is being hosted by Messy Mimi. Please check her out and all the participants' take on the words. Thank you Mimi.

Words for Wednesday

sustenance*
booth*
street*
hint*
syrup*
drab*

and/or

older*
cardboard*
wounded*
front*
empty*
astonished*


The Recipe

The booth rental was cheap, only five dollars for the whole day of the June fair, six weeks away. She ladled out the change, coin by coin, from her small leather purse directly into the mayor's hand. She was slowing down, turned seventy five last November, she knew that, but she quickly calculated that if she sold 80 bottles of her special syrup at 50 cents a piece she would be thirty five dollars to the good. That would see her through the cold northern winter.

She gathered her drab, once pale blue now grey, dimity dress in one hand as she stepped carefully on to the boardwalk bounding the street outside the town office, avoiding a boy with a hoop and a mother with a high baby carriage. Horses were tethered to the railings outside the small tea room and carriages were pulling in front of the Blagg's General Store across the street. She glanced through the window of the tea room and saw it was empty and without thinking, went in and sat down at one of the perfect round little tables.

Mr. Partridge came over from behind the counter, rubbing his hands, quickly concealing his astonishment.

"Miss Winterton! Well I do declare! To what do I owe this enormous pleasure?"

"I need a little sustenance," Miss Winterton said briskly, she'd never lost her school marm ways and had taught Eddie Partridge, "I was conducting some business at the town office. I shall have a booth once more at the June fair."

"Why, I'm thinking you will be again offering your recipe presented so beautifully in that special bottle in its very own cardboard box? The older I get, even if I just get a hint of that lovely taste I am well near enraptured!" and Mr. Partridge clasped his hands together most charmingly.

He waved payment for the cup of tea and biscuit away as he laid it gently on the table.

"Now, dear lady, you must put 5 bottles of your recipe away for me. Don't even think of selling your complete stock. Put them aside I beseech you!"

Miss Winterton nodded, sipping her tea, nibbling her biscuit. Perhaps she should think about expanding her production.

The only trouble was, in this dry town, so many took to drinking her syrup during the June fair and within a very short while, baffling as it was, this resulted in confrontations and misbehavior and even, heavens, some fighting and wounds being inflicted.

But why worry, Alice, she admonished herself, this has nothing to do with you.