“Probably can’t afford to have it finished,” said Godwin. “She came in here on Saturday and bought nine colors of wool, two skeins of metallics, and a fat quarter of twenty-eight Cashel. She counted out the last two dollars in change. Poor thing.”

Betsy said, “There are a lot of hobbies that pay enough so the hobbyist can at least break even, but this isn’t one of them. Needleworkers can’t sell their work for even what the materials cost, much less the hours spent stitching it. That piece she just took out, she’ll probably end up giving away rather than be insulted by an offer of forty dollars for it. I just don’t understand why fabulously talented people who work with needles and fibers don’t get the recognition that people who work in oil or metal do. It isn’t fair.”

“Would you buy it?” asked Godwin.

Betsy half closed her eyes, picturing it on her living room wall, in a smooth, dark frame… “Gosh, yes.”

“What would you pay for it? I mean, if it was an auction, and you were bidding on it. How high would you go?”

Again Betsy half closed her eyes, imagining raising her hand with a numbered paddle in it. Fifty dollars, a hundred dollars, two hundred dollars. “Who’s bidding against me?” she asked.

“The Getty.”

Betsy giggled. “Then I haven’t got a chance, have I? But I’d go as high as five hundred, I guess.”

Godwin smacked his hand down on the desk. “Sold! Would you really go that high?”

Betsy hesitated, then recalled that figure in the foreground so realistically bent under the wind’s constant shove, and the way the snow swirled around the plinth and softened the vertical lines of the buildings. She had worked not far from Columbus Circle many years ago, and had once been out in a city blizzard… “Actually, yes, I think I would. But I’d also like to hang it down here as a model for a while, and sell lots of patterns. Oh, darn, I let Irene get away without asking if she’d do that Terry Nolan model for me. Remind me when we’re closing up, I need to call her at home.”