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A Lightbulb Goes Off
The first Herald of the Quest which Sophie cannot now refuse is small-scale, purely local, yet important all the same.
As with the mayor's wife's caterpillar green hat that "makes her look like a stunning schoolgirl," [21] the brilliant success of Jane Farrier's hat has not gone unnoticed. There has been at least one order for another just like it, which came in a week before May Day. [11]
Two weeks later, Sophie sits alone in the shop, wageless and more discontented than ever.
A very plain young woman customer stormed in, whirling a pleated mushroom bonnet by its ribbons. "Look at this!" the young lady shrieked. "You told me this was the same as the bonnet Jane Farrier was wearing when she met the Count. And you lied. Nothing has happened to me at all!" [24]
Did Sophie actually tell her that? I doubt it. The girl's expectations, although justified somewhat by the local buzz, were the product of her own need. She was not as lucky as Jane, though. Instead of casting a spell of beauty and allure over it, Sophie, exhausted and depleted, tried the girl's hat on herself and concluded that it made her look "Like an old maid!" [12] No wonder the poor young lady has failed to snag a nobleman, or anybody else! The reader fervently hopes that the old-maidness stays with the hat and not with the girl who had such hopes for it when she bought it.
Sophie, meanwhile, has had it up to there, and she lets fly at the girl:
"I'm not surprised," Sophie said, before she had caught up with herself. "If you're fool enough to wear that bonnet with a face like that, you wouldn't have the wit to spot the King himself if he came begging — if he hadn't turned to stone first just at the sight of you."
The customer glared. Then she threw the bonnet at Sophie and stormed out of the shop. Sophie carefully crammed the bonnet into the wastebasket, panting rather. [25]
Meowtch! Is this the kind of behavior one expects from a hero-in-training?
Of course, says Jones:
[Heroes] have enormous individuality and a larger-than-life personality – not always a very nice one. They sulk, they stamp, they throw racquets and they insult the umpires and the linesmen. But then, very few heroes are like Sir Galahad. Achilles sulked worse than a tennis star – he was also vengeful and whined to his mother. Theseus made unscrupulous use of Ariadne (whom he left on an island where Bacchus later found her – I always think that really meant she took to drink, poor girl) and Jason made similar use of Medea…. ["Heroes," linked at right]
Sophie's talent and hard work are the lightbulb that's allowed every other dame in town to bask in rosy radiance. Her energy, both physical and psychic, is the battery everybody else draws on as they strut and prance on May Day. Sophie, meanwhile, is exhausted, she's frustrated, and she knows that this is just all wrong.
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