"Try it with the cream," she suggested -- offering a little pot of the thick stuff after she had pushed aside her plate of half-finished meal. Being the lady of the house meant she didn't have to finish her vegetables before moving on to dessert.

Her smile was small and demure and hardly felt. She was thinking about Colemon's words. Supplies would be short, eventually. And she barely had a full pot of the dye Lysa used to provide. How long, she wondered, before her roots began to show...?