It was a shameful secret, the small charred perforation like an evil eye on her lap. She wore the dress in her dreams, which admitted no flaws or superstitions. She danced in it. Finally, two weeks ago, she had taken the ruined dress to a seamstress who was said to be a wizard. The old Hungarian woman, Magda Bogner, had consoled the Governor's wife with her shiny pins and deft hands.
Nobody even guess.
Her throaty voice and thick accent suggested the unassailable authority of a fortune-teller to the Governor's wife, who rather believed in magic. It was a belief her parents had encouraged in her as a child. She had learned in adulthood to call it by other names and, eventually, not to mention it. Mrs. Bogner had detached the skirt from the bodice, excised a narrow strip from it, and reassembled the garment with tiny stitches. When the Governor's wife returned for her dress, the burn was gone, like magic.