Mr. Galt explained why he’d been so growly after the boy unloaded our goods and took his hired cart back to the market. Mr. Galt, who’d been standing in our doorway watching us arrange our bedding, said, “Mrs. Connolly, I hope you don’t take it off how sharp I was earlier today. The last time a lady rented this place, she weren’t no lady, if you take my drift.”

      “I see,” Mum said, blushing again.
 
     “What does that mean?” I said. Mr. Galt pursed his lips.
 
     Mum said, “She had no time to clean, Jenna. Does the place change hands often, Mr. Galt?”
 
                      “It changes when I say,” he said. “Were you going to clean my shop, then?”
 
                      Mum closed her eyes. She was tired. I said, “Mr. Galt, I’ll clean your shop.”
 
                      “What, a little chit like you?”
 
                      “I could clean until bed time.”
 
                      Henry Galt said, “Let’s see you do it, then.” He turned to go down the stairs. Mum said, “Thank you, Jenna,” and she lay down with James.
 
                      Mr. Galt and I treaded down the back stairs, and we stood just inside the doorway to his messy living space looking out at his shop.
 
                      I had no idea where or how to start. To my right and left, tiers of small drawers and shelves reached nearly to the ceiling. On the shelves, bottles and stoppered stone jars covered in dust. In the drawers—who knew? A counter ran in front of one of the walls. On the counter sat a scale and an oil lamp and a big book and the ivory half-skull. Opposite the counter, a series of rope lines ran from the front of the shop to the back. Hanging from these lines were bunches of leaves and herbs and dried flowers, the lot covered with lengths of fine cheesecloth. A large window near the door—just below our own upstairs window, I guessed--let in daylight. Dust blanketed everything but the drying herbs.
 
                      “This shop were my father’s and grandfather’s,” Mr. Galt said.
 
                      “Were they the last ones to clean it?” I blurted.
 
                      Mr. Galt blinked, and then his mouth widened and he wheezed and coughed and gasped. I hoped he wasn’t ill. He wiped his eyes and blew his nose and said, “Cor, you’re a cheeky one!”
 
                      “Beg pardon, Mr. Galt. I didn’t mean to be rude.”
 
                      “No harm done, girl. I haven’t laughed like that in many a day. Call me Henry.”
 
                      Call him by his given name! Henry fetched a ladder from the back along with yet another bucket of water and some rags. He held the ladder while I climbed up and down like a monkey in Mum’s Arabian Nights book, wiping off the outside of the drawers. When I got to the shelves, the bottles were so clotted with dust that I guessed they hadn’t been touched in a long time. Whatever labels hadn’t yet peeled off were brown with hand-lettered words. “What language is this?” I asked.
 
                      “Latin,” Henry said.
 
                      I picked up a bottle. “What’s in here? What’s ‘Axungia Hominis’ ?”
 
                      “Human fat. That’s left from my grandfather’s time. He got it off executioners.”
 
                      I quickly set the bottle down. I pointed at the next, its label written in English. “Is that really Dragon’s Blood?”
 
                      “What it really is, is sap from a palm tree.”
 
                      “What’s in all these other bottles?”
 
                      “Could be dried rose petals. Could be dried earthworms.”
 
                      “Don’t you want to know?”
 
                      “As Mr. Gray says, ‘Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.’ ”
 
                      “What does that mean?”
                      “It means if I open ‘em up, I’ll have to clean ‘em out. Or you will.” I dusted them.

Delaney Green is the pen name of Eau Claire’s Debra Peterson. Peterson taught English for 25 years, and before that, she was a reporter, a copy editor, a professional actress, a Broadway theater concessions manager, and a farm laborer. She is the author of Playwriting: A Manual for Beginners, published by Dramatic Publishing. She answers questions about writing on her website here.

A Candle in the Window is excerpted from Jem, A Girl of London –  the first book of Peterson’s in-progress Young Adult series (currently looking for a publisher). The books focus on Jessamyn Connolly – no ordinary girl. She hears what animals are thinking. She feels disease in people with no outward symptoms. And she decides early on that the only way for a girl to get along in a man's world is not to be a girl at all –  so she dons a pair of breeches and calls herself "Jem."

You can find two more excerpts below.