She scurried to the clothespress, reached inside it, and brought out the most hideous contraption Kitty had ever seen. It was a pair of stays, she supposed, but what a pair! A long cruel case of whalebone and stiff buckram, high in the back, very low in the front, pinched and pointed like the body of some vicious insect. That it was covered with white velvet and sewn with brilliants did not make it any the less frightening. Kitty got a cramp in her stomach as she looked at it. Her chest tightened, and for a moment she had trouble in breathing. But Sally Rose had a gleam in her eye.
“I got this at the staymaker’s this morning,” she said. “He ordered it for a rich Tory lady, but she fled away to join the British in Boston, so he let me have it cheap.”
“I should think he might,” said Kitty. “Why it’s hardly a foot around the middle. You’re slender, but not that slender, Sally Rose. How do you think to lace it up?”
Sally Rose smiled engagingly and stepped into the dreadful garment, dragging it over her hips and around her slight form. “Oh, you’ll have to lace it for me, Kit,” she announced. “I’ll have a truly fashionable figure now. I always wanted one. Remember, Gerry’s been looking at those rich Boston ladies all the week long. I don’t want him to feel disappointed when he sees me.”
Kitty climbed down from the bed and went to her cousin. She picked up the ends of the lacings and began to weave them into the metal hooks. Sally Rose stood there beaming, holding the stays in place.
“Hurry and lace them up, Kit,” she urged. “It will be easier if I can slip out while Gran is still at her work. Before she comes upstairs, I mean to be gone.”
With a great effort Kitty drew the stays together at the bottom, clamping her cousin’s slim hips and belly into a frighteningly narrow space. The garment had been designed for a much taller girl, and came well down over the thigh, almost to the knee. It fastened at the bottom with a tiny jeweled padlock, and Kitty noted a similar one at the top. She hesitated.
“Does this unlock with a key?” she asked.
Sally Rose held up a tiny bit of gold on a satin ribbon. “Oh, it does, Kitty, and I have the key here. Isn’t it all deliciously clever?”
“I don’t know,” muttered Kitty. “Hold your stomach in.”