Lauretta’s tone was so vehement that Sarah went out quickly, closing the door behind her. Immediately, she heard her sister commence weeping again. She yearned to re-enter the room and comfort her, but she dared not. She had been rebuffed. She had been clumsy, no doubt, as she had said, however well her actions were intended. Lauretta would want to be alone, of course, feeling herself to be in love and knowing that her lover was, although now perhaps shouting lines upon the city’s stage, soon to abandon the city that held her.

Sarah went to bed and wept a little in sympathy. She fell asleep after listening hard and hearing no sound from her sister’s room.

She woke early but made herself stay in bed. After a while, hearing voices through the window that faced the back yards, she got up and went to look out. It was a misty, gray day. Uncle Joshua, who acted as butler and general manager of the house and its grounds, was walking from one flower bed to another in the back garden with Ichabod, the man whose main work was outdoors, planting and tending plants, although he performed miscellaneous chores as necessary. He was not dignified by the title “gardener,” being allowed no opinions, simply directed by Uncle Joshua to do this, that, and the other.

Sarah heard Ricey’s voice raised in the kitchen just below her bedroom, and then Clarice’s voice, loud and scolding. She bathed quickly after pouring water from the pitcher into the bowl on her washstand. Ricey brought water to the three bedrooms every night. During the winter months, at the time they had asked to be called, she carried up kettles of hot water which they mixed with the cold from the pitchers. In severe weather they had to break the ice that had formed overnight at the top of the pitchers before using it to cool the water from the kettles.

Bathed, she dressed simply. She would dress again before going to services at St. John’s. Leaving her room, she paused at Lauretta’s door, but hearing nothing, proceeded downstairs and on to the kitchen. When coffee was brewed, she helped Ricey set two trays, one for Aunt Pea, and the other with two cups and saucers, which she carried up to Lauretta’s room. Lauretta could not mind; they often had their morning coffee together, the first to wake going down and bringing it up.

She knocked and entered to find Lauretta sitting by her window. She was still in her nightgown, but her eyes looked stark and staring with the skin darkly puffed beneath them, as if they had not closed all night.

“Good morning, Lauretta.” Sarah set the tray on a table and poured coffee into the two cups, adding sugar and cream in the amounts they liked.