From the time she could walk, Selma had a sense of the dimensions of her world. She went everywhere, more often than not alone, because Buttercup was not by zeal or temper a firm attendant. Everyone on the place knew her, of course, and if she grew tired where she wandered, she had only to ask to be taken home for arms to reach down and pick her up, cradle her as she rested head comfortably against a sweaty shoulder. True, untaught aristocrat, she accepted a physical familiarity from those who served her she would not have tolerated from her peers. There was safety even in the jarring walk that carried her.

Pauline’s world was more proscribed. She had no desire to wander. She stayed wherever she was put and hoped people would find and notice her. When they did, she was happy, and when they did not, she was lonely.

Most of the cabins had a patch of garden, a few turnips or cabbages or stalks of corn, indicative of whim more than need, for all ate from the common supply, although the selection depended on what was left after the choicest went to the big house. Lovey and Ezra’s cabin had no garden, for neither had time to work in it. There was only an umbrella chinaberry tree that gave in spring a lovely smell of its purple flowering, and in summer a blessed shade. As soon as she had the strength, Pauline climbed the tree. It was not big, although it seemed so to her when she was four, but its foliaged branches gave her a feeling of delicious privacy. (If she could not have company, then privacy would have to do.) She observed the passing world as secretly as a cat hiding in a hedge.

It was from this perch she first became familiar with the sight of Selma on her solitary wanderings. She watched her without revealing herself. Although it was her nature to offer herself too freely, when Selma came along, she drew into the foliage cautiously. She knew that Selma was the daughter of the mistress. Seeing her, unseen by her, Pauline hungered fiercely to know her.

A little older, Pauline followed her mother to the kitchen of the big house. It is easy enough for a quiet, respectful, obliging child to be tolerated in a big kitchen, and Pauline was soon at home there, passing a cooking fork before it was needed, alert to pick up a dropped dishcloth, graduating soon enough to peeling and scraping, learning to wait, learning to judge.