“That’s because they’re men, and women were behind the Tea Party,” Miss Myrtle said. “I really think you must have it in any representation of Edenton. It’s what we’re known for.” She stood up and crossed the room to a tall narrow bookcase. Pulling down a slim volume, she sat next to Anna on the settee. She paged through the book until she found a political cartoon from England that mocked the “tea party” protest, precisely because it was a movement led by women. The women looked hideous and foolish in the sketch. “And men are still mocking it,” Miss Myrtle said. “We haven’t come very far in some ways, I’m afraid. But it was important. It started a whole movement throughout the colonies.”

Miss Myrtle’s passion for the subject made Anna like her even more, but she did wish she hadn’t shown her the cartoon. Now it was stuck in her head and she wasn’t sure how to illustrate the Tea Party with the image of those hideous-looking women in her mind.

Miss Myrtle had a large library full of books and Anna learned that she was a college graduate. Her accent wasn’t at all off-putting, although Anna wondered how her own accent sounded to her new landlady. “You don’t have to tell people where you’re from now, do you?” Miss Myrtle had teased after Anna’s first few sentences. “All you have to do is open your mouth.” But Anna liked the soft charm of Miss Myrtle’s accent. Her grammar was quite perfect, and she told her how taken aback she had been while meeting with the men at lunch the day before.

“A couple of them have such poor grammar,” she said. “Even the editor of the paper.”

Miss Myrtle chortled at that. “Oh, honey,” she said. “They know proper English. They just don’t want to sound like they’re above their raisin’.”

“Above their raisin?” Anna frowned.

“Their raisin’,” she said, and she spelled it out for her. “They don’t want to sound hoity-toity. They want to fit in with their people. You should read one of Billy Calhoun’s columns in the Herald. He’s sharp as a tack, that one, and probably knows more big words than you and me put together.”

She handed Anna a copy of the Chowan Herald and pointed to an article by Billy Calhoun about a tragic house fire that had taken place the week before. Anna read every word of the beautifully written piece and saw that Miss Myrtle was right. It was hard to believe the article was written by the same man she’d met at lunch. She was going to have to put her preconceived notions of the world aside while she was living in Edenton. The South was nothing like New Jersey, where what you saw was what you got, whether you wanted it or not.