She rustled the pages to the very end. She held her hand over the paper and read aloud the print there. “See? This part are words to learn. ‘Free.’ ‘Life.’ ‘Live.’ ‘Took.’ ‘Love.’ ‘Loves.’ ‘Man.’ ‘Now.’ ‘Will.’ ‘Thank.’ ‘God.’ ‘Work.’ ‘Hard.’ ‘House.’ ‘Land.’ ‘Made.’ ‘Slaves.’”

With each word she spoke, I saw him wince, as if the words had pricked his finger.

“And these,” Mama said, “are the sentences to learn. ‘I am free and well.’ ‘I will love God and thank Him for it.’ ‘And I must work hard and be good and get me a house and lot.’”

“‘Work hard,’” he said.

“Yes.”

It was quiet between them for a bit, only the fire crackling.

Then Mr. Ben panted out, as if it was taking him great effort to do so, “There was a nigger back in Maryland who learned how to cipher. You wanna know how he learned, Miss Doctor?”

“How?”

“He took pot liquor fat and dipped pages of the Bible in ’em. Dipped ’em in till the pages was clear through. Greased the Word and hid it underneath his hat, and that clever, pretty nigger walked around with the Bible fat on his head, and if any white man saw it, he wouldn’t know it as the word of God. He’d only see some greasy, dirty papers on a nigger’s head and leave ’im be.”

“Well, that’s marvelous,” Mama said gravely. “That’s quite beautiful.”

“You think?” Mr. Ben sucked in a gulp of air, cleared his throat loudly. “I always thought it was a whole lot of work. But”—he pointed at the newspaper held between them—“we must work hard and be good even in freedom. That’s what you telling me. With rules like that, don’t it make you wonder what freedom’s for?”

He let his fingers run along the mantel again, from the Bible, to the mirror, to the flowers and back again, skipping over the newsprint.

“You got so many pretty things, Miss Doctor,” he said. “Such pretty things. My Daisy was the same way. She kept three stones she’d found: pink ones, and a white one, too. And a shell she’d found down by the wharf. She even had a mirror like this,” he held up the mirror and set it down again. “She wanted one something fierce. ’Course, she didn’t need one. My eyes were enough of a mirror for her, I told her. But she said no, she needed a mirror. To see herself. First thing she bought with the money from her market garden, even before she tried to save for freedom. She loved looking at herself in that thing. Sometimes, I’d have to beg her to put it down so my Daisy would talk to me.”

He picked up the mirror at last, cradled it in his palm. “Do you think someone like that belongs in freedom?” Mr. Ben said. “I mean, if she’d lived to make it here. Do you think she would have been able to work hard and have her lot of land to earn her freedom, like that paper says?”