Price himself saved me a place near the front. When I thanked him for the privilege, he told me that I had a way of angling toward him when he sermonized, as if I were about to leap from my seat and throw in for the cause right then. He believed my enthusiasm contagious to all. When John and Abigail Adams walked in and sat in the pew in front of me, I thought my heart would pound out of my chest. Mrs. Adams was known for her homemade bonnets, he for his awkward manners (the West Enders would have laughed at him), but I was drawn to their native simplicity, taking it as a sign that they preferred liberty to fashion, and ideas to trifles. Once, during a hymn—I could just see over the pew—the husband squeezed his wife’s hand, and she turned to him with smiling eyes. It was a small gesture, but I never forgot it.

I saw Abigail Adams in deep conversation after the service with Mrs. Burgh, who rarely came out these days, but of course she wouldn’t miss this. She leaned heavily on her favorite malacca cane with the painted porcelain female bust for a handle. Her tremor was worse, but her blue eyes gleamed like one of our girls at the school. I stopped a few steps short, not wanting to interrupt their conversation too brazenly. I was surprised to hear Mrs. Adams waxing poetic over the “simple charms” of Scotch songs. They always called up a memory, she was saying, of when her husband had been away in Paris, while she and her youngest sons were fending off a bone-cold winter in Braintree.

“Picture me, surrounded by a mountain of snow, sure that winter would begin and end me, my days as lonely as my nights were solitary. I missed my husband as if my own soul had flown away. A young friend found me in the worst melancholy, and sang me a song to cheer me up, about a wife greeting her seafaring husband after he’s been ‘awa.’ I still sing it to myself when I feel that hour upon me: ‘His very foot has music in’t/As he comes up the stairs—’”

“‘And shall I see his face again/And shall I hear him speak!’” I couldn’t help cutting in. It was Fanny’s song, the one she’d taught us.

They both turned to take me in. “Yes! You know it too,” Mrs. Adams said to me. “It has beauties in it an indifferent person wouldn’t feel!” She offered her hand to me. “And you are?”

“This is Mary Wollstonecraft,” said Mrs. Burgh, beaming. “Not an ‘indifferent person’ at all. She’s got a school for girls. Teaching them how to think for themselves. Reform the girl, reform the world! You would approve, Mrs. Adams.”