Once I walk in that gate, I ain’t free anymore, she thought. No matter how handsome the house, once I enter I’m a servant girl—no more than a black slave. She had been queen of the cabin and the straggly fields and sugar bush up there on the hill. But now someone else would call the tune. How could her mother have done such a thing? She was sure her father would be horrified—she and Charlie drudges on someone else’s place. It didn’t matter that plenty of poor people put out their children for hire to save having to feed them. She and Charlie could have fed themselves—just one good harvest—one good sugaring—that was all they needed. And they could have stayed together.

She was startled out of her dreaming by a hideous roar, and before she could figure out what animal could have made such a noise, a stagecoach appeared, drawn by two spans of sweating Morgan horses, shaking their great heads, showing their fierce teeth, saliva foaming on their iron bits. The coach had rounded the curve, its horn bellowing.

The driver was yelling as well, and then, just in time, she realized that he was yelling at her. She jumped hard against the wall. He was still yelling back at her as he pulled up the reins, the coach itself now on the very spot where she had been standing seconds before.

Should she apologize? No, he wasn’t paying her any attention now. He was turning the team over to a boy who had run out of the shed. A woman was hurrying out of the kitchen door to welcome the passengers, who were climbing stiffly from the coach. Lyddie stared. They were very grand looking. One of the gentlemen, a man in a beaver hat and frilled shirt, turned to hand a woman down the coach step. The lady’s face was hidden by a fancy straw bonnet, the brim decorated with roses that matched her gown. Was it silk? Lyddie couldn’t be sure, never having seen a real silk dress before, but it was smooth and pink like a baby’s cheek. Around her shoulders the lady wore a shawl woven in a deeper shade of pink. Lyddie marveled that the woman would wear something so delicate for a ride to the northland in a dusty coach.

Safely on the ground, the woman lifted her head and looked about her. Her face was thin and white, her features elegant. She caught Lyddie’s eyes and smiled. It was a very nice smile, not at all haughty. Lyddie realized that she had been staring. She closed her mouth and quickly looked away.